Much has been said about the passing of Steve Jobs. Much more will be said as the years go by.
Most people find it a lifetime accomplishment to shed a little light in a corner of the world. But this was a man who heralded major change in a handful of industries. The secret behind everything Steve Jobs touched was his intense, if not neurotic, focus on every aspect of the user experience. We can expect that tenet to continue to guide Apple as its ever-expanding efforts bring change to other industries.
Distributors think about content, and manufacturers think about devices. Content used to be married to the delivery mechanism and the medium on which it was viewed. Newspapers were delivered in one format, magazines another. Television shows, another. Only movies were exposed to multiple delivery mechanisms, through television and home media. As the barriers for the delivery mechanism blurred across all forms of media, Jobs’ brilliant insight was that differentiation could take place by means of the user experience throughout the distribution and device level. This meant more than a GUI, more than a device, more than a store. Jobs’ focus, and the drive and focus of Apple over the past decade, has been how the user interacts with the entire food chain for content. And that drive continues today inside of Apple. It will continue to impact and surprise all of us for years to come, and it will even impact the cinema.
It’s said that Jobs’ left a road map for the company to last 3 years. That’s probably an underestimation. Jobs was public with his dismay over Google’s moves with Android, phones, and tablets. He was willing to commit as many resources as necessary to pay back the favor. Apple’s first step in that direction was released the day before he died. The powerful combination of artificial intelligence and voice recognition that Apple introduced through its Siri application will evolve into much more than a way to up the game with Google. It’s easy to see how it will be applied to search and maps. (In fact, Apple has been buying up map technology in recent years.) Unlikely that it will stop there.
Siri is only at the starting gate. When people are able to interact with machines in the manner that people interact with people, “it’s going to change everything, again.” It’ll impact every interaction that involves a human and a machine, from personal devices, to point-of-sale, to eliminating the sea of remote controls on our living room tables. This is the stuff of Star Trek.
Home entertainment is the next realm for Apple, and the development has begun. Jobs’ own description of the project says that this is far more than an upgrade to Apple TV. The company is gathering talent. Tom Holman, perhaps best known as the originator of THX while with Lucasfilm, recently took leave from his professorship at USC to consult with Apple. Intelligent voice control, state-of-art sound, beautiful image – these are the things we expect from Apple. But the company’s tribute to Jobs will take form with a far deeper thrust: the disintermediation of cable and satellite using the Apple ecosystem of Internet, iCloud, and apps. A step in this direction was taken when the company submitted an update to its HTTP Live Streaming protocol to the IETF (Internet standards committee) this month. But Apple doesn’t have to be first to provide the best user experience, and there will be much to borrow from. A milestone paper was given (by others) in this month’s SMPTE conference outlining a framework for Internet delivery of television programming.
The audience can’t wait. Entertainment apps already account for 60% of peak Internet downstream traffic in the US. Netflix, a provider of streaming movie and television shows in the US, occupies more than 50% of that. But as popular as the Netflix streaming service may be, there is more that consumers want that only a tightly managed ecosystem such as Apple’s can deliver. More than storage, more than a device, more than a user interface, Apple will tie it all together in a way that makes the user experience stand out from any other. And that will add just another chapter to the legacy of Steve Jobs.