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It's interesting that in 1994, Steve Jobs considered it a foregone conclusion that video rental stores would get killed by the internet. He says it so blithely
by karzeem 17y ago
It's interesting that in 1994, Steve Jobs considered it a foregone conclusion that video rental stores would get killed by the internet. He says it so blithely that it seems like it was conventional wisdom.
The interesting part is that a) Netflix wasn't founded until three years later, and b) it's only now that we're starting to get good products for renting movies via the internet.
- jfarmer 17y agoI think everyone "knew" video delivery would go online back then. But what's the saying? Everyone overestimates how much will happen in 5 years, and underestimates how much will happen in 15.
- pyre 17y agoHe doesn't say that he knows that the video rental stores are going out of business. He says about 'digital convergence in the set-top box', that "All that's going to do is put the video rental stores out of business and save me a trip to rent my movie." It's not hard to see that hooking the Internet up to a television saves will allow you to have video delivered to your television over the Internet. You'll notice that he's poo-pooing the digital set-top box in that quote, not praising it.
- jfarmer 17y agoAnd yet we have AppleTV. :) I think it was mostly posturing.