I’ve stopped trying to predict what Apple will do long ago, seeing as how I’m inevitably and awesomely wrong, but that hasn’t stopped many others from predicting and prognosticating. Those others include folks who predict and prognosticate for a living, like Forrester Research, who apparently have put out a study examining what Apple will release in 2013, as the Wall Street Journal reports:Among the new products Forrester predicts Apple will create are wall-mountable digital picture frames with small high-definition screens and speakers that wirelessly play media, including photos, videos and music, stored on a computer elsewhere in the home. Such products already exist, but Apple could put its own twist on them — for example, by adding its design panache and a touch-sensitive screen that lets viewers flip from image to image with a finger swipe, a la the iPhone.
For the bedroom, Forrester envisions an Apple “clock radio” that pipes in music and other media across a home network. Possible, too, is an “AppleSound” universal remote control, also with a touch-sensitive screen, that lets users browse their music collections and change the songs playing through their stereo as they stroll around the house. This latter technology is already available in primitive form through an application called Signal (www.alloysoft.com) that turns the iPod touch and the iPhone into remote controls for Apple’s iTunes program.
My guess is that even if any of these guesses are right, Apple will make them that much better and unpredictably amazing.
So they're saying Apple is going to make Sonos?
http://www.sonos.com/
I'll put my prognosticator cap on and say no.
The digital picture frame is a stupid idea that calls for optimizing all the wrong features of a picture display (and minimizing an important one--no fingerprints). A touch display for one gesture? At eye level? I wipe my iPhone down several times a day. No problem because it's in my hand; a mounted frame?
Clock radio? Like there aren't dozens that play media from your iPod? Is there demand for more content on your clock radio?
The universal remote idea assumes people have a whole-house sound system. That doesn't seem likely to become standard in the next 5 years (I might walk through my house with my iPhone playing media...).
These ideas are just too pedestrian for Apple. I'd sooner predict a gaming console.
After reading this, I think I might wait for iHome. Where the home and everything in it will be an Apple product. Imagine a toilet having access to music, video, and the internet with personal cleaning built in, they will call it iPoop. Then I will drive to work in my iGo.
Seriously I have a Mac computer, Apple router, iPod in my car, and an iPhone. So if I am not an Apple fanboy I don't know what is. This article as far fetched as what I wrote above. Maybe I should publish it and become a famous Apple prognosticator.
or maybe a partnership with a TV company to make an HDTV with apple tv built in
So, their research looks at current technology and predicts that Apple will do something amazing with it? If you put it in general terms, like I just did, without a lick of research, that sounds just about right. If you've done actual research and predict that specific far-out lame-ass technologies will be the exact ones Apple will pounce on, you're just a plain idiot.