APC Magazine’s Dan Warne reckons Apple is about to deftly round-house kick Microsoft’s media center strategy for six. First Apple leaves a mysterious header on the Mac Mini motherboard for a non-existent iPod dock connector. Then it brings out media center software and a video iPod at the same time. Then it recruits the head of TV recording company ElGato. When you put the pieces together, it ain’t pretty for Microsoft.
Warne writes, “Apple’s a shrewd operator. First, its spreads misinformation from the top – like how Steve Jobs famously slagged off media centre PCs in a conference call with financial analysts last year. ‘We might as well make it a toaster too,’ he said. ‘I want it to brown my bagels when I’m listening to my music,’ he said at the time. ‘And we’re toying with refrigeration, too. We’re not going to go that direction,’ Jobs concluded. ‘There is a small audience that likes this.'”
Warne writes, “Yet only a year later, he has released the video iPod, along with the ability to download good TV programs from its iTunes Music Store. Apple has simultaneously released an upgrade to its iMac G5 to give it media centre capabilities. This model of Mac can’t record or watch TV, so it’s a half baked media centre solution, howl the critics, and fair enough too. But what if the industry’s presumptions about the future of ’converged’ computing is fundamentally wrong?”
“Apple’s about to do to the media center PC market what it did to the portable music player market. It doesn’t mean people will switch to Macs as their primary home PC, but Apple is going to sell a truckload of Mac Minis along the way anyway as under-the-TV media-centre boxes. The next phase of its long term strategy isn’t too hard to imagine, and it will be to do with replacing home PCs (with the assurance that you can always run Windows on an Intel-based Mac if you need to.) Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs is damned clever at assembling the pieces on his chess board without people noticing until it’s too late,” Warne writes.
Full article, an excellent read which includes the first Australian review of the video iPod, here.
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Related articles:
Elgato CEO to head Apple Germany – October 18, 2005
How Apple can win the OS war – October 19, 2005
Apple’s Front Row with Apple Remote and iMac G5: media center done right – October 12, 2005
Apple introduces new thinner iMac G5 with built-in iSight video camera, ‘Front Row’ media experience – October 12, 2005
Ahh
M$ should just deep-six Office for the Mac. Force people to choose.
To quote Jayne from the cancelled-but-great Firefly:
“I’m smellin’ a lot of ‘if’ comin’ off this plan.”
Evil_MS_User: Hehe, You think Apple doesn’t have an office suite ready for just that occasion?
MS uses Office as a out to say they are not a monopoly. And Apple allows them to do this, for now.
Office is Microsoft’s only card.
They played their web browser card (dropped Internet Explorer for Mac)
They played their IM card (they don’t make MSN Messenger for Mac do they?)
Apple stole their Media Player card (iTunes has put Quicktime on millions of PCs)
Verbose,
MS does make MSN Messenger, but it’s hopelessly out of date. No voice, no video. The last update finally got us animated emoticons. Yippee.
Steve Jobs’ 3 simple steps to success:
1) Get everyone (competitors, media, customers, etc.) thinking “Zig”
2) “Zag”
3) Repeat
I think Apple should make thier .mac account more useful.
Make Pages and online application. Where all you have saved on your machine is Pages templates and the appliction is accessed and used online.. all your documents are saved online, and an a virus check is run regularly.
Even work on a spreadsheet app too!
Sun and Google are planning for it.. I think apple can make the move now.. they already have .mac .. why not make it fully useful.
The only thing standing in the way is broadband connections as a staple for everyone. But having items that you can install on your machine (such as templates) for example can compensate for a lack of high speed internet connection! Think of it as a glorified email account.
MSN Messenger SUCKS ASS!
I just bought an iSight today, plugged it in and was conference calling my sister in Croatia within 2 minutes!
You gotta love Apple
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You people who want to dump Office, probably are unemployeed.
If M$ pulls Office for Mac, it would raise anti-trust concerns at DOJ. The initial proposed settlement to the anti-trust case the M$ lost was to break up MS into two companies – a systems software company, and an applications company. The M$ negotiated a consent decree in lieu of the draconian remedy, and are being monitored by DOJ until 2007. If they yanked Office Mac, the anti-trust police would be all over M$.
Why do people talk about Frontrow not being suitable for the living room? Surely what’s more interesting is how suitable it is for bedrooms and kitchens and studies. Not as a replacement/addition to a tv but as an enhancement to available media in those rooms, to replace a cd player etc. It doesn’t replace the main media centre of the house but it spreads media throughout it.
We will see when the HDCP and other DRM Intel chips come.
You see the entire US TV market is going over to digital HDTV’s with HDCP copy protection, this is already evident in the new cable boxes that can hold a movie for a day on their hard drives.
HDCP is incredibly hard to crack, requiring numerous keys and authentication. (hardware crack)
The roadblock to a media PC included HDCP, which unfortuantly goes through the cable lines.
If you want a “black box” later and be able to record HDTV into your Mac unencrypted, get a PowerMac G5 Quad and a few EyeTV 500’s now. (MacTels will be DRMed and the EyeTV 500 might not be allowed to be sold if the broadcast flag makes it through Congress this week)
Connect: Cable>Cable box (control with cable remote)>Black box (acts like a HDCP HDTV)>EyeTV 500>PowerMac G5 (dual core/processor or better, fast hard drive to record)
Act fast or be left out in the cold.
“Make Pages and online application. Where all you have saved on your machine is Pages templates and the appliction is accessed and used online.. all your documents are saved online”
Ha ha! I almost took you seriously, until i read your handle.
Yeah, sure, like anybody is stupid enough to not own their own documents.
…then again, we have folks suing because they scratched their iPods with 60-grit “paper towels,” so maybe there are folks out there who would… oh, never mind!
Anybody that can’t figure where SJ/Apple is heading with all these products is deaf, dumb, and blind. Unfortunately for his rivals, knowing the final destination doesn’t help because you can’t stop him along the way, as he creatively gets all his ducks in a row.
Just love the chess analogy…
..its just possible that SJ is so many (unseen so far) moves ahead that Microsoft is already check-mated.
Interesting to see that Microsoft also chose the wrong side on the Blu-ray HDD argument with Warner Bros now moved to Blu-ray.
It’s just what we said a year ago..once the negative spiral for MS starts it will be hard to stop – equally the positive spiral for Apple once under way will be hard to stop. It’s happening and it’s a joy to see.
“Act fast or be left out in the cold.”
Yeah, you know, i just don’t have time in my life for broadcast/cable TV anymore. It’s such a waste of “life credits.” Don’t have cable, only watch one broadcast show anymore (and it’s starting to bore me).
Virtually everything i watch is on DVD, and most of it either movies or vintage TV. If Apple gets vintage TV on iTMS, that could interest me. Cable and broadcast does not interest me in the least and i don’t spend money on it.
Microsoft will always dominate the rainbow boys with the rainbow apple or is it the white apple? Either way, superiority is proven by the bottom line and ol’ Billy Gates has really stuck it to Ol’ Jobsy…sorry guys…hate to rain on your parade.
Bill Gates
“Asteriod” is probably some sort of box that allows a MiniMac to do what an iMac does and more. I’m surprised they haven’t released it yet. Something that can give me that Front Row, powered by a MiniMac, and can support HD Video to whatever display……sounds good to me.
If you want to break your Mafia$oft habit, it’s not hard with some planning. For example, there are a ton of excellent word processors out there for Macintosh. Many much lighter weight than that piece of bloatware shit called M$ Word (more like M$ Phonebook).
The writer is obviously well informed and quite intelligent. Nice change.
As long as we’re speculating, try this – Apple monitor/TV’s with wireless networking capabilities so that each one can be connected to the central Mac – each one can have Front Row and remote controller capability for controlling the media from the CPU. All the technology is available. All the pieces are ready. I’d be way-interested (although I would prefer it if Apple could make it work on my existing TV’s as well – too much money invested to go out and drop hundreds or thousands on several new sets). Imagine having Front Row access to your music, video, photos, etc. from every TV set in the house. Then the next step would be to include video cameras ala the iMac and access to iChat, web browser, etc. (might need a slightly more robust remote). That is the media center dream, and Apple could be moving in that direction – whoever gets there first and best gets the prize.
xpPRO – the bottom line proves profitability, not superiority. Here’s a simple analogy for you – Stephen King and John Grisham are very wealthy authors, does that make them nobel laureate caliber?
To Worker using Office
I have been using office my entire working career and have consistently earned significantly more than the national average for engineers in high-tech businesses.
Office has been pretty much one big pain since the early days of feature bloat. When my Mac can run for days and weeks at a time without rebooting it is completely unacceptable that Word, that champion of word processors will crash almost daily and usually for the most trivial and inexplicable of reasons – like adding a period to the end of a sentence.
The only reason this drivel is still on my machine is because I have yet to find the information management capabilities of Entourage adequately addressed in another tool. That said, with service packs like the last one Microsoft offered it may not be too much longer before the individual apps Apple offers as part of OS X “back into” pole position. SP2 for Office for Mac has broken more things than it fixed including the helpful little colour bullets that told me which project the information related to. To round things off nicely there is no uninstall option for SP2 and I simply don’t have time this month to reinstall the whole damn thing – so I’ll have to live with the downgrade for now.
If anyone has any alternative programs they can recommend, please post some links.
“M$ should just deep-six Office for the Mac. Force people to choose.”
Microsoft would have a hard time explaining this to their shareholders. Office for Mac makes Microsoft a lot of money. And it’s one of those curves based off the Mac–the more Macs that Apple sells, the more money Microsoft makes off of Office for Mac.
Frankly, the only way Microsoft could really explain this is to say, “We’re being anticompetitive” and that would bring down the house.
Jobs talked before that a problem with TV is that Cable and Satellite control the content. Selling / distributing TV content via the internet and through iTunes maybe Apple’s way of getting around them. We may also see streaming TV programs in the future that would compete with the distribution by the cable / sat companies. Funny thing is is that a considerable amount of broadband is achieved through cable. Will Comcast for example allow Apple to take over their business through their own channels?