You Don't Get It!

Michael Gartenberg | April 17, 2007, 08:58 AM

One of the classic comments a product manager can say to annoy me is how I "don't get their product". I remember one of the first times it happened, when the head of the Newton project at Apple told me I didn't get it when I told him that the product was totally un-suitable for a large SFA project at the Fortune 500 where I was working at the time. It's a total cop out comment. Of course I get it. I'm the customer.

So it's a little hypocritical when I tell folks commenting on Apple TV that they don't get it. Of course they do, but they might be missing the forest for the trees. Let me explain. A few months ago when I spoke at the Mobius conference, I posed the question "what's a smartphone?" Today my question is, "what's a PC?". Those who are saying that they don't want an Apple TV and that they'd rather hook up a PC to it are missing the point. Apple TV IS a personal computer by any definition. It even runs OS X. It's not a crippled PC like the PC jr was, trying to do everything a full PC could do an do it poorly. It's taking a specific subset of PC functionality, focusing on doing that well and simplifying the process. I think I'm a pretty technical kind of guy but more and more, I want to focus on the function and not on the technology. That's the reason I like my Apple TV... And my Xbox... And my TiVo and all the other "PCs" that I have connected to the various things in my home that I call TVs. Of course, that begs the next question. "What's a TV?"

Fun part is I'm working on a report right now that gets directly to this issue, do consumers want to connect PCs to their TVs directly or do they want to get content from their PCs to their TVs by some other mechanism. I'm looking at the data right now and grinning. Sorry, can't give away the answer just yet but you'll be really surprises at what's REALLY going on here.

Update - Dave points out I was pointing to old info. I didn't see the later post. My point wasn't about whether someone gets Apple TV or not, rather that it's a product designed for a different market than folks who want to hook up traditional PCs to TV sets.