Blog Insights: Windows In The Home
What bloggers are saying about the latest in information technology
Apple Computer has to have the most annoying television commercials ever, with its "I'm cooler than you" campaign that features a smarmy, casually-dressed Mac user standing next to a geeky PC user. Apple's intent of course, is to capture the home market, by boxing Windows PCs into the "business" category. In reality, the Windows versus Mac battle is little more than a tempest in a teapot, and the difference between the two is about the same as the difference between Republicans and Democrats, which is to say, very little.
The real battle isn't going to be about what brand of computer sits on the desk in your spare room, or even what operating system it runs, it's going to be about who gets to dominate the market for home servers that will control your entertainment, television, telephony, and your home automation system. No -- productivity applications and usability on Mac and PC have reached equilibrium. What's more important is who will dominate the applications that will control your home-wide entertainment system and appliances, and the applications that will let you control your lighting and HVAC from your hotel while on vacation. In case you haven't noticed, the computer is no longer something that sits in a rectangular box and lets you write letters and balance your checkbook. The computer is, and will be, in everything. Just one example of the ubiquity of computers, and of Microsoft software of course, is Microsoft's deal with Ford to create a voice-activated in-car system for entertainment and communications.
When Microsoft's Bill Gates addressed the Consumer Electronics Show this week, he wasn't as concerned with productivity applications and PCs as he was with family entertainment and new services. Two new services in particular position Microsoft right at the center of the new "connected" home: the IPTV-enabled Xbox 360, and the Microsoft Windows Home Server. Of course, Apple will be talking about its own iTV set-top box this week at MacWorld.
Reports are only just now coming in from the CES, where Microsoft finally released the much-anticipated home server. On the ZDNet blog , there's a little speculation about the nature of the beast, although at press time, there's still not much known about it. Now there's a lot of folks out there who are saying, "what in the world do I want a server in my home for?" And fair enough, most people wouldn't. That is, they wouldn't want a server in the conventional sense of the word. But Microsoft is turning the concept towards the consumer, with a server that is less of a business and productivity machine than it is a home entertainment storage and serving system. More of the media we have at home is electronic -- photographs, music, and even movies -- and it's only natural that a server with large storage capacity would become part of a home media center. With this release (and the subsequent release of an Apple equivalent), home servers aren't just going to be for the geeks among us, but rather, for the audiophiles, the world travelers with a million digital photographs, and collectors of digital movies. The importance of the home server will only increase when the inevitable happens, and movies no longer come stored on DVDs you get from Blockbuster, but rather, downloaded directly from their Web site. My prediction: Microsoft's Home Server will put an end to the perception of "Apple cool, PC geeky" once and for all -- and hopefully an end to those annoying commercials.