Speculation Saturday
Subtitle: Saturday is it ain’t all about you aliens day. (grin)
Speculation. I think I’ll do it all day today. It won’t just be about you aliens, but I won’t let that stop me(grin). I can’t seem to write on any one specific alien topic since Tuesday. I really burnt my creative summation skillz up doing all three of those in one day, While staying “On Series”. Lesson learned. On the other hand, I put out 5 posts this week if you count this one. Which I’m going to do. (grin)
But today is going to be wild speculation day. Have fun with it! Don’t take it too seriously. Please. I know I won’t. (grin)
1. iTV – It’s not here yet, but I can hear the hoofbeats of it in the hallways of my mind. Several different inputs are starting to come together in my dysfunctionally parallel driven thought process. Allow me to share! After the “more” break of course.
Now We Know Why Apple Bought A Chipmaker – It’s an interesting article in that it ties Apple to the consumer’s desire for the “Instant On” function we are trained to by most of our electronic devices. Especially the content providing ones like our TV’s, Radios, iPods, TIVO’s, etc.
Actually, the TIVO cheats by always being on. That way when we turn our TV’s on, the TIVO content is right there waiting for us like a transparently good little consumer device should be. Heck, the TIVO even records stuff with the TV off!
That’s where I think this “Instant On” capability comes in. It’s one more piece in the puzzle that Apple needs to make Apple TV better than TIVO. In one way it is related to my blog’s purpose. Some of you aliens are obsessed with the Apple TV. Here’s where I think it’s going. What? It’s not that far a stretch. (grin)
Apple succeeds by doing what others do better than they do it, in such a way that the device itself not only forces the acceptance of the device by overwhelming public demand, but by recreating the market with the Apple Brand.
The iPod is the first real example of this. The iPod is the device and brand where Apple put all their previous experience into hardware that finally achieved this goal. The iPhone is positioned to do the same thing to the cell phone industry. Some think it already has.
The Home server market is a difficult nut to crack, and an Apple content storage device would be perfect to crack it. IMHO, That device will be the first successful reinvention of Apple TV. Call it the first “iTV” if you must, Apple probably won’t. But it is a very successful branding technique for them. So they might.
By reinventing an already somewhat successful market that had stalled by saturating the available customer base, the iPod combined with iTunes made the “mp3″ player ubiquitous. You may not remember when the iPod first came out. It got about the same reception as the first generation Zune.
When Apple finally got all the pieces put together “right”, it became THE Portable Music Player to have, in the public perception. Everybody else was suddenly imitating Apple(including all the companies that were making MP3 players long before the iPod). And not doing nearly as well.
Some form of “Memristor” like capability is the next nut to crack in the DVR market. Right now, the TIVO works by staying on all the time. It’s an external device that has to be hooked up to a TV, and correctly set up before it works. Hooking it up to a computer network with access to the Internet greatly increases it’s functionality. Once set up correctly, it’s a fairly easy device to use.
Apple could pull an “iPod” style move on TIVO and all the other DVR players by turning the Apple TV into a “All In One Easy To Use As an iPod-like “iTV” device that instantly starts up where it was turned off. Installation needs to be as simple as plugging in power and content cables.
Apple could wait to rap all this up into some kind of Mac, but it doesn’t need to. It simply needs to beat TIVO at the DVR/TV game in the all important “consumer perception” market. Memristors could help them reach this market that the public has been wanting ever since TIVO gave them a taste of what it COULD be like. Instant on “TV/DVR/Home Network Server” that is as easy to use as an iPod.
“But jimmy” I hear you saying, “how will Apple beat TIVO’s huge lead?” Pay attention grasshopper! Apple can sell the “iTV” as a device independent of a “guide subscription” contract. It could do this for just analog content over cable, and make deals with all the content providers on how it resells digital content to consumers. Gee, if only Apple had a model for this. (grin)
“But jimmy” I hear you saying once again, “what does this have to do with the Home Server Market?” It’s quite simple really. I think I know better than everyone else does about everything(grin), so naturally I know what it takes to claim this particular market.
Content is king baby. I don’t really care about having a “backup” server unless it does something important. Like making sure that all the content I “download”, off of whatever source, is freely available to everyone in my household on every content “sharing” device. And important to me! If I “DVR’d” it, and then kept it, it’s important to me!
Few companies are positioning themselves to do this. Several of the Big Ones want to. Apple does this kind of thing best, once it works out the kinks preventing “the devices” from fitting the iPod branding model.
“But jimmy” I hear you wishing you’d asked, “what does all this have to do with us aliens?” I dunno, maybe nothing. It really depends on how successful you are at holding on to your right to provide free content to anyone who wants it, or who you want to reach with it. Which brings me to wild speculation number two:
2. The end of the free lunch. In the next Speculation post of course. Whenever that is.
What? You ain’t paying for this! Not a single one of you has pushed my GodPal button! You know, push it, pay me like PayPal AND be God’s Pal! All at the same time! The fact that I haven’t actually created and added this to my blog is no excuse! TAANSTAFL baby! (grin)
