“Recently, a few articles have suggested that the window of opportunity for Apple’s next generation TV project is closing,” John Martellaro writes for TheStreet. “To make that assertion, it’s necessary to have a comprehensive picture of the current technology, the roadmap for Apple’s competition and keen insight into Apple’s secret development work. Few have it all.”
“Even more ironic is that the very outcry for innovation by Apple is a call for something new and unexpected,” Martellaro writes. “How can one demand the unexpected and yet arrogantly claim that Apple’s opportunity has disappeared? It’s a contradiction.”
Martellaro writes, “Put another way, the window of opportunity for the Apple brand of exciting innovation, problem solving and elegant combination of hardware and software never closes. Ever.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Here’s what will happen:
1. Apple will announce a new product that nobody outside of Apple’s highest levels has ever imagined.
2. Immediately, those who lack imagination – Dvorak, we’re looking at you – will proclaim it to be nothing special.
3. The better, saner tech media will quickly realize that, hey, this could be something very, very special.
4. Reviewers will get their hands on the new product and they will be frantically tapping the thesaurus on their iPads for new superlatives.
5. Apple will revolutionize yet another market. Customers will flock.
6. The Googles, Samsungs, and Microsofts of the world will scramble to produce assorted halfassery at cheaper prices.
7. The well-educated and well-heeled will buy the Apple product and make substantial content and service purchases, insuring a vibrant ecosystem.
8. The cheap and nondiscerning will flock to lower price tags, not purchase much, if anything, but gravitate instead to pirated and free content, insuring a weak, insecure ecosystem.
9. Reviewers will begin to forget (or ignore) which is the original and which are the knockoffs and, via some confused notion of “fairness,” equate Apple’s products with the wannabes – Mossberg, we’re looking at you.
10. Virtually every single “news” story that’s clearly about Apple’s product will nonetheless piggyback the leading knockoff’s products into sentences such as, “High-end devices such as Apple’s [insert product name here] and [insert knockoff peddler name here]’s [insert product name here] typically cost over [insert price here], but similar devices from [insert low-end knockoff peddler names here] cost significantly less.” Little or no mention will be made about ecosystem quality, build quality, ease-of-use, security, etc. Reviews of Apple’s following generations of said product, by now evolved into a product family, will also employ the same “fairness.” To the ignorati, the leading knockoff products will be considered equal to Apple’s revolutionary, category-defining product.
11. Next reviewers will begin to claim that certain knockoff products are better than Apple’s due to one specific spec or another. Some reviewers will even claim to have “switched” from Apple’s product to the knockoff in order to whore up some clicks. On Twitter, they will post links to their “I dumped Apple for” articles from their Apple devices.
12. The Apple short-sellers who have been trying to concoct negative sentiment all along will begin to get some traction by touting new market share data, claiming that Apple is losing, Apple can no longer innovate, Apple needs cheaper prices, etc.
13. Apple’s stock price will take a hit. Smart investors will use this period to back up the truck.
13. Slowly, data will reveal that, hmm, Apple is taking the lion’s share of the profits of this new market that Apple has created. Wow. Further, the data will reveal that Apple’s ecosystem is, gee, highly profitable for everyone involved, from accessory makers to developers to advertisers to content producers to Apple themselves. Who’da thunk it?
14. Apple’s stock price will rebound to new levels.
15. As Apple rolls out successive generations of the product line, pundits will begin asking “what’s wrong with Apple?” and clamor for Apple to deliver the unexpected.
16. See #1.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Hmmm,
For most of us, lighting only strikes once.
Crossing fingers for Apple.
Lightning strikes routinely at Apple. Off the top of my head, I’ll probably miss some:
Apple I
Apple II
Mac
iMac
OS X
iPod
iTunes
iTunes Store
iPhone/iPod touch
MacBook Air
App Store
iCloud
iPad/iPad mini
Take MacDailyNews’ list above and it applies to every one of the products/services I’ve listed.
I hope you have an ouija board handy.
It’s some of the underlying technologies Apple implements that are always overlooked and I think are just as important as a new hardware category – iCloud (that you mention above), iBeacon (I think a lot of people are failing to realize how HUGE this technology will become), power saving architecture, location-based/mapping services (I think we are still in it’s infancy and Apple will come up with angles on it that will leave Google flatfooted), and seamless document/data ubiquity, among the many others.
Whats Apple #1 in?
1. #1 Hardware product sales/profit globally
2. #1 Globally profitable music retailer via iTune
3. #1 Globally profitable brick and mortar retailer: Apple Stores
4. #1 Globally profitable apps industry
5. #1 Largest company on the planet
Pretty big gap between the Mac and the iMac. Wonder what happened there?
Sculley, Spindler, and Amelio happened.
Or to put it another way, Steve didn’t.
The lightning analogy that is perpetually repeated with respect to Apple’s success, implies that the company’s future is contingent on chance. Simply a roll of the dice. No one EVER questions the ability of Ford Motor Company to produce another product, or class of vehicle.
However, in the case of Apple, it seems beyond imagination that this mature ENGINEERING POWERHOUSE awash with success and cash could possible produce another product in it’s native industry.
ABSOLUTELY MIND BLOWING!!!
Buy as much AAPL as you can afford, and let the talking heads chatter away! Do you think for a nano second that the likes of Ichan et al. have not done their homework??? They have already told you that AAPL is their LARGEST holdings!! Chew on that for a while!
My lighting comes on repeatedly when the button is pushed a bit like at Apple
MDN, that’s your BEST “Take”, ever!
the future A series chip, when removed by competitors for study, will turn to liquid metal, just like the cop and kristanna loken.
the chips brain will circulate floating algorithms that act in concert and travel wirelessly to interact with the alpha waves of the viewer. the real apple tv will exist in its most potent form as a gestalt of the viewers awareness as the viewers awareness becomes focused on apples tv. it will be a paradigm shift as its technology interacts with biology.
samsung will produce a meaningless and ineffectual prototype in the year 2045 AD.
Roku is kicking Apple’s ass. Apple really needs to put more emphasis in making AppleTV a more competitive product. Whatever Apple plans on doing Apple should do it soon.
Isn’t true innovation always unexpected?
The “iTV” detractors, lacking imagination, imagine a stylish HDTV with a built-in Apple TV box. If that’s all Apple has for its complete TV product, then that’s a product that should never be released. It would just be a more expensive “hobby.”
But when it is eventually released, you know it will be MUCH more. There is nothing right now that cries for the Apple makeover more that “TV content delivery and consumption user experience.” Progress is stagnant. Most HDTVs are just “dumb monitors” that connect to a box from the service provider. The “cable box” interface looks and feels like a bad copy of TIVO from the 1990’s. There is better opportunity for Apple here than in the smartphone market in 2007.
It just takes a lot of time to put all the pieces of the strategy together, because the scope of this venture will be staggering.
Now it’s become harder to make it unexpected due to leaks but, yes I guess I see your point.
Mac Daily News’ Take is spot on!
It just missed one word in my opinion:
#8 the cheap, undiscerning *and unethical (immoral)* will flock…
Gosh! Who would have expected the unexpected?
Any kind of inquisition.
Because nobody expects it, except for Spanish Cardinals.
I wasn’t expecting that.
No one expects the Spanish Inquisiton.
Nobody!
And now, I’m going to poke you with the comfy cushions!!!
It’s only a flesh wound…
I’m not sure that this gets the other key element in Apple innovation, the ability to do right for the first time what many others have tried and failed to do right.
Have any of you struggled with a current generation Smart TV: essentially a screen with Internet access via a Linux box built in? The challenge for Apple is to do it with an Apple box built in, or attached in the mature form of Apple TV, to the extent that no satellite or TV cable connection is needed. Timing not yet right, because a) would crash the network capacity and b) needs all the content streams set up for on-line delivery. The TV networks get it, which is why they are playing hard to get.
Same problems arose when the iPod emerged and people said why so late to the MP3 game, and then why did the iTunes store take so long?
It’s not the unexpected new product category, it’s the perfect implementation of one that’s pretty obvious, but like shovelling **** when others try, that does it.
Innovation: if it was easy, everybody would do it.
Ditto for baseball. If it was easy, it would be our national pastime.
Uh, on second thought…
Perfect encapsulation of reality!
Apple rejects current reality and substitutes their own.
(Paraphrasing Adam Savage)
Yeah, the pattern was starting to seem obvious, but the pundits are so locked into their roles in this looping scenario that they can’t help but play out Groundhog Day. Don’t they ever sense déjà vu? Do they notice themselves parroting themselves? What a bunch of caricatures. Voltaire would have thrown up his hands in defeat.
I heard Voltaire ran a 12 Volt battery across his forehead while shaving & singed his eyebrows to a cinder.
You’re back! And in fine form, I see — your imagery is electrifying.
Electrifying? I thought he usually aimed for revolting.
Applying the electrodes twice, yes, quite nice wordplay that
very good.
Out on bail? Welcome back BLN.
Botvinnik’s Bail Bonds: 1-OBA-MAS-UCKS.
24/7
“You like your jail, you can keep your jail, period.”
jeez, you’re a good writer.
for a girl.
“yes, the pattern was obvious, but oblivious are the role-playing pundits, blinded by shadows of another February Second. Alas! My dear… unless you have been raped by two Bulgarians, stabbed twice in the belly, have had two castles destroyed, two fathers and mothers murdered before your eyes, and have seen two of your lovers flogged in an auto-da-fe, I do not see how you can surpass me; moreover, I was born a Baroness with seventy-two quarterings and I have been a kitchen wench.”
high art.
I’m a paperback writer. Romances make more money than murder mysteries, satisfy more reader longings, and make more sense than biographies. Also there is little of that irritating public accountability or moralising cant set forth by bunched-up reviewers. Being viewed as dubious or irrelevant by mainstream literary pundits is a definite advantage. It’s a form of liberty.
I once had a female romance writer dedicate a book to me. It is among my treasures with my Beatles autographs…some of my best friends are bodice-rippers.
I consider it special that you shared that. I am sure that writer was not me, as my books were mostly undedicated. By the way, did you actually read any of them? Be honest now.
her nom de plume was Nancy Bishop. Perhaps you have heard of her. Yes, I read virtually all her work. Long time ago, last I heard she lived in London.
oops, Nancy Butler. sorry.
Sorry, no. Before my time, I expect. That quote of yours? Candide, you sly fox. Queen takes rook, check.
heh. no foolin’ you. Always a pleasure to talk to a lady.
do you know Brenda Russell’s music?
guess not.
But will it come in pink pokodots, smell like cheap vanilla and fart rainbows to match with iOS 7?
Snap
MDN’s take: Beautiful and classic. At least some history does in indeed repeat itself.
So damn true! You hit it right on the head, but you forgot they will also say only the fanboys are buying it!
I usually think the MDN Take is over the top – sometimes wayyyy over. But this time they are straight on, didn’t miss a beat or exaggerate.
Ha, that’s gotta be the best and most long-winded MDN take ever
The MDN take is priceless.
A culmination of events from all forces noted and recorded reflecting Apple in the Tim era.
A blueprint for things to come …
3a.) Consumer Reports will universally pan it without a shred of supporting evidence, while likely citing a lot of positive evidence that undermines their “review”.
Expect an iphone device that wraps around the wrist that controls everything. Lights TV, Computer; Thermostat. Monitors health; changes channels. Is an all around password key; integrates with your wallet; – is your wallet. Unlocks the car….never leave home without it.
I still have my “hobby,” the tv original, I have always felt that it was the future of home entertainment. My instincts are never wrong.
well, except for that one time back in ’74 when I proposed to my future ex-wife.
After Apple dumbed down Final Cut Pro and Pages, and turned iOS into a flat cartoon, I’m just hoping that I’ll be able to use the new Apple TV without jammies and Cocoa Puffs.
Don’t sign up for obamacare
That would mean no insurance at all. An insurance company offered me major medical for the bargain price of 100% of my monthly income. Anyone who is smart enough to articulate why Obamacare is bad, is smart enough to have a feasible alternative. I’m listening. .
Off-topic, but I couldn’t resist.
Don’t breathe anymore, X.
MDN left off one item in their scenario. Jackass pundits will claim that Apple’s new device isn’t new or innovative at all; it is simply a copy of some previous product, even though that product was a functional disaster. They will even offer as proof Apple’s new product’s patent, by extracting 2 words (“rounded corners”) out of context from a long, detailed patent and attempt to use that as their evidence. Apple’s critics will jump on that and repeat it on forums throughout the net.
When analyzing Apple’s future, my first question is always, “what does Rob Enderle think?”
Apple have already missed the boat for TV in the UK. You can watch any channel on pretty much any device except the AppleTV.
eh, England doesn’t count.
what a idiotic day dreaming. throwing magic spells in the wind? how about clinching fists and making faces? apple is done people, sad but true. since passing of steve jobs there was only superficial glazing on existing products. the future of apple is nowhere to be found.