Hidden Dimensions
Apple’s Next Move: Make the PC Obsolete
November 12th, 2009 at 4:00 PM - Columns and Opinions by John Martellaro
“Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.” -- Vladmir Nabokov |
Some companies dream up cool products or look at market trends and try to fulfill a need. Apple, however, seems to be doing more. By analyzing critical and single failure points in Microsoft's strategy, Apple could, with one close-out product, make the need for desktop PCs for the home customer irrelevant.
In order to figure out how the Windows PC could become obsolete in that environment, one has to ask the question, "Why do people buy PCs and how do they use them?"
The next question to ask is, "Is a PC the only device that can get the job done for the majority of home users?"
Another good question, then, is "if people are buying PCs to watch traditional video content, how can one solve the convergence issue in one fell swoop?" Loosely, the TV convergence issue has to do with legacy TV (cable, satellite) watched at 3 meters (10 ft) and a PC or Mac on the Internet watched at 0.5 meter (20 inches). That division and its solution (a convergence) has stymied corporation for years, going back to the failure of WebTV.
PC Activities
Note that I'm not talking about tasks that are best done on a desktop PC or Mac in a business environment. Some typical examples are giant, complex Excel spreadsheets or movie making in Final Cut Pro. Apple, as we know, sets the standards for the home user with individual purchase authority, then lets the technology trickle into business, like the iPhone.
If one examines the principle activities conducted by home users on a PC, such as web browsing, e-mail, calendaring, instant communications like Twitter and iChat, it'll be obvious that all of those activities can be conducted on a tablet. Probably TurboTax as well with the right kind of gesture and keyboard refinements.
Note also, that I'm not talking about capturing 100 percent of PC users. There will always be those people who take work home, require a capable desktop PC, or want to solve Navier-Stokes fluid flow equations with a Fortan compiler. It would be sufficient for Apple to capture only a fraction, say 20 percent at first, of the PC market to trigger a cascade failure at Microsoft. Surface computing is not the salvation Microsoft is looking for.
TV Convergence
The convergence issue is tricky, and involves an enabling platform that can serve as a desktop on the lap, yet manage video content on the home HDTV. Because Apple doesn't need to and probably cannot compete against Sony, Samsung, Sharp, and Pioneer in the TV market, any solution has to be separated from but beautifully integrated into the home user's typical set up.
Before I make the formal argument, I want to note that the iPhone is essentially running in the old Multi-Finder mode. One app at a time is all the mobile smartphone user can deal with -- plus some background music. On a 10-inch tablet, however, one can expect many apps to be running at once. And there are 100,000 of them to chose from. Apple's task is to leverage all those 100,000 apps by freeing them from the confines of an iPhone display.
The Solution
Consider a headless home server with a 4 TB drive that holds all the customer files and iTunes content. Consider such a device connected to an HDTV with HDMI. The display is a tablet in the user's lap. When content is desired on the HDTV, the user selects it in iTunes, and it plays in 1080p. When content is desired on the Internet, the user launches Safari on the iTablet. Home file management is also done on the iTablet. For generally young people with no (eye) accommodation problems, switching context and distance is no problem. (Not even for us older people who wear "progressive" eye glasses.)
Credit: Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo
Suddenly, for most people, of either a PC or Mac persuasion, they have everything they need on their lap. The only extra device needed is a super Apple TV running Mac OS X that has monster storage and connects to the TV. The sum of the costs is about what one would pay for a mid-range iMac.
This model gets people away from their dens, siting in isolation, and gets them out and about with the family. The more time customers spend with iTunes on their laptop tablet, the more money Apple makes.
Problems
This scenario isn't without some problems. That doesn't mean the scenario is defective. It just means that new solutions need to be found.
- This product mix cannibalizes the traditional Mac. The loss in Mac desktop sales would have to be weighed against the gain in new tablet customers.
- Apple is loving the security of the iPhone apps in contrast to the old technology of Windows and its horrendous security issues. A new focus on iPhone-like apps, which will likely grow to several hundred thousand, has to be weighed against the health of the developer community for classic Mac OS X apps.
- Many Apple customers have come to appreciate Mac OS X, its access to the underlying UNIX. They'll scream bloody murder as Apple appears to be moving its software base from the legacy, desktop UNIX Mac OS X and to tightly controlled iPhone apps.
However, as with most Apple transitions, this process will take years. Apple will continue to sell Mac Pros, MacBooks, and iPhones/iPods to all comers. Remember, Apple has been through this already as the iPod touch cannibalized but surpassed the old iPods.
At this time of year, we tend to think about the future. It's hard to conceive of a future, five years from now, when Apple's product line is just more of the same, but better. Apple has the opportunity to slam the door shut on the traditional, isolated, constraining home PC and move millions of customers to a new era of media convergence and system security. Just exactly how Apple does this has to be handled delicately. If Apple is thinking along these lines, it explains the stagnation of the Apple TV and the delay in the introduction of the iTablet.
That is to say, the iTablet is not just another toy that is added to Apple's product line. Rather it's a strategic product that changes the game. It exploits the casual attitude Microsoft has about the traditional PC enduring forever. Such a transition would require tremendous planning, flawless product design, keen marketing, and maybe even a new data center to support it.
It all makes the hardware design look like the easy part.
John Martellaro is a senior scientist and author. A former U.S. Air Force officer, he has worked for NASA, White Sands Missile Range, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Apple Computer. During his five years at Apple, he worked as a Senior Marketing Manager for science and technology, Federal Account Executive, and High Performance Computing Manager. His interests include alpine skiing, SciFi, astronomy, and Perl. John lives in Denver, Colorado.
You can follow John on Twitter at twitter.com/jmartellaro.
35 Observer Comments
Well written. I love speculatory tech ideas in general, plus i’m a lameo inerd and this is of course my dream. if not apple then someone will do this concept.
“solve Navier-Stokes fluid flow equations with a Fortan compiler”
would be better if written as:
solve Navier-Stokes fluid flow equations with a Fortran program.
Personally, I prefer FORTRAN.
I remember having a conversation with Apple’s Larry Tesler back at the first JPL scientific visualization conference in 1988 about the lag in human interface design relative to consumer computing. Even then PARC had some stuff in prototype that still hasn’t made it to the Big Box stores via info appliances.
Given the possibilities for interaction, and the reciprocal impact on cognitive task performance as a function of body posture and gross motor involvement, it is amazing that WII and multi-touch are the interface news of the first decade of the 21st Century.
So your article is well thought out and shows definite savvy regarding the real world probabilities of consumer direction. But it makes my head spin 20 years after the introduction of HDTV and VR was available through Nintendo, that we are talking about slates that require increasingly artificial combinations of gestures to interact with a Euclidean, photo-realistic window of information. Slouched on a couch, of course. Just hangin’.
And why is that, exactly? Because Tom Cruise wowed everyone with the cyber-aikido in Minority Report. Yeah, it is Hollywood that holds the product design and marketing imagination in thrall yet. And we still don’t have voice capable of the chilling defiance of an almost 40-year-old HAL.
Well, it would be nice if Apple would throw around a few of PARC’s old interface equivalents of the custom rod show jaw-droppers. Even the simplest hyperbolic display on a home computer to manage fido’s water level and the previews for Fringe simultaneously would be a welcome change of pace for these old eyes who “have seen it all” but have seen nothing yet.
While I think the tablet is interesting, I don’t think its going to be quite as revolutionary as some people think. For many computer activities, a keyboard is a real necessity. While the iPhone’s virtual keyboard is fine for quick notes, I wouldn’t want to type anything as long as this post on it. Similarly, on a tablet, I don’t see how you’re going to type on it while propping it up in your lap. A laptop works great for this (hence the name) as the base holds the screen up at a decent viewing angle while giving you access to the keyboard. I can’t see myself being happy typing on a tablet flopped on the couch. My wife watches a lot of Hulu on her laptop while working in the kitchen. Again the base holds the screen at a nice viewing angle for her so she can see it from across the room. You’d need a stand to do that with a tablet, and unless its integrated, who would want to carry that around?
The iPhone is wonderful because you can stick it in your pocket, but something the size of a tablet needs a carry-bag… and then why not just have a laptop?
As far as software goes, I see that despite the large number of titles, the iPhone software market is in trouble. Why? Because the average price of a paid app is next to nothing. People are not going to pay $79 for an iPhone app, and developers are not going to risk working for a year just to have their app rejected for a silly reason. This pushes iPhone apps squarely towards the “toy” category, which is OK for a small pocket computer, but would be disastrous and unacceptable for a desktop replacement.
I’m very much in agreement with this. I’ve been thinking along similar lines for a while, the stagnation of Apple TV is because the solution is to take it away from the box on the floor beside the TV to a tablet which is in appearance the complete replacement of the remote.
You end up with devices that do things that they should do. Cookers cook, TV’s display programmes, movies and stuff that requires a big screen stuck in the corner. But the control of them and the content is somewhere else, possibly in your hand. You want to control the lights, the heating, pre-heat the cooker, set the alarm, close the blinds, put some music on… you do that with the control in your hand. The music, the videos, the films are in the device or easily streamed/downloaded to the device to be spread out to where you require. You can sit at your desk with your remote/tablet/iphone and control the music from there, while you do work on your computer. You can sit on the couch and decide what shows up on your TV. Since most of the activities we do are controlled by our hands this makes perfect sense.
It’s a bit like the fact that the webpage is fast becoming obsolute, as one size does not fit all. Most of the iApps go round the back straight to the content, a process that was started with the humble widgets. The 100,000 or so iApps are to a certain extent the replacement for customised web pages. Web pages will be left as company brochures, in a similar way to suppliers sending out leaflets/brochures etc in the olden days! News websites will become, as they are now, read on iphones/tablets/kimbles etc, or diverted onto the TV if you want to sit back and read them, or just watch the multi-media elements, just like rolling news and video casts.
I’ve got a hunch that this central controlling device is what Apple are trying to work towards. It doesn’t so much matter where the content is as to where is it to be displayed/heard/output.
You’d end up with a small, easy to use, portable hub in your hand, which is, like the iphone, highly capable of being adapted and updated. And to return to your main point John, I quite agree, keyboards and mice and such are quaint but out of date, we’ve learned to use them rather than vice versa. They are still going to be the primary method for certain tasks, but like apple has tried to prove with the over minimal Apple remote, for many thinks, you don’t need a ton of buttons, you just need a way to navigate through options. By not having a physical keyboard on the iphone and moving to total touch Apple has laid down a marker, think beyond the keyboard, leave it for writing, and with the vast improvements in voice recognition, even the writing part of it will possibly soon diminish.
All good interesting stuff, it’s just a question of how soon and how fast this will happen.
developers are not going to risk working for a year just to have their app rejected for a silly reason
They are never rejected for “silly” reasons.
Your scenario is silly.
Apple TV or server connected to a single display with HDMI? How about Apple TV/server connected to several displays using the new mini-DisplayPort (mDP) standard, which allows for content to more than one display at a time. In a serial fashion? I can envision an AppleTV with mini display port sending display info to 4, 16 or even 64 low-cost, smaller size LCD screens in an array format. All over thin cable. Heck! Why not have an iPhone or ‘iTablet’ with mDP send video info to a 52-inch HDTV. The HDTV provides the power. The hand-held supplies the signal and controls the TV.
Stop calling it an iTablet! that’s a gross name. Like people calling the iPod touch an iTouch. Ugh.
iPod super touch
Apple iPad
Apple iTablet
Apple slate
Apple tablet
Which one do you guys like?
The programmer writes Fortran programs; the computer requires a Fortran compiler.
I still have a couple of pads of Fortran coding sheets - and some 80 column cards - but alas I don’t have an 026 punch or an IBM 7090 anymore. Happy daze!
I vote for iPod Super Touch or iPod Touch S.
I also vote for the one that Steve likes (because I hate to back a loser)
Which one do you guys like?
How about the tAPPlet? 
People are not going to pay $79 for an iPhone app
Yep, people will not pay $79 in one fell swoop for an iPhone app, but they will pay $4.99 (or some other low threshold) repeatedly through in-app payments if they find the app to be useful and the increase in functionality per in-app payment is significant enough as to not feel like a rip-off. The iPhone really has changed things.
Forget it John. If the tablet follows the closed iPhone model, it should be called the crAPPLEt. Mark your calendars today, 12-Nov-2009, the day Apple lost the living room. Dell has a $229 computer that in its base model ($299 with Windows 7 and 802.11n), is better than either Apple’s Mac Mini or its Apple TV. See it here.
BTW, deasys wins funny comment of the year for: They are never rejected for “silly” reasons. Comedy gold! Because if you really think that rejecting an app because it pokes a little fun at public officials is anything less than silly, you, my friend, are (Godwin Alert! Godwin Alert!) a fascist.
If the tablet follows the closed iPhone model, it should be called the crAPPLEt.
Since all you seem to do on this site anymore is poo-poo on anything Apple-related, we should call you the Turd Burgler. But doesn’t the screen name “Bosco” already allude to that?
Wait, Dell creates a knock off of the Mini 4 years after it is first introduced by Apple, attempts to sell it at a ridiculously low price meaning it has ZERO profit margin, and you think that’s going to pull Dell’s sales out of the toilet? The company is in serious trouble Bosco and Wall Street knows it. Investors see that it is not only struggling, it’s losing ground. And just as an added knock, it looks like a Transformer toy.
Dell has a $229 computer that in its base model ($299 with Windows 7 and 802.11n), is better than either Apple’s Mac Mini or its Apple TV.
Really, Bosco? “Better?”
Looking at the Zino base model for $229,
- Is it better because it’s 2.5 times larger than the mini?
- Is its single core AMD Athlon 2650e CPU @ 1.6 GHz better than the mini’s Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.26 GHz?
- Is “Windows 7 Home Basic 32-bit” better than Mac OS X Snow Leopard?
- Is its DDR2 RAM on an 800 MHz FSB better than the mini’s DDR3 on an 1066 MHz FSB?
- Does its lack of WiFi and Bluetooth make it “better?”
How about the fact that it has just 4 USB ports instead of the 5 on the mini? Maybe its lack of optical audio I/O appeals to you? Maybe the tray loading optical drive (you know, the one that can double as a cupholder) rather than the mini’s slot loading drive?
Ah—I know! It’s those colorful top designs, right?
I know you love to inject a little humor into your article comments but you’ve outdone yourself with this one. Thanks for the laugh, Bosco.
Or maybe it’s $299 with Windows 7 and 802.11n, and maybe I’ll be buying quite a few of these in the next year. Tens if I’m not too successful, hundreds if moderately successful, and if you stop hearing from me, then thousands. The reason it is “better” is because I can hook it up to a flat screen with a short HDMI cable for a professional looking install. DVI—> HDMI from a Mini has all sorts of sync issues with cheaper flatscreens. The reason the Zino is “better” is because it adds only $299 to the cost of my solution, which, BTW, does not need an input device tethered to it by wire or Bluetooth. Mac Mini adds $599. If Apple had a sanctioned Mac OS X story—even a “lite” story—for its $225 Apple TV, I wouldn’t even be looking around. But price matters a lot more than a menu bar and a dock that nobody will ever see.
And as a Christmas gift… I can give 2 of these for the cost of a Mac Mini. Trust me, the female recipients on your gift list who might need a new computer would much rather get a cute $299 Dell and a $300 trinket from Tiffany than a $600 Mac to hook up to their living room TVs. Your mileage may vary, but don’t say your friend Bosco didn’t clue you in.
John.
You outdid yourself.
An intelligent article that provokes my thoughts.
Thank you.
ChandraC
Geez John - you have really started something here.
It reminds me of my early days in programming. A colleague of the 1960s said to me once : “If you want something that doesn’t work too well - You don’t have to spend megabucks or wait years for it- You can have it now.”
Recent Headlines - Updated September 2nd
- Thu, 12:58 PM
- Deal Brothers - Refurbished 17” MacBook Pro 2.66GHz Intel Core i7: $2169
- 12:47 PM
- Editorial - Apple TV: What was Apple Thinking?
- 11:35 AM
- Games - Chillingo Intros Lamp of Aladdin iPhone, iPad
- 11:14 AM
- In-Depth Review - Eye-Fi Pro X2 Lets Your Digital Camera See the World of WiFi
- 10:42 AM
- Rumor - Apple Source Claims T-Mobile iPhone On the Way
- 10:15 AM
- Hot Forum Topic - Reader Speculation: Apple’s Move into Content Delivery
- 9:51 AM
- News - Amazon Intros $0.99 TV Show Purchases
- 9:19 AM
- Product News - Twitter for iPhone adds iPad Support
- 8:50 AM
- Apple Stock Watch - Analyst: Apple Primed for Holiday Season
- 8:18 AM
- News - Apple Posts September iPod Event Video
- Wed, 5:46 PM
- News - Live Nation Drives iTunes Concert Information
- 5:30 PM
- News - Apple Swings Name Deal with Ping Golf
The Mac Observer Reader Specials
- TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com
Mac Memory and Hard Drives: MacBook Pro Memory 8GB kits $275.99! iMac Memory 4GB Kits for $109.99! Mac Pro Memory 8GB Kits for $289.99, 64GB for $2,839.99! Mac Hard Drives 2TB Seagate SATA II for $149.99! Click Here!
If you're using a Mac, then you've gotta check out Full Tilt Poker for Mac. This Full Tilt Poker bonus code does the unthinkable, it actually rewards!
Microsoft’s critical failure points:
1. OS System security.
2. Complacency about future of WIndows.
3. Failure to fully deal with the convergence issue.
4. Lack of vision, other than WIndows as a cash cow instead of an enabler of new technologies.
5. Ambiguous approach, torn between a business staple and glamor of Macs and iPhones for home users.
Any others?