This really isn’t a mac blog.

I feel it necessary to say that upfront because it’s the third macpost in as many days and in the scheme of things the focus of horse lats it is only really an aside.

Despite my best intentions I was refreshing like a mofo desperately trying to get on engadget to see the ‘one more thing’ during ’showtime’ and ever it was initially a bit disappointing. Having had a day or two to allow as Jason Kottke john gruber time to tell me what I think the dust to settle- it is starting to become a little clearer.

Sure there were no widescreen ipods (or 40″ black imacs for that matter) but the overall message was (despite ridiculous articles to contrary)just as interesting. The battle for Apple isn’t really to be constantlycreating bleeding edge tech to keep geeks and rumour blogs satiated.,it’s to move difficult and radical ideas into the mainstream. Thecompany’s great skill is in it’s ability to market these difficultideas into actual products that people buy. (and when I say people I’mtalking about normal people not people who read digg 25 times a day orwho populate the macdailynews forums with religious fervour).

The ‘battle for the living room’ is populated by the wrecks of manygreat and powerful companies and the gap between the media we consumeon our computers and the media we consume via our monitors is far greatthan a wireless link or a media extender can currently reach. It’s notthe tech. it’s the idea that is difficult.

Maybe that is why we had a preview of iTV rather than the product itself, to give us time to process the idea.

The focus of the presentation was film, but the real deal-breaker for me is TV. Most of my favourite programs I now watch viabit torrent. It works well (but it’s enough of a ball ache for me to wantan easier way to do it), so how about itunes on my home computer with asubscription to my 5 favourite shows, updating automatically every timethere’s a new episode. I turn on my TV (not log on to my mac) and watchwhat I want. Now that’s radical, but it’s also simple enough for my mumto understand. Turn on box watch what I want.
If Apple can sell that idea it will be as important thing as anything they have ever done.