Apple: Always 'Late'. Never the Bridesmaid.
Originally posted on Tumblr, 21 May 2014.
Seems like Apple is late again. Very late with their TV, and just plain late with the iWatch.
For anyone following Apple for more than about 15 minutes, this is nothing new; even part of the game plan. Apple is always ‘late’ — never the bridesmaid.
I shouldn’t say ‘always’, because in the early days, Apple was often…um…early. The Mac was the first computer with a graphical interface, aaannnnddddddd it got slaughtered in the marketplace. Apple was the bridesmaid to Microsoft’s bride.
But that changed with the iPod. The iPod was quite late to the party. There were already MP3 players around, and people knew about them. They didn’t buy many of them, but they knew about them. There was the seed of a big market by the time Apple swept in and took the lot.
Same with the iPhone. Nobody will tell you Apple created the smartphone market. It was long established by the likes of Nokia and Palm, and yet it remained a bit of a sideshow. Only geeks were really interested.
Bill Gates began talking about tablets nearly 10 years before the iPad came to be. Again, nobody took much notice. There was a kernel of an idea there, but it hadn’t been worked through enough to make it very useful.
In each of these cases, Apple moved into an already established market, solved a fundamental problem, and stole the family China. For MP3 players, the problem was that they had limited capacity, and were difficult to manage. Phones and tablets had clunky interfaces based on physical keyboards and onscreen pulldown menus migrated directly from the preceding generation of hardware: PCs.
To think that this happens by chance is naive. It’s a well orchestrated plan, and I guarantee they teach this stuff to new recruits at the Apple University (link no longer available). Creating a new market from scratch is diabolically difficult and risky. Waiting for a market seed to germinate, and then turning up with your fertilizer, is a much sounder approach.
And so we get to the order of the day: Where’s our TV? What about the watch? Like everyone else, I’m just speculating, but I do think we will see one or both quite soon. My suspicion is not based on any rumor or insider knowledge — it’s based on looking at the existing offerings of other companies.
SmartTVs are starting to take hold. Buying a new TV without apps is becoming a challenge, and yet, I can’t actually say I know anyone using them. I’m sure most people don’t even know their TV has apps.
Feels ripe for Apple. A very similar situation to the MP3 player market just prior to iPod, or the smart phone market prior to iPhone. There is a market, but the available products are not very good, and nobody really gives a sh*t. Now would be a great time to release that TV, solve cable hell, eliminate 3 out of 4 remote controls, and include an SDK for developers to build a vibrant App Store.
I’m not sure about the watch. It feels a bit premature. There are wearables, like the fitbit (link no longer available), but I think they may be a way off going mainstream.
Whether or not that is the case, you can be sure Apple is monitoring the market’s pulse, and will strike when it thinks the planets are aligned, and not a moment sooner.