Is Apple completing Microsoft’s 3 screens and a cloud strategy with the final piece of the puzzle – Apple iTV?

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Sep 202011
 

Back in 2009, Steve Balmer introduced Microsoft’s new strategy of “three screens and a cloud” – namely the mobile screen, the PC screen, and the TV screen, all interlinked together by a unifying cloud. Let’s take a step sideways and looking at what Apple has done over the past few years, and my personal prediction of Apple’s strategy going forward into the future.

Apple started with their foray into mobile screen way back Steve Jobs introduced the iPod back in 2001, which created a big disruption over the music industry. Apple then introduced the iTunes Store 2 years later in 2003, creating the first music store online disrupting the entire online sales space, laying the foundation of the largest most successful online content store in history coupled together with their hot-selling iPod devices.

In 2007, Apple went into the fragmented mobile phones space by introducing a revolutionary iPhone 2G that introduced a unique interaction with your phone – purely touch. A year later, Apple introduced the “App Store” for the iPhone, piggy-backing the highly successful iTunes Store, growing the apps ecosystem in the mobile phone space.

All the while doing that, Apple innovated and revolutionized the MacBook line by introducing the MacBook Air – the first super thin and light mobile laptop computing system that got everyone in the industry scrambling to imitate Apple, unsuccessfully.

Not only that, Apple introduced a new screen form factor, the iPad recently in 2010, which provided a different experience yet maintaining the familiar iOS user experience together with the apps eco-system that comes with the iPhone.

Also in 2010, Apple introduced the newest 2nd generation Apple TV, coupling streaming video service into a lightweight and cheap USD$99 device. Google has already forayed into this space too with Google TV, but unsuccessfully at doing any damage to the existing TV eco-system.

Going forward in a few weeks time, iCloud will be released publicly which Apple has time and again failed their MobileMe cloud strategy. The iCloud will be synchronizing all your content like photos, music, videos, documents, contacts, calendar, mail and apps to your iPhone, iPad, Macs.

So where am I getting at? Does this sound familiar to you? Doesn’t it sound like Microsoft’s “three screens and a cloud” strategy? Apple has captured the mobile screen – iPod, iPhone, iPad (yes it falls under this); the laptop/desktop screen -MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac Pro; the TV screen – Apple TV (really? Maybe not, as I explain below); the cloud – iCloud + iTunes and content services.

So what is lacking in this picture, knowing that Apple loves to maintain strict control over everything from hardware to software to services and content? During Apple’s Q1 2011 financial results announcement, we already know that Apple made $3.9 billion long term investments in components supply for the next few years.

Here’s what I think the next disruptive revolutionary technology Apple is going to introduce. The Apple iTV (or whatever they’re going to call it). Why do I say that, and why not just use the Apple TV companion device instead?

The television manufacturing industry is still relatively immature, with very unsuccessful attempts at making SmartTVs by Samsung, LG, and various others. Apple potentially has the ability to disrupt this industry and make this the next biggest cash-cow of Apple. Not only that, Apple will also be killing another industry altogether – the console gaming industry.

Imagine your Apple iTV running iOS, with the ability to interact with your iPad or iPhone as a control device. Together with the ability to directly purchase and consume content directly from your TV, synchronizing all your content (photos, videos, etc) to all devices using iCloud, and of course providing the ability to run apps and games on your Apple iTV.

Utilizing the huge pool of developers currently writing iOS applications, these developers will be able to create a whole slew of new interface apps to the TV. With the control over the hardware of the TV screen by pushing the resolution higher than ever before, providing the best experience with iOS and content.

How about democratizing hand gestures with your Apple iTV by licensing a motion gesture technology aka Microsoft Kinect? Knowing Apple, they may even come up with a completely new way to interact with your Apple iTV (read “not touch”).

Your Apple iTV will be the living room extension of your Apple experience. That is the future.

I love you, MacBook Pro: After 2 months

 Articles, Lifestyle, Technology  5 Responses »
Aug 172009
 

After the keynote at the World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2009 on June 8 when they announced the 13” MacBook Pro, I decided to take the plunge and buy it. For almost 2 weeks I stalked various Apple fan sites, like macrumors, to find out what I’m actually getting myself into. There were various problems I was concerned about. For example, the SATA II was capped at 1.5 Gbps, which a firmware patch was released several weeks later, and some screen models weren’t as good as others, the glossy screen, etc.

I finally bought the 13” MacBook Pro, 2.53GHz with an 8gig RAM upgrade. I’ve used it for more than 2 months and here are my thoughts on it. I’m splitting this post into 2 parts, where I’ll talk about what I like in this post, and what I dislike in the next post.

I love you, MacBook Pro

One of the things I really love is the hardware itself. The unibody case is very well crafted together with the screen. The aluminium gives it a very nice touch and feel to it, although be very careful if there are power leaks. My MacBook Pro had a power leak once and got pretty feisty because of the aluminium casing. For those who know me personally, I have the tendency to caress this marvellous piece of craftsmanship very lovingly.

The screen is brightly lit with LED backlit, displaying great graphics and clear images. Even though the screen is glossy and reflective, I don’t really have any problems with the reflection as I initially thought I might have. I like the glass panel protecting the screen although it adds a little weight to the overall laptop.

The multi-touch trackpad is a pleasure to use, with various multi-touch gestures that are inbuilt into the operating system. For example, I love the 2 finger scroll up/down gesture; the 3 finger back/forth gesture; the 4 finger swipe up/down for expose and swipe left/right to switch applications. It is well integrated into the operating system and works on most applications which really makes the experience all the more complete.

The keyboard feel is not too stiff and not to deep to type. It isn’t stiff and clickity like some keyboards out there. It has a different feeling from my usual Thinkpad keyboards, but I like this new MacBook Pro style of keyboard. The backlight on the keyboard is a refreshing change from the slowly deteriorating ThinkLight technology.

The new non-removable battery is exactly as what Apple proclaims, of much better quality. Although I can only get less than 3-4 hours with my virtual machine turned on, and a little more than 5-6 hours with my normal applications running, it is more than satisfactory as opposed to my previous Thinkpad. It’s been 2 months, yet I’ve been able to get consistently 96-98% full battery charge, which is pretty good. The battery usually gets reduced to 93-95% or less after 2 months of my normal usage on previous laptops. Just a refresh of the battery usually brings the maximum battery charge back a little higher. I’m very impressed with the quality of the battery, and what Apple has done to make it robust and last for quite some time. To get almost all the information you need regarding your battery, download coconutBattery. The maximum capacity for this battery is 5450 mAh and my current maximum charge is 5300 mAH with about 60 charges.

One of the greatest features I love on the Mac OS X is Spaces. Now I can’t live without Spaces. I assign different Space for different uses. Space 1 contains my web browser, which is mainly what I use, and various other activities like QuickTime for watching movies, and listening to music. It is my main workspace. Space 2 contains my various communication avenues, like twitter, IRC chat, instant messengers, etc. Space 3 contains my news reader and various news related applications. This is the workspace where I just sit back and relax, reading my news for a few minutes before I get back to work. Space 4 contains my Windows 7 virtual machine, which I use for coding, and other Windows related activities. I love this ability to compartmentalise my life into different spaces to manage my tech lifestyle. There are many applications out there that allows virtual desktops on Windows 7, but I haven’t really found anything that’s nice. If you do, leave a comment.

Spotlight is another really great tool that I find really useful to load up applications and search for various information related to your search criteria. Windows 7 has the feature too, but it isn’t as powerful as Spotlight. One things that Spotlight wins over Windows 7’s search implementation is it has it’s own dictionary application which is able to search for the definition of a certain word. That, my friend, is the most useful feature I’ve ever come across, especially when writing articles, emails, documents, or just chatting with friends. You are also able to use it as a calculator just to do quick calculations. There are applications that offer this feature too, like Skylight and Launchy, but it’s either too resource intensive or just isn’t as clean and good as Spotlight.

But I think the best feature, which I’m sure everyone would agree, is the speed it takes to sleep and resume from sleep. To me, it is an amazing experience to be able to open your MacBook Pro and just able to use it within 2-5 seconds, as opposed to Windows 7 which takes a fair amount of time to wake up for its sleep. Putting it to sleep is really a pleasure, especially when you’re in a hurry to go somewhere. Although it is great, but it didn’t fully sleep for just once, which made the MacBook Pro extremely hot. I had to turn it shut it down manually in order not to let it overheat any longer.

Although there are many features on both the MacBook Pro, hardware-wise, and the Mac OS X, software-wise, that I like, I have many complaints about it. There is a love-hate relationship between my MacBook Pro and myself.

Stay tuned for Part 2 when I discuss the bad and the ugly of both the MacBook Pro and Mac OS X.

Disclaimer: These are my own opinions, and do not represent anyone, any organization or any company’s opinions.