What will Apple announce on Jan 27th? The best way to answer that question is to imagine you are Steve Jobs. What would you do if you were Steve?
First of all, keep in mind that you are very ambitious. You want to make a HUGE splash way beyond just launching a big iPhone or flat iMac. You would never let this much buzz and anticipation build if you were not releasing something with the potential to be a "game changer."
Next you have a deep insecurity that drives you and causes you to always remember and obsess about your failures. Apple dominates smart phones, computers, and music players but you don't get that much enjoyment from that success. Instead you spend more time agonizing about where you have tried and failed.
So where has Apple failed? In the living room! Apple TV is a flop and iTunes had much more success with music than TV and movies. This really really bothers you. To make matters worse, when you look at what dominates the living room, you want to poke your eyes out. You LOVE good design but when you watch TV you need to navigate ugly scrolling menus with a crappy remote control covered in disgusting buttons.
Of course you KNOW you can fix that crappy interface and make something better. You KNOW that you can disrupt the industry and do for TV and movies what you did for music and smart phones. You KNOW that Apple TV was just a false start and that you are going to change the world again. Which brings us to the Apple Tablet.
If you were Steve Jobs, you would launch a Tablet computer designed to be THE device for navigating media. Right now that device is the TV remote control. But you desperately want to replace that with a slick Apple interface featuring TV shows, movies, magazines, and to a lesser extent books and newspapers. You just select whatever you want from a insanely simple interface. And what you pick be displayed on the tablet but will more often be transmitted wireless to the TV in your living room.
Yes the Apple Tablet could very well be a remote control. A way to flip through channels. A way to navigate media. Instead of fighting over the remote control, families can fight over the Tablet. The TV remote is the one interface that has not been disrupted by new technology so it is the perfect target for you and your interface experts at Apple.
Oh and I almost forgot to mention that you HATE buttons. You refuse to put them on your computer mice, you refuse to put them on the iPhone, and you even refuse to have them on your shirts. There are lots of buttons on a TV remote ... and you want them gone! All of them! Jan. 27th can not arrive too soon.
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Your life will go on just fine without the latest Chinese iTrash folks.
I've had all I can stand, I can't stands no more!
Seriously, have you ever tried to browse for content using a remote? Yes the functionality is there, but it is so poorly implemented that I can't see how a touchscreen remote would be anything but a de facto upgrade.
Digital Scale: Stand on the Tablet, and have it post your weight to Twitter and Facebook, while comparing it to the weights of your friends.
Bike TV: Like those little TVs on exercise bikes at the gym? Mount the tablet on your handlebars, and watch YouTube or iTunes, check email, or play Sudoku on the road while you ride to work. Especially great if you bike around in a city like New York, and want to stream video of a winding mountain road and fantasize you're there. If you get hit by a car, the accelerometer can tweet that you need an ambulance, with a GPS link to your location.
Digital Mirror: No more outdated analog mirrors: hang the tablet on the wall, and its camera can show you how you look. Turn on filters like sepia tone or black and white, or airbrush out things you don't like. With Flickr and YouTube integration, videoblogs and Daily Self-Portrait vanity projects are easier than ever.
Kindle for Board Games: gather around with friends or connect on Facebook and choose from classics like Monopoly, Checkers, Backgammon, Candyland, Risk, and more, updated with animation and leaderboards. The Tablet won't just save the publishing industry, it's going to save Parker Bros. And with optional 3D glasses, Trekkies can finally play 3D chess, just like Riker and Picard.
http://www.boxee.tv
A near-instant FAIL.
The last thing a person wants to have to do when "navigating media" is to have to look at the remote control, and all the touchscreen remotes have this unfortunate trait in common: you can't navigate by feel. They're great for creating neat universal remote configurations, but they're not all that convenient, or cost effective, to the average couch potato.
how does it dominate computers, exactly?
Like Mercedes does with cars.
First and best.
All are 2005 SFF industrial surplus, total cost under 1 top end MAC, each child has their own, each adult has their own, Stream Rec TV, Movies, Home Photos, Music online 24/7
Monitors extra of course, some are attached to TV's.
I drive a Toyota Matrix
I Guess I'm slumming?
MAC has it place, I don't dress well enough to go in and browse.
But one quibble: Apple does NOT dominate computers. According to various analyst figures, Windows PCs hold about 90% of all home and business computer sales. Mac comes in at about 8 or 9%, and then Linux. (Figures do not include servers, where Linux has higher numbers.)
Speaking of Apple and remote controls: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak developed a universal remote years ago. Didn't seem to take off.
By the way, the Mac OS "aped" the Xerox Star OS, which was developed in the late 70s or early 80s. But you probably wouldn't say the Xerox machine dominates.
(And I've been a Mac user since 1984.)
My recollection of its demise was that Microsoft made a significant investment in Apple, part of which was an agreement the required killing the Newton product line.
Doing numbers is an interesting exercise. India has a population of 1.2 billion vs the US population of 330 million or so. The 2009 GDP of India was $1.2 trillion, while the GDP of the US was $14.4 trillion.
Depends what you are calling dominant, I guess.
Can't wait....