Was it all the way back in 2002 that you guys first starting talking about the Digital Hub. That’s seven, count ‘em, years ago. When do you think we’ll see it come to fruition?
You have made steps, for sure, because we’ve got Macs, iPods, iPhones, Apple TV, and a monitor or two. That covers desktop and mobile computing.
There’s iLife and MobileMe to tie the hardware together giving us personal web site creation, photos, home movies, the ability to burn DVDs (those old fossils), and to share content with our family, friends, and the world on the Internet.
iTunes is a big part of the integration for music, movies, TV shows, podcasts and syncing to the other devices like iPods and Apple TV. In many ways, the features are targeted at making you more money than what’s best for your customers (don’t get me started on the 2G Shuffle and iTunes 8.1 fiasco).
It sure looks like you’ve got a hub strategy. Yet, you don’t promote the hub concept anymore. Is that because it would handcuff you into implementing features that would be detrimental to maximizing your profit margin?
Let’s talk about the rough edges and one huge group of people you’ve left out — family.
The Apple TV is a funny beast. It’s supposed to be a media player but only handles a small subset of the media formats out there. Stranger, it doesn’t handle media formats that your other applications handle, like QuickTime or DVD Player.
What about the numerous other photo-sharing sites out there. To a point, you can’t support them all, but not even 