JamieG Analysis

My most popular post on my blog has been “AppleTV will be a new beginning at MacWorld“. It has now been a week since Macworld ended. I decided to wait a little and watch the ripple effect of Steve Jobs’ announcements.

I personally felt the Keynote was very disappointing, but after getting over the HYPE build up from the press, it is nothing less than could be expected. To be honest, however, Bill Gates’ CES keynote had a lot more meat to it then Steve’s. It is just Bill has no charisma and Steve was in a in-between year.

But really, as I previously wrote, the ONLY real development at Apple was the AppleTV and the push into Movie-Rentals. This is really the only real topic here. I will quickly go over the other three of the four topics Steve discussed.

One: Leapard and Time Capsule.

Leapard has sold well. Really this is last year’s news. We know this. OSX has been the biggest success for “Apple Computer” (Note COMPUTER) in recent times. Steve did defiantly breathe life into apple when NeXT OS became OSX. To me, this should have been a run up to his significant content of his keynote. This simply shows, he did not have a lot to say this year. But really that’s ok, he has had his hands full, and we cannot expect walking on water every year.

TimeCapsule is an interesting device. I do not think much of it but then again, its not my area. I imagine there must be soemthing to it as Apple should know best.

Two: iPhone update.

We got nothing we did not know before the keynote. Available end Feb, and here is some wobbly icons to distract you. (Oooohhh!!!)

Three: Apple TV, lets leave this until last.

Four: The CONCEPT Laptop… That you can purchase.

Yes, to me that’s all the Macbook AIR is. I like to compare it to a concept car at the motor show. It is quite amazing, but does anybody really buy this stuff. It’s simply not practical. “There’s something in the air”. This to me was very cheesy. And to tell the truth, my rule of thumb is. If you can use a Hard Line, Use it. As a tech guy, I have many people ask my opinion on why they have been having problem. All to often I have been asked about network issues and wireless. My response. “That is wireless for you.” If you want super reliable networking. “DON’T USE WIRELESS”. The lack of an Ethernet port is Apple pushing a concept on us too much. A concept that all too often has too much interference. And with the ever increasing wireless world we will be living in. It was a fatal floor to not have Ethernet.

It is also too expensive, too fragile and to “Look at me”. It has been said it is mainly for the travelling graphic artist. A limited market, and one that REQUIRES an Ethernet interface.

“The thinnest Laptop in the world”. It has also been reported that other, such as Sony, have released Laptops just as thin. They don’t sell them any more.. Umm.. Wonder why…

Now let’s get back to the MEAT of the keynote. AppleTV

The first thing that popped into my mind is that the UPGRADE to the functionality is simply what should have been the feature set of the initial AppleTV offering. The fact that no new AppleTV-2 hardware set was released was very disappointing. I put this down to a hard year for Steve and his business relationships. I feel he has been spending a lot of time putting out fires, and products simply did not get the time needed to reach maturity for Macworld. I personally think that we will see new AppleTV hardware before the next Macworld. Most likely with a TV/PVR feature set. Tivo watch out. (See prev post for reasons why)

The addition of a Blu-Ray player is also very likely but hard to call. Microsoft and Apple are both pushing for “ONLINE LIVING” where you get everything online (And from them.) So they may hold out on an optical drive. Still. I feel consumers will always feel the need to create personal media. Either they purchase another Optical drive based player, or AppleTV becomes that solution as well. It’s a hard call. My call is they should bundle it. It is a better consumer friendly decision.

On this topic, even tho Blu-Ray has won the war, but the race to reduce its costs is still on. DVD is a reasonable storage/backup medium. If, as everyone thinks, we go online for most data storage and access, Blue-Ray may not reach ignition point of becoming the defacto standard. Ie when you purchase a PC, you cannot really purchase a CD-Rom drive anymore. This pressure will keep the pressure on to get the cast down fast. Apple may be waiting for Blue-Ray to reduce more before they release the “Digital Player” we all want.

On the topic of Movie Rentals. Apple getting all studios was no surprise to me. And I will tell you why. I have worked on a number of business modems developed to replace Movie rentals. I also do a lot of work in the Cinema industry. One interesting issue pops up in both. The reporting of stats on Movies-Rented, or Patrons-in-cinemas, has always been a contentious issue. These numbers which are tied to the return of money to the distributors, is up to the Cinema, or Rental-shop to be honest with. And you can imagine this is not always the case. To give you an example of how big an issue this is. Distributors have SPIES that go to cinemas and count the numbers of patrons. They then correlate this to the numbers the cinema is reporting back.

Going online is inevitable, and the distributors are starting to embrace this. But at the same time, if going online, we can see definite advantages to the distributors. For one, no more untrusted numbers. Less middle men and a bigger percentage of the rental charge.

To be honest, the Distributors would most likely get ride of DVD or distributor on content on any hard media at all. No more sharing DVD’s or selling them back to second hand shops. They would prefer we got all our content from a trackable/chargeable medium. The Internet. This is impractical, but gives you a starting point of their motivations.

Apple offers exactly what the Distributors want. An end to end DRM based video distribution model. Apple have one of the best on offer. They should be chasing Apple.

This, however, does not hold up so well for Music and TV-shows. As we all kow, Apple has upset the Music Distributors, and they are trying their best to reduce the Apple dominance. The Music, where you have a brand that brings out new songs, for music, or new episodes for TV, an ongoing relationship between the producer and consumer exists. Who owns this relationship is the sticking point. As such, I don’t expect TV-Shows to offer themselves at the Apple alter nearly as easily.

This all comes down to access and owning consumers. For example. Jaman recently showed of a unsupported plugging for the AppleTV that gave it a JamanTV button. This basically made the AppleTV into, what I would call, an InternetTV. The AppleTV had escaped the Apple Walled Garden, and now had access to Paid content directly from a distributor (Jaman). Apple was no longer in the loop clipping the ticket. This is obviously against Apple’s interest in making money from the AppleTV but at the same time. The InternetTV device is inevitable.

Another example of this is BBC iPlayer. For example, the BBC has also shown interest in becoming integrated with AppleTV. Obviously they simply want to grow the audience. But do you expect Apple to let this happen for free? Unlikely.

Another business models that breaks Apple’s models is “Open Television Network”. The idea here is to implement a method for consumers to do micro transaction payments to RSS feeds of their favourite shows. This is more of a huge tipping jar for shows you want to support. It makes it very accessible as you can pay, say 10cents for podcast episode you download. Paying small convenient amounts is very agreeable to listeners. As the AppleTV has an RSS feed downloader directly built into it. Again we have a model that bypasses Apple clipping the ticket.

There is also circumstantial evidence that Google is working on a TV-OS, similar to Android.

Considering all this, Apple may simply bend to these trends and turn the AppleTV into a InternetTV and try to build the relationship with the consumer on a hugely positive note similar to the statement in that Steve announced the support for DRM free music content. What a brilliant marketing exercise that was.

[Additional]

Philip Hodgetts mentioned to me today a few very good points.

Firstly, he does not expect that Apple will go Blu-Ray as the security requirement for the OS are very unfriendly to the OS.  Windows Vista is a good example of this.  This is a VERY good point.  As such, Apple may pass on Blue-Ray.  However, I still think they need an Optical drive, and even going with DVD is extremely useful.  I still expect a optical drive in the near future.

Philip also does point out that I have been a bit hard on MacBook AIR.  Again, I am guilty.  The Macbook AIR is a great development for those who simply want to surfer/emailer/writer-documents. It is as cool as they come.  A little pricey, but Cool.  But again, giving it the eye of the investor. I would not be pleased with the Macbook AIR.  If it was considerably cheaper. Absolutely.  I just do not expect it to sell that well for reasons above.  Apple could have really created a MUST HAVE ultra portable computer.  Macbook AIR is NOT that.