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"We know the iOS 5 is coming, and very likely alongside the iPhone 5. There will also likely be a cheaper “iPhone 4S”, perhaps sold contract-free. Apple will al

by Jun8 15y ago

"We know the iOS 5 is coming, and very likely alongside the iPhone 5. There will also likely be a cheaper “iPhone 4S”, perhaps sold contract-free. Apple will also undoubtedly refresh the iPod lineup as they always do around this time. And there is talk of the company having some tricks up their sleeves when it comes to new content for iTunes." Notice a conspicuous absence from this list? A revamped, much better Apple TV. As he says, Jobs' two biggest successes was to break the monopolies in music and cell phones (the latter thought to be impossible to do just few years ago). One thing he (or Google or anyone else for that matter) couldn't do is to break the cable TV stronghold form the leech-like grip of the likes of Comcast. So, maybe the mindblowing thing this fall will be something like that. Would be super. I doubt it.

eftpotrm 15y ago
The market dynamics with TV are rather different though. The music industry as a whole Apple haven't broken; record labels still exist and the bulk of commercial music is distributed through them. What they've broken was the physical distribution model in favour of a digital model controlled by them, by providing a large semi-captive audience. Equally with phones, they haven't destroyed the model of networks selling a pre-agreed bundle of services at a flat tariff with the pre-pay component being vastly cheaper than the post-pay. What they've broken is the assumption that carriers could do what they liked with phones, but again I think this was less of a challenge than you think; pre-smartphones we all had much what came out of the factory because that was all that was possible, and phones have long been a fashion driven market. Apple simply managed to get a bigger fashion leap (not that this was the only leap) on their competitors to the point where carriers couldn't avoid taking the phone on Apple's terms once one had given in. With TV, I suspect the bulk of HN readers can quite plainly see by now that what we used to call 'video on demand' is both economically deliverable over the internet and a compelling user experience compared with having to organise one's life around a broadcast schedule to receive the preferred content. The challenge for Apple is how to insert themselves as the default gatekeeper in the way they have with iTunes and iOS. Compared with music the content providers are fewer in number and with a substantially higher cost base, making them both harder to supplant and more risk averse. Compared with mobile carriers, the power dynamics are reversed; the hit product becomes the network's unique content not the hardware vendor's fashionable item. If Apple had managed to produce a hypothetical viable Apple TV product (and delivery channel) prior to services such as Hulu, BBC iPlayer or even YouTube and Justin.TV then there could have been a window of opportunity for them as gatekeeper, but I think that would have been an improbable scenario and is clearly not possible now. Which leaves Apple with a problem in the Apple TV. The compelling offering is the content not the device; the content providers have a strong incentive to make their wares widely, not narrowly available. iOS has prospered as a closed, Apple-controlled ecosystem, yet the opportunity isn't there with TV. Their only opportunity is to provide a hardware device which is sufficiently far ahead of the alternatives as the first iPod was perceived as being when that launched, but I'd suggest that the market there is already sufficiently mature as to make that unlikely.

by Jun8 15y ago

eftpotrm 15y ago

The market dynamics with TV are rather different though. The music industry as a whole Apple haven't broken; record labels still exist and the bulk of commercial music is distributed through them. What they've broken was the physical distribution model in favour of a digital model controlled by them, by providing a large semi-captive audience. Equally with phones, they haven't destroyed the model of networks selling a pre-agreed bundle of services at a flat tariff with the pre-pay component being vastly cheaper than the post-pay. What they've broken is the assumption that carriers could do what they liked with phones, but again I think this was less of a challenge than you think; pre-smartphones we all had much what came out of the factory because that was all that was possible, and phones have long been a fashion driven market. Apple simply managed to get a bigger fashion leap (not that this was the only leap) on their competitors to the point where carriers couldn't avoid taking the phone on Apple's terms once one had given in. With TV, I suspect the bulk of HN readers can quite plainly see by now that what we used to call 'video on demand' is both economically deliverable over the internet and a compelling user experience compared with having to organise one's life around a broadcast schedule to receive the preferred content. The challenge for Apple is how to insert themselves as the default gatekeeper in the way they have with iTunes and iOS. Compared with music the content providers are fewer in number and with a substantially higher cost base, making them both harder to supplant and more risk averse. Compared with mobile carriers, the power dynamics are reversed; the hit product becomes the network's unique content not the hardware vendor's fashionable item. If Apple had managed to produce a hypothetical viable Apple TV product (and delivery channel) prior to services such as Hulu, BBC iPlayer or even YouTube and Justin.TV then there could have been a window of opportunity for them as gatekeeper, but I think that would have been an improbable scenario and is clearly not possible now. Which leaves Apple with a problem in the Apple TV. The compelling offering is the content not the device; the content providers have a strong incentive to make their wares widely, not narrowly available. iOS has prospered as a closed, Apple-controlled ecosystem, yet the opportunity isn't there with TV. Their only opportunity is to provide a hardware device which is sufficiently far ahead of the alternatives as the first iPod was perceived as being when that launched, but I'd suggest that the market there is already sufficiently mature as to make that unlikely.