Crossroads

At the intersection of technology, finance and the Pacific Rim.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Apple at the Core

Steve Jobs yesterday announced a series of new products. I encourage all of you to see his presentation in San Francisco yesterday. You will get a good understanding of how fast technology moves--how it shrinks the physical, and gets better with more (storage, processing power, functionality etc. etc.). Also you will see many of the attention to fine details that makes Apple what it is--the focus on how the customer would want in the product and also the little design changes that can have a big impact on the functionality of the product.

Steve Ballmer must be chewing his shoes in frustration. So many engineers and so hard to force feed them with the elegance that Apple brings to its products and style. So what do people think of the $299 iTV that will be coming out in Q1 of next year. What are the risk and what is the upside? We will discuss this a bit tomorrow in class.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ok, i am maybe some kind of stuborn who don't want "the new" quicktime for my firefox so if you are close to my case, here some link to Youtube to see a part of the Apple iTV presentation here :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTbdI2JYDEo&mode=related&search=
The video has a bad fps but the sound is perfect.
For a little overview about what launched Apple like new Apple Ipod Shuffle, Ipod Nano and a short comparison with Microsoft product and other japanese companies product, check the link here :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0woRmkszGdw&mode=related&search=
The video is in Japanese but you can still check what the technology look like.
Here is one of the reason why Apple will sell so much of its product : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE3eqrxV7jk&mode=related&search=
This is the new advertising for Apple iPod.
So it was funny for me that these Japanese journalists did not really care about iTV even though it must be the biggest news from Apple (As we say we always keep the better for the end). Maybe because no japanese companies prepare a counter attack for it?
I don't know how they plan to launch iTV but I think, $299 so maybe $249 to remove cable from my PC to my TV is a little bit expensive. But I don't feel I am targeted with this offer. To be targeted, you need "A BIG FLAT SCREEN" as Mr Jobs said 30 times in his presentation. So they probably want to target really high income people who just want to feel themselves "fashion in" and can pay for that technology. Also, it looks like iTV makes the transfer of the video from PC to TV easier so people can feel like "Oh I can watch PC movie on my TV" as they think it was impossible before or possible only for electronic engineers.

12:44 AM  

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