Living Room Videoconferences For All
I know Robert X. Cringley’s column is all about speculation, but his current description of a plan for Apple to introduce living-room-based videoconferencing gave me a moment of “Why didn’t I see that coming?”
Apple has already created the world’s easiest videoconferencing setup and built it into almost every computer they produce. To make HDTVs with it built in, or even to enable it via the iTV, would make a tremendously compelling user experience… and for me, a tremendous reason to buy their equipment.
I have young kids. I have brand-new baby cousins on the other coast. I could spend a couple thousand dollars to travel and see them for one week, or I could spend half of that on Apple hardware and see them every week or even every day.
I have young kids that I hate leaving at home when I’m on a business trip. What better family experience than a quick videoconference from a Mac laptop to the home living room before bed?
Apple has always been excellent at driving technology where the users need it, whether they know it or not, which has created incredible sales opportunities for them. If this is real, I could be buying a new HDTV, a new Mac for the house, a new Mac laptop… and that doesn’t even start to cover the relatives’ purchases.
And, if the interface for calling is implemented correctly, it will feel like a steal. Final pressure will be on the Apple dev team, but if they have even marginal attention to detail and follow the iTV interface already shown in Jobs’ presentation this could be an incredible hit.
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