I figure Apple is letting them figure out the basics and then they will introduce Siri-in-a-box kind of thing. No sense in being first to market if your execution is flawed.
Bascially this. Since the return of Jobs, Apple has not been first about anything (and one may argue about them not being so back in the day as well). But Jobs always had a flare for marketing.
Can you have loyal customers with just marketing? Certainly you can get them to buy a product, but marketing doesn't create satisfied customers post purchase. Being first is similar. You can certainly get some nice industry buzz (marketing) by being first. People will buy the product, but will they be satisfied? Only if it is well designed.
I feel like the Blue Origin / SpaceX "first to land" is relevant here.
Blue Origin (another Bezos company) was technically first to land a rocket, and gloated about it. But SpaceX has a more useful implementation as of now.
Does AppleTV have HDMI pass through? You would need it for it to compete with the echo. The echo is always on, always listening and accessible. Having to turn on the TV and change inputs and all that removes all of the conveniences of the echo.
My feeling is that some company is gonna do that eventually, use the set top box as the home hub, but there are some convenience issues to be figured out.
Why not sell a display that will work with it wirelessly? It would basically be the iPad with WiFi but no touch screen, no camera, maybe even no battery (always plugged-in), and a stripped down iOS with limited CPU/RAM/storage. You talk to the AppleTV box, the display lights up and shows you what you asked for. Add a microphone to the display so it can hear where you are and display you the results in your kitchen display, bedroom display or wherever.
And add a feature to listen to commands like "Show me X on my phone" or "Send this to my phone" and it will display whatever you just asked for on your iPhone. Or even "Send this to [contact name]".
There are a lot of smart TVs already integrating with internet... I would imagine most would be like that in the future. It didn't make sense to me why they integrated a screen (other than to get people to use it in every room/ some sort of Amazon strategy that usually works for an unforeseen outcome).
What I haven't seen is something like the electronic-paper Kindle... a calm display. Most of the time I have my laptop and tv on quick shut-down because the ambient light feels grating (maybe it's the feeling of losing energy? not sure why it annoys me). A calendar or XKCD board would be awesome.... have the echo just populate a poster with stuff that's slightly irritating to lookup... this leads into an idea of having 'settings' for the environment/ room...hmm
