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Category Archives: General

Why the HBO/Universal deal is VERY important

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HBO and Universal just renewed a distribution deal.  For the next 10 years.

If you are in any ways connected to the TV industry, be it for the past, present, or future of it, this is quite significant.  Why?

Part of the reason TV as an industry is fairly impervious to disruption is the unbelievably tangled knot of deals and relationships.  In TV/Movie-land, deals are (1) worth Billions, and (2) made for the long-term.

victoryag.org

But with all the kerfuffle about TV changing, TV dying, TV this and that,we should take note that two of the biggest players in the industry just renewed a deal that is (1) worth Billions and (2) made for the long term.

The significance is, in a nutshell, that in TV-land, business as usual is still going on.

ps – dont think I’ve ever made a point before in 100 or less words!  ;)

My New Year's Tech Resolution: Quitting Real-Time

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Let’s take a long trip back in time.  Let’s remember a world where you were running a little late for a dinner date with friends, and you just showed up a bit late, no texts.  You got to the restaurant and didn’t check-in on Facebook, Yelp, or FourSquare (oh, and you didn’t even use Yelp to find the restaurant, or double-check that it has 4 stars, you just heard about it from a friend).  When the menu arrived, you read it, picked the item(s) that looked good, and placed your order, and if you wanted to know what was the most popular, you asked the waiter.  While waiting for the food, you drank wine and chatted with your friends.  When the meal arrived, you didn’t take a picture of it (or apply a filter) and shared with others.  If the service was lousy, you told the manager, not your Followers or Friends.  When you finished up the meal, you drove home, without using crowd-sourced GPS to get there.  And as a final note, at no point in the meal did you get interrupted by others sharing equally unimportant minutia with you, but if they really *really* needed to track you down, maybe you got a call.

If you are under 25 and reading this, the above probably sounds like a nightmare, but trust me, it wasn’t.

I think it’s time to admit that living in “real-time” is a bit of a disaster, and there’s tons of studies arising that lend evidence to social media (among other things) as problematic to society (here’s a funny take, but full of facts on the topic).  But you really don’t need the studies, just some common sense.  We’ve evolved over millions of years (or, as they teach in several US States – a few thousand plus some fairy dust) and until the last half a decade, the only thing that was really crucial to do in real-time was running from sabre-tooth tigers, which we were actually pretty good at.

Since I started writing this a few minutes ago I’ve received two texts and one IM – every one of which disrupted my writing and thinking.  Thankfully I had already closed my email client (something I plan to do much more frequently), and I have push notifications OFF for Facebook and Email on my phone.  But that’s a core to it: we’ve somehow made ourselves constantly interruptible, and I can’t see how anything good comes of it.  How do you think deeply on anything if your pocket is buzzing, the corner of your screen is flashing, and other little whooshing and tweeting sound effects keep rolling by.

If you are reading this and thinking “that guy’s just an old-fuddy-duddy” (which, to be fair, no young person today would ever actually say), and you are also patting yourself on the back because YOU are a great multitasker, go take a break from this piece, google “multitasking myths” (or just read this) and then come on back.  Bummer, eh?

And it’s not just about getting stuff done, as that too is just massively overrated.  It’s about a lack of peace and calmness. When do we take time anymore just to do nothing.  Even standing in line for a coffee (which is, of course a take out coffee, since there’s no time to just sit in a cafe and enjoy a hot cup of coffee in a real cup) everyone’s on their phones, doing stuff.  The human brain actually needs time, every day, just to do nothing and process all of the events that are transpiring (great article here on “doing nothing”).

So what am I doing?  Focusing on purposeful activity, single-tasking, and shutting down virtually anything that expects me to deal with it imminently, as there are truly very few events which can transpire that I must reply to in real-time.  Somehow I doubt this will negatively impact either my professional or personal life in any way.   This doesn’t mean I won’t use services like Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, IM, and the like – it just means I’m getting a lot more comfortable turning them off for long stretches.

My focus in 2013: Enjoying the moments, and having them for myself – not others.  Enjoying the view, not the retweets of the photos. Enjoying the funny/cute/silly kids, not worrying about grabbing the camera, nor counting the likes or comments.  Enjoying walking into an unknown restaurant, ordering anything I like, getting delighted by it, and telling a friend about it some other time.  Sorry real-time, I’m pushing pause.

The Dijit Remote Refresh, Now With NextGuide Social TV Profiles!

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The Dijit team’s been really hard at work all year building NextGuide, which was quite the task and accomplishment. A few months ago we recognized it was time to give the Dijit Remote another round of enhancements as well, so we got to work on giving it a good refresh.  Most importantly, of course, was updating it to support everything new in iOS-land since last winter, which includes Retina iPads, the iPhone 5, and iOS 6 support too.

Additionally, we incorporated the NextGuide social TV profiles into the Dijit Remote, so users of either app can discover and share content back and forth.  We are building the most robust personalized TV discovery platform out there, and this is the first step to bring it to iPhones as well.  Between our two apps we now have a lot of people finding new shows and movies to watch on live TV, as well as streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and more (note: the Dijit Remote app only supports Netflix search at present).  We also added the extremely popular “record to DVR” button for DirecTV subscribers, allowing anyone to program their home DVR the moment they find a great show or move to watch on live TV.

Lastly – accessibility.  We’ve heard story after story from people who use accessibility enhancements on their iOS devices, and how the Dijit Remote is integrated into their personal needs.  I was shared images of a young girl in a hospital room with extremely limited mobility, but just enough to control the TV using her iPad and the Dijit Remote app.  Unfortunately she couldn’t access all of the features, so we set about fixing that, and now we’re very proud to bring accessibility enhancements across virtually every feature in the app to help anyone who might need it.  It’s not often we get to be in a position to just help people, so it’s something that we all feel pretty good about.

It’s been a long while, but we’re happy to bring this update to the legions of loyal Dijit Remote users, hope you love it! Check out the new and improved Dijit Remote here!

Introducing NextGuide

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It’s my pleasure to unveil my newest product, NextGuide.  NextGuide is a hyper-personalized TV listings guide designed specifically for the iPad™.  It’s been a six month labor of lots and lots of love, and I’m extremely excited to tell you about it.  In a nutshell?  We went to the drawing board and utterly reinvented the concept of the TV program guide.

If you think about the concept of a “guide” it’s something that’s evolved over 60 years from supporting 3 to 13 to 80 to 500+ channels.  But that’s really all it does, and let’s face it, we no longer live in a 500-channel world.  We live in a 500 channel, plus tens of thousands of hours of streaming content on services like Netflix, huge libraries of video on demand from our cable and satellite companies, as well as iTunes itself.  It’s effectively an infinite content landscape, and having so much content has crippled the formerly easy process of discovering shows to watch.

As an example, in my house at night, we start by browsing our DVR library, don’t see anything we’re in the mood for, then switch over to live TV.  After browsing (painfully) the grid for a while, we give up, turn on the Apple TV, and head to Netflix.  Netflix is great, but I have a tendency to see stuff I already know about – Mad Men, Dexter, Weeds, Breaking Bad, etc – all great shows, but not really anything new that I’m ready to consume.  Part of the problem here is catch-up TV: if I’ve never watched Mad Men before then I’m a good 80+ hours away from catching up to live, and that sounds painful.  Anyhow, after an unsuccessful attempt to find something to stream, I generally end up watching whatever’s on (either Cops, the Shawshank Redemption, or an infomercial), then go to sleep.  Sound familiar at all?

So we invented NextGuide, designed to actually help me discover things I *want* to watch. We do that by tilting the concept of Channels, Times, and Genres on its head a little, and instead focus on Shows, People, and Interests.

Shows – we believe people care more about the show they watch than the channel number or time it airs.  So NextGuide uses beautiful show cover art to make it easy to find things and “escape” the grid view of numbers and times.

People – we believe TV remains a central zeitgeist component to modern society. When was the last time you chatted with any friend about a show you like (or love)?  Probably in the past day or so.  NextGuide makes it ridiculously easy to turn conversations, not to mention Facebook Likes, into easily discoverable shows.

Interests – we believe people care about finding things of interest to them, personally.  We all have interests, from bands to sports, from cities to hobbies, and these interests define so much of our lives. NextGuide connects you to your interests, and finds them all on TV and streaming services, in a seamless, organic way.  Examples of what NextGuide’s found for me over the past few weeks: Bill Murray’s guest appearance on Letterman (seriously, how would I even have known that unless I watch every night??), a live Coldplay concert on Palladium (I didn’t even know the channel was in my lineup), and Bizarre Foods goes to San Francisco (not a show I normally care for, but had to see what Andrew found in my city).

That’s enough writing already, this is one of those apps you just have to experience to get a sense of what we’ve done. It’s a complete paradigm shift for TV viewing, and I’m happy to share it with you.  You can download it from the App Store, or watch our quick intro video below.

Introducing NextGuide from Dijit Media on Vimeo.

I can’t wait for your feedback, thanks so much for trying out the app.  Thanks to Apple for inventing the iPad so we could have such a cool platform to bring something like this to life. Extra special thanks to my family, friends, coworkers and investors who have made the process of inventing something disruptive more fun than I think I really deserve.

We are getting some amazing press so far today, here are some great pieces:

Oh, and here’s the actual announcement on our newly revised site!

Why Apple Will Make a MacBook Touch (eventually)

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A few weeks ago someone mocked up a concept MacBook touch, and in a nutshell, they way-y-y-y-y overthought it.  After a week(ish) using my iPad with an external keyboard, I can see how the worlds could and should collide.  And I think it’s exactly what Apple plans to do – one day. The concept is already as much as there in their products anyway: ship Mountain Lion with the ability to “launch” iOS.  That’s it.

In the current OS X, Lion, we already have LaunchPad, a feature clearly designed for a touch-screen interface, mainly because it’s the exact UI for iOS apps.  This would/should be touch-enabled.

Next, OS X already has an App Store, the inventory of which could easily expand to include iOS apps.

The LaunchPad would become the primary “desktop”, and Finder would move to be an app instead of the primary navigation metaphor.

Apps could then be written as OS X, or OS X with touch, or iOS.  Standard OS X apps would function like they do today, expecting a mouse + keyboard interface.  That’s the easy part.

iOS apps would go into full-screen, thought likely not include the ability to rotate – but maybe they wouldn’t have to.  The next-gen MacBooks are already rumored to go retina anyway, which provides enough pixels for a portrait-mode app to run on the screen size of a 13″ laptop.  Granted, a ton of apps would work poorly – things that require lots of motion sensitive or heavy gesture inputs.  But maybe that’s okay.  Maybe this isn’t about a laptop with great Infinity Blade capabilities, it’s a bit more focused on productivity.  More on this in a bit.

OS X with touch apps would be able to support mouse + keyboard + touch interfaces.  This is the tricky part.  There are times when touch works great, other times when the mouse is ideal.  For example, a pull-down menu is going to be too tiny to easily work with a finger, but the mouse is perfect.  Similarly, mouse-overs are useful for many applications, and the pixel-level work in design apps could never be done without a mouse.  But moving files, selecting apps to run, and creating free-form quick designs are all radically better with a touch input.  Gestures are awesome methods of navigating through computing interfaces.  There’s a right balance, and as long as Apple can clearly delineate best practices, I think some great new experiences would emerge.

Combining the full power of OS X and iOS brings great power, and accordingly, great… You know.  But in all seriousness, this isn’t meant as a “make a MacBook all fun like the iPad” nor is it “turn the iPad into a productivity center”.  It’s both.  The computing era has evolved to the point where touch is a key part of things.  Further, Apple is uniquely positioned to create a product like this, where the touch features augment the overall platform, as opposed to just being gimmicky.  Lastly, they’ll create yet another leap forward that their competition will have to spend eons catching up to.

ps – for those wondering, I’m using the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard for iPad. I love it.  I started with the Apple Wireless Keyboard (with great sleeve by SF Bags) but ultimately preferred Logitech’s solution.  Amazingly.

Why I Miss Scarcity (and why it's the only thing that matters)

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Back in college (ah, college), some buddies and I road-tripped down to New Orleans (thrice) to experience New Year’s Eve and/or Spring Break.  Good times had by all (thankfully this all happened in the pre-camera phone era).  Whilst there, I enjoyed local beignets, chicory coffee, and discovered Cajun Power Sauce. Yum.  I bought 4 extra bottles for the return, one to keep, the rest as gifts. By the third visit, I bought a dozen bottles, since everyone loved it and it wasn’t findable in the Pittsburgh vicinity.

Today, it’s not a big deal.  You can buy it online, from a variety of vendors. When I was a kid living in Montreal, the winter was a special time, as everybody knew someone returning from a Florida vacation, which meant a bag of fresh oranges/grapefruits.  Today, every supermarket everywhere has fresh produce, available pretty much year-round, coming in from around the world.  Today, I can order a fresh Maine lobster, have it arrive tomorrow in San Francisco packed in ice.  And it’s not just food.  With globalization, just about everything is a Google or Amazon search plus FedEx delivery away.

I was thinking about a few of my “favorite” things, and while none are mittens, most are the things I own that are more scarce than the rest.  The outdoor furniture my wife and I bought on our trip to Vietnam.  The shirts I had custom made in South Korea.  The t-shirts I order from CafePress are also fairly special to me, but no more so than the fridge magnets I pick up for my kids in every airport I visit.  All are hard(er) to find.  But the stuff I really like?  The highly limited run shirts at Threadless – until I bump into someone with the same shirt on. Sad face. My favorite t-shirt is one I bought from a UK-based semi-custom t-shirt store (pictured to your right – feeling good Billie Ray!).

I think there’s some kind of weird link between scarcity (or faux scarcity) and hipsters, who know about bizarre Japanese imports, coffee shops with no signs, and DJs who only play hidden clubs at 3am.  Think about the cache of being the first to discover some amazing artist, or having an iPhone case nobody’s seen before, or remembering that you played DrawSomething back when it was just a Facebook app.  Or knowing about Double Double Animal Style, back when it was actually a secret. Or having seen the original Hunger Games, when it was called Battle Royale.  Etc etc etc

At home we can make genuine chicory coffee imported from New Orleans.  We can find the recipe online for making Caffe Du Monde beignets.  I just ordered a bottle of Cajun Power sauce (and you should too).  But the truth is, I miss scarcity.  I miss things being hard to find.  I actually miss the feeling of missing out on being able to get something.  I also believe scarcity is power. Scarcity is the new hip.  Having “the only one” or limited production runs, etc matters.  Think about the desire for sites and services that launch “in beta”.  Think about the power of “only XX made – ever.”  I predict hyperpersonalization will be augmented with hyperlimited productions, and that will cross the lines between physical and digital goods.  And that’s something I can get excited about.

Abundance is a really great thing, except maybe when there’s just too darn much of it.

The Case Against an Apple Television

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I’ve flip-flopped better than a politician on this topic, but just read an awesome piece that I wanted to share.  Highlights are:

Most fundamentally, all assumptions about Apple seem to stem from a misunderstanding of how differently Apple thinks and operates from everyone else.

For starters, Apple doesn’t chase markets just because they’re there. Nor do they get sucked into market share battles just so they can say they sold the most units (see: iOS vs. Android).

…

In other words, for an Apple TV to be free-flowing with first-tier TV content in the same way that an iPod flows with first-tier music, Apple will need DIRECTV and/or Comcast to bless it.

ESPN, after all, earns $4.69 per subscriber household in affiliate fees on each and every cable subscriber. Apple’s good friend, Disney, owns ESPN, ABC, Disney Channel and a slew of other channels. Disney simply isn’t going to throw billions of dollars away in affiliate fees just so they can help Apple. All of the major TV content players view the world similarly.

…

So where does that get you when you connect the dots? I’ll tell you where it doesn’t get you … to a television-like device that:

  1. Is priced 2-4X the cost of an iPad.
  2. Has sales cycles of one device every 5-10 years.
  3. Has bad margins.
  4. Has a serviceable form factor that for many people is good enough. (Apple challenges industries where the baseline experience is terrible. Television hardware wouldn’t seem to qualify.)

I strongly recommend reading the rest of it as well, one of the best perspectives I’ve seen on the topic of Apple in general actually.

So when might Apple announce a television?

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Seems like Apple has news coming later this month.  Regardless of your feelings about Apple, it’s safe to say they have mastered the art of the product launch like none other.  Even when virtually every detail of a new product gets leaked due to it being stolen lost at a bar, they still master the news cycle and generally enchant and entertain.  Some might argue they simply do things whenever they want, others would surmise they do it entirely calculated on a spreadsheet based on maximizing sales.  My guess is they do it “when they can” – the moment they are done with the first production line and have the shipments queued up, the media invites go out, a few semi-leaks pop up here and there, then off to the races.

This works great when you can fit a few hundred phones into every crate and airdrop ‘em over the US at the same day/time with ease.  Sure it’s costly, but in the grand scheme of things, no big deal.  The boat’s left the harbor at the same time, and within 3 weeks the full distribution cycle is up and running.

But now we’re not talking about a gadget that fits in your pocket, it’s an Apple Television (right? right?).  And despite what self-aggrandizing promoters some analysts say, it’d be my guess that they ship them in more sizes than just 32″ and 37″ (seriously, how did anyone actually believe that?).  Unless they’re about to pour forth with statements about how those are actually the ideal sizes for a display, I don’t think they’re about to exist in a market where size really does matter and play on the small front.  I’d guess we see one at ~32″, ~40″, ~50″, and ~60″ – those are the main categories of TVs sold today.

Yeah, I'm on a truck. Life's just that good. I have a keg back here too.

And now is where we face our hurdle: these TVs are big.  The box for my Samsung 63″ plasma barely fit into a pickup truck!  You can’t exactly airdrop hundreds of each model to Apple stores.  In fact, every aspect of the logistics to pull off Apple’s typical surprise & delight maneuvers is quite tricky here.  So that’s problem number one – in my guess they solve this via the “and you’ll all be able to receive your units 30 days from today” type of solution.  But there’s no way you’ll hear “and you can go get them in Apple stores nationwide this afternoon.”

Second, unlike phones and iPads, and even computers, TV buying has a lot more seasonality to it.  And other than a core set of fanatics (nope, I’m not at that level yet), most people aren’t about to pick up new expensive living room gear for any given reason.  This is actually one of the trickiest nuances of the TV world (on the hardware front) – it’s really hard to get someone out of their buying cycles.  Sure, if someone was already planning to get a new set next holiday season they’ll consider getting one in June or August or whenever.  But if not, (question mark).

So, they can’t announce too soon.  Or too late.  They can’t announce in the first half of the year.  But if they wait til too late, they’ll impact supply chain in a painful way and potentially affect sales.

My money’s on a late Spring announcement, shipping in the Summer.  Even though it’s traditionally a terrible time to introduce a TV set to the market, it’ll give them more time to get the logistic down, the stores reformatted, and everything else into full swing in advance of the Q4 buying season.

But then again, it’s Apple, so “the rules” just don’t apply.

CES Tips: CES 2012 Edition

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One of my favorite CES moments. I'm 1/4 of the way to winning an EGOT!

Over a dozen CESes later (is that how you pluralize CES?), my tips for attending CES have shifted a bit, but not too much.  But for a personal first, my tips aren’t changing at all since 2011′s CES Tips list.  So, here’s that list, copied and pasted for your convenience.

  1. Wear Comfy Shoes!
    Of all the feedback I get on these lists, this is the one people appreciate the most.  CES isn’t supersized like it was back in ’08, but it’s still big, and tired feet equals sore back equals unhappy attendee.  Freebie bonus tip: while walking the show floor, try to walk on the booths as they tend to have better padding than the walkways between booths.
  2. Stay Clean
    I’m not a purel fan in general, but for a show like CES with over a hundred thousand people visiting from every continent, you are guaranteed to bump into someone who has exposure to some bizarre strain of something that’s going to make your next few days pretty miserable.  Keep your hands clean, wash before every meal and snack, and you’ll at least up your odds of avoiding the CES Flu next week.  Good luck.
  3. Pack Light
    My recommendation is to walk the floor with either nothing or a near-empty backpack. Forget shoulder straps, you’ll be aching by the end of the day. Bring nothing you do not need during the day. Also, try to dump your bag prior to dinner, so you can spend the night on the town without having to remember anything later. What happens in Vegas…
  4. Be Nice to the Staff
    Booth workers have likely sacrificed their entire holiday season to prep for CES.  They have to answer a thousand questions or so an hour.  Their demos are probably going to go awry as they are probably dealing with brand new gadgetry that doesn’t really work so great.  Treat them nice – don’t pester them as if they are tech support – they aren’t.  Don’t ask them hour-long questions on some weird technology nuance.  Don’t badger.  And don’t suck up all their time considering there are folks standing right behind you with questions to ask too.  Just be nice, they could use a little break from time to time.
  5. Plan Everything
    Figure out which booths in which halls you are going to prior to getting there.  Figure out where your dinner is, and book enough time to get a taxi.  Figure out where to get your badge before going there.  Figure out where your parties are, and plan that properly.  ”Winging it” utterly sucks when it comes to CES and Las Vegas.   Traveling between any two destinations could easily take an hour, even as early as 8am. If you try to leave the show, go to a hotel, then come back, your day is done.
  6. Skip the Swag
    Do you really want a Panasonic pen, or a Sony plastic bag, or a brochure from TiVo? Really? My wife has actually forbidden me from bringing home anything, period. Also, for those of you into conservation (which should be, you know, everyone), no better way to send a message than to leave Vizo with an extra truckfull of mints (note that for the 2012 edition I changed Samsung to Vizio, just for funsies – yet I kept the same gag in from 2011 #lazy).
  7. Stay Hydrated
    If you carry only one thing (a simple backpack, remember?  no?  back to #3 for you!), it should be a bottle of water.  Also, since your hotel room will be quite dry, leave the bathtub 1/4 full of water overnight, you’ll feel better in the morning.
  8. Get Connected
    Since about 80% of everyone at CES will be using an iPhone, odds are y’all won’t have much of a signal.  Further, wifi is going to be spotty at best.  I recommend relying on texting as your go-to method of staying in touch with folks.  Either that or grab a MiFi for the week.
  9. Share Cabs!
    When you get to your hotel taxi line in the morning, and it’s huge, here’s a simple trick to save yourself 30 minutes per day(or more).  Walk to the front, ask if anyone’s going to the convention center, if they say yes, offer to pay for their cab.  You aren’t actually “cutting” in line, because the person who was 2nd in line remains 2nd in line and you have no impact on their wait.  Easy one, eh?  By the way, you should be sure to tip a little extra when you do this, since you’ve taken away a full fare.  Plus, sharing is caring (I don’t know how that fits in here, but it sounds so nice to say).  Oh, and don’t forget – you can’t hail a taxi in Las Vegas, so grab them at hotels, restaurants, or the LVCC.
  10. Layer Up
    Vegas is in the middle of a big desert, and while it may be warm during the day, the nights are very cold in January.  Bring a jacket or a sweater when you go out.  But don’t forget to leave your CES badge in your hotel room before you leave for the night!
  11. Bring Business Cards
    I would say roughly 97% of the people that I’ve met at CES over the years who don’t have cards regret not having them. Maybe it seems cool now not to carry them. Maybe you think they are so 1990s. The truth is, there’s almost no reason not to carry cards, and even looking at it from a potential loss vs potential gain perspective says: carry the darn things! And Moo cards don’t count, people.  Updated for 2009201020112012:  Still true.
  12. Follow Live Online
    Engadget puts up a post every 3.8 seconds during CES (this is not a fact, I am just guessing – it’s probably more frequent than that). Make sure you tap into theirs (or Gizmodos or your own favorite gadget blog) during the course of the show.  If you are AT the show, you might find out about something cool to see; if you are stuck in your office, it’ll be kinda like being there, except you are stuck in your office and they’re in Vegas. Loser.

Oh, and if you missed it, here’s a video of myself and Robert Scoble talking about whats in store this year.  Have fun at the show!

Decoding "I Cracked It"

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As Nick Bilton wrote:

“I’ve finally cracked it!” Steven P. Jobs, co-founder of Apple, told his biographer, Walter Isaacson.

This topic seems to come up time and time again in the “future of TV” discussions, and was revived today over at AllThingsD: “Though it’s currently only embedded in the new iPhone 4S, Siri could eventually change the face of the TV industry.”  I’ve seen a few other stabs at what “cracking it” could possibly refer to, but none seem quite right.

First, regarding voice-controlled TVs.  Is this part of the future?  Absolutely, unquestionably, undeniably.  Siri hacking is already a hobby, and the idea of “TV, channel 702 please” or “TV, Watch The Office” or “TV, Record New Episodes of Arrested Development” all sound great.  But how much of an improvement is this really?

I’d call it a minor enhancement – specifically in context to all the action happening in the second screen. If you can pick up your smart phone or iPad and perform roughly the same query in one of dozens of apps, then “talking” this command doesn’t really sound like a HUGELY big deal.  It sounds incremental.  And “cracking it” doesn’t seem like it’s about incremental.  As I’ve written about previously, I don’t think it’s about physical gestures either, and as I’ll write about more in the future, it’s unlikely “apps” nor about some “new” 10-foot user interface (those are terrible, and are dead, thankfully).

What if the interview wasn’t about some futurey thing we’ll see one day?  What if it’s not some mystical innovation that we can’t possibly fathom?  See, I talk to virtually everybody in the future of TV industry, and not a single person seems to be able to imagine what this could be.  That’s a whole lot of smart, industry-relevant, savvy people to be so in the dark.

So I’m going to take a giant leap backwards on the statement “I cracked it” and instead of looking at what might come, I’m looking at what’s already there.  See, from my eyes, the single biggest improvement to the TV experience I’ve ever seen happened last year.  I think “I Cracked It”exists, and it’s called AirPlay.

AirPlay takes a fundamental mindshift from thinking about whats happening ON the screen, where you have to use a remote (or gesture or voice or whatever) to control some awkward, ill-performing, frustrating, fundamentally LOUSY user interface.  AirPlay shifts the interface to your favorite location, the device you hold, and carry with you all the time.  AirPlay enables you to have the most organic, natural, helpful user experience you can, then just shift that experience to the device you want, easily and flawlessly.  It’s an awesome experience.

For the record, I don’t mean this to be a gush about Apple TV / AirPlay – merely the experience the two together provide, one I anticipate will be replicated by others, and soon. The future of TV interfaces will be controlled by your second screen, and you’ll have one simple way to get it to the screen of your choosing.  Today that’s done by AirPlay, but by the end of 2012 you’ll see this type of offering from a variety of manufacturers and app providers.

The first “moment of change” for TV user interfaces happened in the late 1990s by TiVo.  The next one happened in 2010, by Steve Jobs & Apple.  And yes, he cracked it.

Why Apple Won't Buy Netflix (or Sony or RIM or …)

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We're like Media. Squared.

I enjoy pondering the question of “who should Apple buy next?”  I think it’s probably best answered in this Quora post, which conveniently includes a history of most of their recent acquisitions, then followed by all sorts of fun guesses.  Some of the companies mentioned include: Square, Pandora, Sony, Amazon, RIM, and many more.  PaidContent lists Apple as a good future home for Netflix.

I’m sure on paper many of these are sound acquisitions.  Some bring good IP. Others good cash flow.  Others good branding and distribution vehicles.  I’d surmise that many a financial analyst could put together very solid plans, and would even wager the discussions happen within Apple from time to time on the topic.  But I don’t think Apple’s buying any of them, and for a vastly different reason, one that won’t make any spreadsheet or pro forma statement anywhere.  It’s about the DNA transfusion.

If there’s one thing Steve Jobs created over the past decade-plus it’s a certain DNA.  It’s a company-wide culture that transcends from product to marketing to customer service to building design.  And inserting hundreds of product managers, engineers, QA staff, designers, etc who come from radically different types of DNA will result in exactly one thing: Brundlefly.

How about an iMinidisc player? Or adding UMD to next-gen Macbook Airs?

My money is on Apple continuing their pattern of only absorbing companies who are either:

  • Small – smaller teams who are tightly focused can have their developing culture be absolutely subsumed by Apple’s
  • Non-consumer facing – ingredient technologies (chips, algorithms, infrastructure) tend to need less of the consumer product dogma that guides the “Apple way” and have less impact on culture

The exciting thing about an Apple acquisition, in my opinion, is watching them take little pockets of technology and turn them into big consumer products far down the road.  Although I would say, of all the companies named above, it certainly does seem like Square could be a good fit from a product, market, *and* DNA perspective, but that’s just from outside appearances.

If AppleTV is 1/3 of the market, who's selling the other 2/3?

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A few blogs are reporting about Strategy Analytics’ recent claim:

Strategy Analytics projects that the market will reach almost 12 million units globally this year, with Apple alone predicted to sell nearly four million devices.

Wow. Pretty bold claim.  Let’s deconstruct it.  Let’s assume it’s a correct prediction:

AppleTV will sell 4 million units, leaving ~8 million for “the rest”.

what do you mean "and the rest"?

Here are “the rest”: Roku, Western Digital, D-Link (Boxee), and… er… I don’t know, how about Logitech? Maybe a few other smaller players, but nothing you and I are buying in a Best Buy, Target, Walmart or Amazon – the only places that matter at all for moving these kinds of numbers.  Yes, there are some other odds and ends in the bizarre category known as Internet Set Top Boxes, but they aren’t mustering up sufficient sales to count here.

Roku: I’ve heard all sorts of things, but lets use publicly available information: as of last January, Roku hit 1 million devices sold.  I’ll assume they’ve at least doubled that in 2011, possibly as much as tripled, due to new products, more viability, and lower prices.  That said, they are now up against an ever-improving AppleTV product.  Even so, let’s assume they can hold pace against the world’s largest marketing machine for digital lifestyle products, and sell another 3 million units in 2012.

Western Digital: You probably haven’t heard of it, but that little gadget your buddy has for watching photos on his TV is called the WDTV Live, and they’ve sold somewhere in the 1-3 million unit range (I know that’s a big range, but it seems pretty fair based on some poking around).  Not a bad showing for a company known for making hard drives.  But in the presence of both Apple and Roku, it’s a pretty fair bet that they aren’t edging out of third place for future market share.  I’ll again be kind with 1.5 million units sold in 2012.

From these guys, only for your TV. Perfect.

D-Link (Boxee Box): Disclosure: I was a core part of the launch teams for both Boxee and the Boxee Box by D-Link, and wish to see them extremely successful, though I am no longer professionally engaged with either company in any way.  And that said, I don’t think they’re anywhere close in numbers yet, and don’t see them hitting the million unit mark any time soon (specifically in regards to unit sales, this has nothing to do with downloads, active community, or positive thoughts). Optimistic high end prediction in 2012: 750K units.

Logitech: $100 million loss.  Let’s move along shall we?

Have the factory spin up about a bajillion of them, nothing will go wrong.

Everyone else: I’ll generously band them all together, and predict they maybe move 500K units.

Unknown entry by traditional consumer electronics brand: Look, anyone can make a media streamer, in fact you can make an adequate one by buying off the shelf parts and licensing open software platforms.  But even the formerly mighty Sony and the young stalwart Vizio is going to have a tricky road in getting a product out in this category that doesn’t include a full end-to-end solution.  And there just aren’t enough to go around.  Maybe Amazon could have some kind of Kindle Fire: Home Media Edition or something, but something tells me they are still getting their feet wet in hardware and aren’t going to jump too rashly into the space (though I’ve been known to be wrong about Amazon and hardware in the past).  Top guess: 250K units.

Grand Total Units Sold, Highly Optimistic Prediction Mode: 6 million units.  Giving Apple TV, with 4 million sales, a 40% market share.  And that’s me being *quite* optimistic, and I’d wager it’s more like a grand total of 4 for the rest.  Or less.  Giving Apple TV a significantly larger potential – and by the way, it’s not exactly Apple’s strongest product.

But their math was so good!

This whole story just reminds me of the time when I was reviewing an analyst report for the *exact same space* back in 2003 when we had just shipped the HP Digital Media Receiver (the first mainstream Internet Set Top Box, by the way).  This was, by the way, before consumers had Flips or other simple video recording devices, digital cameras were mostly a novelty, and there was no YouTube, Netflix streaming, or pretty much anything else to watch on the darned thing.  But still, the potential!

The analyst predicted hundreds of thousands of “streaming video boxes” sold in 2003.  The only snag was, we were literally the only game in town, and we had predicted tens of thousands at best.  When I spoke with the analysts, they said they predicted several years forward, based on consumer interest, to arrive at several million units a year.  Then, they backtracked it into 2003 and, boom, hundreds of thousands.  What could possibly go wrong with this kind of logic?

They sold literally dozens of them