Apple has lost the opportunity with iTunes to conquer the digital living room

Apple’s iTunes media player and media store have been a huge success so far. In this article I will explain how the opportunity to be the best has been missed. The key issue I have with media players in the living room is that I don’t think Media Center software should be the primary platform for playing music, videos, or photos. I strongly believe that the desktop should be the launching pad for whatever media you want to play. The living room is the center of the house and people probably spend most of their time at home there when they are awake.

Companies that develop and provide computers and media center software undermine the activities that occur in the living room. I’ll give you an example to illustrate my point. Let’s see listening to music as an activity in the living room. When you play your music with the brilliant media center software, it is assumed that while listening all you want to do is sit back and stare at the album art or viewer playing on television. What if you want to browse internet sites or check your email while listening to music? For most media centers this is not possible. Most media center software assumes that you don’t want to do anything else with your computer while listening to music.

This is where I think the desktop has the most potential to become the media center platform for the living room. Since I buy most of my music from iTunes, it is an obvious choice to use as a media player in the living room. Apple has focused a lot on iTunes as a media player and online media store. The key problem I have with iTunes is that it was not designed to be viewed from a television in a living room. It is not optimized to be seen from any distance of more than one meter. The size of the text, even in large size, is simply too small. The font size from the iTunes store is ridiculously small for use with TV.

I guess Apple’s strategy has been to bring Apple TV as a media extender into the living room. However, due to the reasons mentioned earlier in this post, I don’t think it’s wise to assume that people only listen to music and watch movies, online videos, and photos in their living rooms. Perhaps this problem can be solved by developing an additional plugin for iTunes that could act as an interface for TV addicts. If you know of any plugins or similar software please let me know in the comment section.

As an example, take a look at what YouTube is doing. In addition to its normal web user interface, they have introduced YouTube XL, which is designed to be used on a large TV in the living room. This is what I think Apple should do as well. They already have a large enough user base, so all they need is to design an XL version of iTunes as a plug-in, for example, for their Mac Mini computer. Or to take things even further, why not develop a completely new user interface on top of Mac OS specifically designed for home theater computers? I understand that it could be a risky move as most have not yet brought their computer into the living room.

So in summary, I imagine that the future media center will act as a launch pad on the desktop for different applications that are optimized for a large TV. As with any converged device (eg mobile phones), they may not excel in all areas, but they have compromised functionality. If you want to have a good camera, buy yourself a camera. If you want to buy a good portable music player, buy an iPod. Mobile phones can do all these activities, but the camera would not be the best or the music playback function. The same applies to media center software, they can do all the tasks but they don’t excel in any particular area.