dsandler.org/wp

Oh, well, I didn’t win the What Would Steve
Do? contest with my “iFi” home stereo component (local iTunes
library, DVR features, etc). Sigh.

Update: Here, why don’t I just post the entire concept, and just get
it out there.

From: dan sandler
To: applecontest at engadget.com
Subject: WWSJD? plausible product: the iFi

Admittedly, it's a bit farfetched, Apple having just announced the
AirPort Express. But the recent creation of a whole iPod division tells
me that Steve wants to make the iPod brand as well known---or, frankly,
better known---than Macintosh. (It's already started to become a
generic tradename, of course...)

So my "guess" is that Steve will introduce a home AV component to the
under the iPod brand family: a slick metal box that fits right in
with your living room instead of your office. It even has a cool,
seventies-retro name.

It is the iFi.

It attaches to your fancy Dolby Digital surround decoder and streams
your iTunes over your forest of living room speakers, not unlike the
Express, but that's where the similarity ends. The iFi has a remote
control and on-board LCD display, allowing a "music surfer" full control
over playback. In fact, it acts more like an iPod than anything, having
its own hard drive which synchronizes music from iTunes on your Mac (or
PC!) rather than streaming it.

"But wait, there's more." It will do for the digital video recorder
"market" what it did for the personal digital audio player "market":
drag it out of obscurity and into the mainstream. (Look out, TiVo---your
days are numbered.) The iFi hooks up to your television, and your cable
or satellite; Apple's iFi Listing Service (part of the iTunes Music
Store? .Mac?) provides television listings (synched over the Internet;
none of this "phone home" modem business) and video-on-demand (movie
trailers, streaming radio/video, download-and-play content).

Of course, the iFi will stream your iMovies and iPhotos too, displaying
them on your TV. That's just a given.

The iFi can burn playlists to CD, obviously---it's essentially an iTunes
kiosk, putting Apple brands and technology in prominent display in your
house, right where your guests will gawk at it.

The iFi is the first "appliance" powered by OS X; the industrial
designers will, predictably, have a *field day* as there are very few
of the traditional Apple form factor constraints (power consumption,
size, weight, etc.). It will be the "must have" gadget of the year, and
the margins will be much fatter than those of the iPod. Finally, a
product that doesn't need subsidizing.

As with Apple's most successful products, not all the ideas are new (see
TiVo; the Home Audio Reference Platform (HARP) from Be Inc.; Apple's own
iPod; etc.) but never before have they all been available in one coherent,
seamless package to discriminating lifestyle geeks.

All this will come to pass. I promise it!