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I couldn't help but be reminded of this video from Steve Ballmer talking about the iPhone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U http://www.youtube.com/wa

I couldn't help but be reminded of this video from Steve Ballmer talking about the iPhone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U IMO it is a bad idea to /not worry/ about apple hedging into your vertical.

silvestrov 15y ago
Yep. “They don’t have the best scaling engine in the world and they don’t have world renowned picture quality that has been awarded more than anyone else.” A lot of those concerns go away when the source is digital. Apple has created the splendid CoreGraphics package and that getting the best scaling on the market might be the easiest part of iTV for Apple. Try do a blind-test: play the same video using VLC using 100% and 110% window size. How many people can see the artifacts from the 10% scaling?
- MBCook 15y ago
  Don't forget the problem of consumers even knowing they are watching HD content. People still buy HD TVs, hook up SD content, and think they're watching HD since it looks better than their old TV. As long as it looks good, I think consumers will be happy. Having a scaling engine that turns 1080p content into 1184p content better than the competition is not something I think will change a lot of buyers minds. If you're at 99% optimal and Apple is at 96.5%, almost no one will care. Having a simple remote, easy access to content, or a responsive user interface will win people over a lot faster than the technical quality of your scaling. Think of all those "important" things the first iPhone didn't have (memory cards, user replaceable batteries, keyboard, 3G, etc). Look at all the things the iPhone still doesn't have. The average customer has pretty obviously made their choice that those limitations were acceptable.
  - hessenwolf 15y ago
    Just watch the download rates on pirated cams and you see how little 'many' people care about the screen resolution.
g9a5 15y ago
As Brian Ford pointed out, this is far more reminiscent of Palm's bravado before iPhone in 2007: http://brianford.newsvine.com/_news/2012/02/13/10398704-samsung-doesnt-think-apple-can-compete-in-the-tv-market-that-sounds-vaguely-familiar http://brianford.newsvine.com/_news/2012/02/13/10398704-sams... > Responding to questions from New York Times correspondent John Markoff at a Churchill Club breakfast gathering Thursday morning, Colligan laughed off the idea that any company — including the wildly popular Apple Computer — could easily win customers in the finicky smart-phone sector. > “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” But, really, what does anyone expect incumbents to say? They know that they can't compete with Apple on the ecosystem. They know that they can compete with Apple on the quality of the picture, because that's the part that they will likely be supplying to Apple anyway. It's clever to try to shape the direction of the discourse away from the stuff Apple will be trying to compete on and back to what Samsung try to compete on.
- alexbell 15y ago
  > But, really, what does anyone expect incumbents to say? Exactly. It's not like a Samsung rep is going to get up on stage and talk about how one of their competitors entering another of their core businesses is bad for Samsung. You have to sound confident, and in the case of TV they probably ARE much more confident regarding competition with Apple. Whether that confidence is warranted remains to be seen.
- Duff 15y ago
  Two things differ from pre-iPhone Palm. Apple has an established track record of not getting what people want from a TV. Ala carte TV shows and a crippled set-top box is not very inspiring. Palm wasn't exactly a superstar before the iPhone's launch. I had a Treo... the only thing that could be said about it was that the crappy web browser was better than BlackBerry's crappier one.
  - g9a5 15y ago
    > Apple has an established track record of not getting what people want from a TV. Ala carte TV shows and a crippled set-top box is not very inspiring. Disagree. TV is not a TV set. You may as well argue that the Macintosh TV from 1994 is indicative that Apple doesn't "get" television. Apple TV is a hardware extension of iTunes. It is not a profound re-imagining of the TV, which is what we are expecting the Apple TV to be. And I'd suggest that TV has been pretty popular. "Apple sold more than 3 million units of the device last year, marking seemingly strong demand among customers for the small box that plugs into high-definition TVs to stream music, movies and photos from computers, mobile devices and various websites." "Cook didn't say what that "something" was, but did add that "for those people that have TV right now, the customer 'sat' (satisfaction rating) is off the chart…"" > Palm wasn't exactly a superstar before the iPhone's launch. Palm's marketshare in Q1 2005 was 17.9%. Back then when there were several goliaths (Nokia, RIM, Sony-Ericsson) that's a huge fucking deal. Samsung's marketshare of the TV business in 2010 (only data I could find)? 17.2% Believe me. This is a very apposite comparison. I'm bookmarking this thread to revisit in 5 years.

silvestrov 15y ago

Yep. “They don’t have the best scaling engine in the world and they don’t have world renowned picture quality that has been awarded more than anyone else.” A lot of those concerns go away when the source is digital. Apple has created the splendid CoreGraphics package and that getting the best scaling on the market might be the easiest part of iTV for Apple. Try do a blind-test: play the same video using VLC using 100% and 110% window size. How many people can see the artifacts from the 10% scaling?

MBCook 15y ago
Don't forget the problem of consumers even knowing they are watching HD content. People still buy HD TVs, hook up SD content, and think they're watching HD since it looks better than their old TV. As long as it looks good, I think consumers will be happy. Having a scaling engine that turns 1080p content into 1184p content better than the competition is not something I think will change a lot of buyers minds. If you're at 99% optimal and Apple is at 96.5%, almost no one will care. Having a simple remote, easy access to content, or a responsive user interface will win people over a lot faster than the technical quality of your scaling. Think of all those "important" things the first iPhone didn't have (memory cards, user replaceable batteries, keyboard, 3G, etc). Look at all the things the iPhone still doesn't have. The average customer has pretty obviously made their choice that those limitations were acceptable.
- hessenwolf 15y ago
  Just watch the download rates on pirated cams and you see how little 'many' people care about the screen resolution.

g9a5 15y ago

As Brian Ford pointed out, this is far more reminiscent of Palm's bravado before iPhone in 2007: http://brianford.newsvine.com/_news/2012/02/13/10398704-samsung-doesnt-think-apple-can-compete-in-the-tv-market-that-sounds-vaguely-familiar http://brianford.newsvine.com/_news/2012/02/13/10398704-sams... > Responding to questions from New York Times correspondent John Markoff at a Churchill Club breakfast gathering Thursday morning, Colligan laughed off the idea that any company — including the wildly popular Apple Computer — could easily win customers in the finicky smart-phone sector. > “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” But, really, what does anyone expect incumbents to say? They know that they can't compete with Apple on the ecosystem. They know that they can compete with Apple on the quality of the picture, because that's the part that they will likely be supplying to Apple anyway. It's clever to try to shape the direction of the discourse away from the stuff Apple will be trying to compete on and back to what Samsung try to compete on.

alexbell 15y ago
> But, really, what does anyone expect incumbents to say? Exactly. It's not like a Samsung rep is going to get up on stage and talk about how one of their competitors entering another of their core businesses is bad for Samsung. You have to sound confident, and in the case of TV they probably ARE much more confident regarding competition with Apple. Whether that confidence is warranted remains to be seen.
Duff 15y ago
Two things differ from pre-iPhone Palm. Apple has an established track record of not getting what people want from a TV. Ala carte TV shows and a crippled set-top box is not very inspiring. Palm wasn't exactly a superstar before the iPhone's launch. I had a Treo... the only thing that could be said about it was that the crappy web browser was better than BlackBerry's crappier one.
- g9a5 15y ago
  > Apple has an established track record of not getting what people want from a TV. Ala carte TV shows and a crippled set-top box is not very inspiring. Disagree. TV is not a TV set. You may as well argue that the Macintosh TV from 1994 is indicative that Apple doesn't "get" television. Apple TV is a hardware extension of iTunes. It is not a profound re-imagining of the TV, which is what we are expecting the Apple TV to be. And I'd suggest that TV has been pretty popular. "Apple sold more than 3 million units of the device last year, marking seemingly strong demand among customers for the small box that plugs into high-definition TVs to stream music, movies and photos from computers, mobile devices and various websites." "Cook didn't say what that "something" was, but did add that "for those people that have TV right now, the customer 'sat' (satisfaction rating) is off the chart…"" > Palm wasn't exactly a superstar before the iPhone's launch. Palm's marketshare in Q1 2005 was 17.9%. Back then when there were several goliaths (Nokia, RIM, Sony-Ericsson) that's a huge fucking deal. Samsung's marketshare of the TV business in 2010 (only data I could find)? 17.2% Believe me. This is a very apposite comparison. I'm bookmarking this thread to revisit in 5 years.