Sony isnt a threat in the control of the living room. sorry to disapoint you.

This. Sony is surely relevant in the gaming market, in recent times PS3 has even been very often and for long periods the weekly best-seller home console, and Sony has also many other living room products, but it ended up not being the threat MS feared for its plans of expansion in the living room. Mostly because Sony equipped PS3 with not enough main RAM to become a viable general purpose living room - home theatre PC, sure it can be a competent entertainment centre, but lack of main RAM prevents it from invading the true general purpose PC turf MS almost considers its own private property. The irony is that while MS was so busy fighting an inexistent threat, the true threats were allowed to grow undisturbed. And Android in particular could actually help PS4 becoming the threat MS feared, but as Android is free and multiplatform, Sony would be just one of these threats, so MS couldn't be able to avert the danger fighting only one of them.

Well if it was a test, they may have waited too long to actually compete. I mean Apple TV launched back in 2007, which would have been a good time to really try and get an edge on the market. But now there are over 200 million game consoles in homes that can stream digital entertainment. Apple really needs to do something unique to stand out at this rate.

An Apple TV box with siri and app support sounds interesting. Especially if it can play some high end iOS games and is reasonably priced. We'll have to wait and see what becomes of that.

I hear the Apple Televisions will cost $1500 - $2000. If that's true, I don't believe they will be successful.

Anyhow, I don't believe Apple has been particularly strong outside of mobile devices. I just feel they haven't proven to be the powerhouse capable of crushing competition. As some believe them to be.

Keep telling yourself that.

yes i will since they arent.

^^
I'm almost sure you are talking about different things, husbo refers to gaming market, Argh to the broader living room environment, but not the totality of it, instead the favoured MS market segment of it, based on a hub joining and coordinating all the entertainment devices, and that MS wants to grow dominated by Windows, so that its biggest cash cow grow and thrive also outside of the office, home office and home computing market and avoid the risk of its market being (partially) marginalized. Sony is again very relevant in gaming, but even considering its enlarged target in the living room, it isn't the same MS is actually interested in, and the reason is very simple, Sony and MS put their living room markets on different roots: both have interest in selling SW and contents and collecting royalties from third parties, but Sony has a stronger interest than MS in selling HW and 1st party gaming and other entertainment contents and absolutely no interest in selling OS', while MS has a slightly lower interest in HW, a stronger interest than Sony in selling services and an interest in preserving and expanding Windows presence, power, profitability and relevance so strong to heavily condition everything it does.

I heard that in a gamespot article, but I don't think they ever said that in the press conference. Do you have a link?

Apple isn't a powerhouse in every category but they've done really well for themselves in almost every market. While the entire PC market has been stagnating, they've gone from less than a 5% share to well over 10%. That's pretty impressive. We all know how well they've done in the iOS market. They haven't lost money on a product in years. Their track record is nearly impeccable since 2001 (and very successful since 1998 or so).

Apple has proven time and time again that if a product is better than the competition, it will sell in high volume at a premium price. Televisions are no different. If they really stick the landing on the iTV, a $1500-2000 price point will be successful (though I think they'll come in more at $800-1500). On top of that, I'm sure they will release a stand-alone set top box in the $99-199 range for those who don't want a full-blown Apple television set.

Will they succeed? I have no idea. I don't know how revolutionary the product will be or if it will be at all. But at this point, it's foolish to bet against Apple.

You're right, chasing was a really bad word choice on my part. MS would probably be considered the front runner at this point but Google and Apple have barely begun to fight back. The next year or so will be telling.

I believe the articles saying Apple has 10% of the PC market are just looking at the US. I'm having trouble finding a world market share because those articles include iOS devices. Basically, the internet is a clusterfuck of articles boasting about Apple and not giving the information I'm actually looking for. Anyhow, MS has been promoting Windows 8 for about a year now. The release of that should boost PC sales.

You're correct. Devices like the iPod, iPhone and iPad were successful primarily because they were better than the competition. However, when those devices launched the competition wasn't very good to begin with. Now that strong competition appeared, Apple is losing market share fast in the mobile market. Hence, Apple did amazing in markets with weak competition. But they never proved they can be a powerhouse in a market that already has strong competition.

Apple's televisions aren't just going to be competing with cheaper televisions. But they also have to compete with devices that connect to the television. AppleTV needs to do more than give us access to streaming media and play some games. So I'm curious to see what Apple has up their sleeve.