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In his book "The Road Ahead", which was full of bad predictions by the way, Bill Gates wrote something about the competition between computers and TVs and about
by ahartmetz 4y ago
In his book "The Road Ahead", which was full of bad predictions by the way, Bill Gates wrote something about the competition between computers and TVs and about set-top boxes. The original Xbox makes sense in that context. It was a bottom-up project initially, but its approval probably had something to do with Bill Gates' set-top box ideas. Microsoft Bob was another related development (cf. the Xbox dashboard, computing appliance).
- ghaff 4y agoGo back to the 90s or maybe early 2000s, and there was definitely this widespread vision of a media hub connected to the TV in the living room as the primary home entertainment device (or even more broadly home control). People weren't necessarily in broad agreement about the nature of such a device but it was certainly a more centralized view of the world than what ultimately has ended up playing out.
- bombcar 4y agoIf you replace “TV” with mobile phone we actually got pretty close to the predictions.
- ghaff 4y agoTrue. Many people primarily interact with entertainment, news, etc. through a single connected device. It's just much more individualized and on the go interactions than it was envisioned in the guise of a home theater/living room hub.