If I was Tim Cook
After WWDC I was suitably excited to see both the software and hardware updates that Apple has in store for us over the coming year. I look longingly at my mid 2012 MacBook Pro hoping that it will fall over so I can get the new MacBook Pro, but needless to say its still as zippy and intuitive as the day I bought.....I'm sure even if I through it down the stairs it will still turn on with that familiar Apple bing!
IOS 11 looks to be the software upgrade I need. I have an Apple Pencil with my IPad Pro, but I'll be honest, I'm no artist so I'm not going to spend hours sketching and drawing, so at the moment I'm just limited to using it to take notes in OneNote. However this will all change when with the next software update as suddenly the Apple Pencil will come alive with uses for me and will justify the outlay I have already made.
My focus for this will be around Apple TV and TvOS and what I believe Tim Cook and Apple need to do to make it a true player in the home entertainment space.
Apple have all the ingredients and capabilities to make this work, they just need aligning better and it could truly be that cord cutter that every Apple fan wants it to be.
Amazon Prime coming to Apple TV is a great addition but I believe it needs to start right back at the basics. I can have all the content I need across Amazon, Netflix, Now TV etc but unless I can have access to Live TV (i.e freeview) my family won't be interested.
If my wife can't watch Eastenders when its on we won't switch. The TV player app is ok, but its stuttery and clunky and the picture quality can sometimes not be great. However, I'm sure that Freeview could work with Apple on an app that delivers this. Need to catch up? Sure she can watch it on BBC iplayer, but that ends up being the next day. How about if I could record, just like I can with my current Sky Q system, but the recordings are saved to my icloud account instead? Think about it. Now I can series record via Siri, I can schedule recordings while I am out via my iPhone or my iPad and can then watch via my Apple TV, iPhone or iPad when I want. Let's face it half of the time I record something because I am going to miss the scheduled time by an hour or so, so this would be the perfect solution for this, mirroring what I can do with Sky Q, using the same end device, but within the Apple ecosystem and without the subscription cost of Sky Q. Also as Apple moves towards being a services business and wants the ramp up iCloud adoption and usage, what better way that getting people to upgrade their storage than by having the lifeblood of a families home saved on it? Ok, lifeblood is a bit to strong....I'm sure food and water come above this, but hey I'm in marketing so let me run with it.
The other option with this would be putting an aerial socket in the back of the Apple TV and creating a really intuitive user friendly guide like no other, but I'm sure Apple don't want us to be having unsightly wires hanging around.
I currently have the full sky package with Movies and sports. My kids tend to watch films and the kids channels, I watch the sports and my wife watches soaps and box sets.
The only thing tying me in to sky currently is the content....oh and the features of sky Q.
With the above solution I could have the same content - via Now tv, Disney life, Amazon, Netflix and Freeview, with the same functionality of Sky Q but at the the fraction of the price as I would be paying for what I wanted to watch, when I wanted to watch it. All in one easy to use interface in the TV App and with the added benefits of Siri to help me decide and knowing that all my shows etc can be viewed on any of my devices in and out of the home.
So now we have the TV aspect of Apple TV sorted, lets look at the gaming aspect.
There has been lots of talk in the news about Apple having a truck load of cash and potentially buying Netflix, Time Warner....even Disney.
All of which would be great and really help establish them as a player in the TV space. But I believe with original content on the way, and access to content libraries through the likes of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Now Tv etc that they don't need to.
In my house, currently underneath my Sky Q box is my Xbox One. When I want to play Fifa 17 its there (although with 3 daughters in the house it doesn't get switched on as often as I'd like!) My wife has no interest in gaming, and my daughters will play Minecraft now and again, but the vast majority of time they spend on that game is on the iPad.
The only time my wife and kids have ever had any longevity playing games as a family is when the Wii first came out. We would all play bowling, or baseball or tennis. We'd all have a laugh and we'd all enjoy the Wii as a family. This is why I feel, that if the cash is there, then Apple should buy Nintendo.
With WWDC Apple announced that because of devices, Apples AR community is already the largest in the world. Why could this not be so for Nintendo and the gaming community? Nintendo's games are fun for all the family, we've seen with Mario Run what can be achieved, but this is just scratching the surface. What if Apple buying Nintendo meant that Nintendo didn't need to concentrate on building hardware, they could solely concentrate on games for the various IOS platforms? Taking the Nintendo Switch concept of playing games in the house, on the go....anywhere but on Apple hardware instead? I think the switch concept is brilliant, but now you are adding TV, Music, Photos etc in to the mix too all on one device and one ecosystem. We could even get retro wireless Nintendo controllers for the Apple TV to add that bit of nostalgia.
Now all of a sudden I don't need a Pay TV subscription and I don't need a separate games console.
This is what I believe Apple TV could be. And if I was Tim Cook, this is what I would be doing.
What do you think?
Dean Wootton