For those that have never heard of the system, Sonos is a wireless music system for your home that allows you to play different digital tracks (or select from a diminishing number of internet radio stations) in different rooms of your house. Everything is small and built as nice-looking components so you can expand your system one step at a time. The system performance is absolutely awesome and would fit hand-in-glove with Apple iTunes and their iTV system.
One issue with Sonos now is that you need to have a PC running with your library of digital music files, or have a network file server (allow at least 1 weekend of hacking to get this up). Having a dedicated network file server purpose built from Apple that could sync with iTunes wirelessly would be Sonos Nirvana.
The founder of Sonos, John MacFarlane, made a mint merging his former company Software.com to Phone.com (now called Openwave Nasdaq:OPWV) and looks set to do it again one day.
So if anyone from Apple ever reads this – I highly suggest you drive your M&A team over to Sonos and buy them out (before they get too big). They have already adopted an iPod style color scheme for all their devices.
The new Toy
We have a new Apple iMac in the office so we can test the FF alpha in a non-PC environment. After seeing the new toy arrive some of our business staff are considering switching sides and moving over from PC to iMac. I guess for non-programmers if you have Office tools, e-mail, a web browser and skype on an iMac it wouldn’t really make much difference.
iMacs also look a lot prettier than PCs in general – when Steve Jobs released the new ‘Air’ laptop recently people went crazy and it was written up in blogs everywhere, but when Dell or HP release a new laptop people barely blink an eye-lid. That’s the power of good design and the aura of the brand Apple.
I just wish we could get TV shows and movies on iTunes in Australia.
QAing
Everyone is busy QA testing the Fast Flirting Alpha version. IE7 on XP doesn’t handle Ajax as well as Firefox but we are working out ways to improve performance considering the large market share IE7 has.
Tags: air laptop, apple, iMac, iTV, sonos
February 8, 2008 at 12:36 pm
You comment about programming concerning the iMac raised my interest. If you’re talking about IT programming you might want to look at this article:
http://www.macworld.com/article/132003/2008/02/xcode.html
As to Apple buying Sonos, you’re missing a very important aspect of how Apple builds new products. All of the OS software is related. They all use libraries and integrate services with each other. The OS itself is about to take full position in all but the smallest iPods. Apple doesn’t want to buy technologies that it cannot use. Small innovative programmer shops with Unix and open technologies are useful. Realized products for PCs are of no value.
February 8, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Please God, No! Apple shouldn’t buy Soros. They may make a fine product but the market is too niche even for Apple. BTW, Parallels and WinXP on MacOS X is a much better PC than physical ones (clean install veryyyy easy). And imagine what happens when the entire office discovers they’re inner creative if they all get iMacs. Hope you’re ready…
February 8, 2008 at 2:28 pm
What about programming on Apple? Most programmers i know wouldn’t dare even think about giving up either their Linux or Windows PCs for their main programming machine.
-Adrian
February 9, 2008 at 12:47 am
I don’t think purchasing the Sonos has makes much sense unless their patent portfolio is really strong.
Apple already has most of the pieces implemented. The iPod Touch and iPhone would make vastly better controllers than the clunky Sonos offering. And Apple already built the HiFi and AirPort Express so they know how to implement the core technologies in the Zone Players. Plus they have AirTunes.
Why not implement airtunes control (and AppleTV control) into the iPhone and touch? And then sell an Airport express with integrated digital amp?