Apple Inc (AAPL)

[tomm]

Comparing Apple and Microsoft's Digital Hubs - Who "Gets it?"

To summarize, the company is essentially attempting to put your TV, DVD Player, Photo Album, Video Games etc in a single box. It's not anything different than an average computer except that Microsoft is defining specific uses for it and telling consumers to put the box in their living room so that a remote can also be sold to manage the conglomeration.

Apple on the other hand hasn't created a literal text definition for its digital hub, but actions have always spoken louder than words and Apple's actions have been clear. Over the past two years, Apple has been busy developing new technologies that compliment the computer. Products such as the Airport, iPod, iSight, and more recently, the airport express compliment each of Apple's multimedia software products without being dependent on one another.

Apple's latest addition to the hub, the airport express is the perfect embodiment of this strategy in action. The product simply acs as an add-on to your existing stereo system while integrating with the company's juke box software. Many believe the company will take this strategy a step further and allow its iPod to act as a wireless controller for the configuration.

The strategy is defined by allowing the airport express, iTunes, stereo and the computer to retain their independence while at the same time allowing them to be easily combined to create new and innovative solutions that don't clutter your room while also being cost effective. History has shown us that consumers are far more inclined to gravitate to this strategy than that which Microsoft is pushing.

If ever there is a time that Apple "gets it" and Microsoft does not, this is it.

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"The big difference between Apple's digital hub and Microsoft's digital hub in the fact that, with Microsoft's, the end-user is a passive player in the digital media experience, essentially using the Media Center PC as a delivery platform for media. With Apple's iLife, however -- and it WAS iLife that the term "digital hub" was coined for before the iPod or Airport Express ever came out -- is an environment where the end-user is an ACTIVE player: compile music in iTunes, pictures in iPhoto, edit video in iMovie (with unparalleled ease of access to the other iLife applications' media libraries), and then author onto disk via iDVD. To me, that rings truer to the original spirit of Apple's digital hub, and really showed a new potential for the end-user. Since the iPod, this mandate has broadened, but to me Apple's digital hub is still a creative process, whereas Microsoft is a consumptive one."

http://www.osopinion.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1525