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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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