Maybe the Mobile Me.. literally but not my living room. I have an iphone and an ipod.... all portable and not use for the living room obviously... My living room has a Wii, Direct TV, DVR, DVD, PS3 and my tv is a Sony... So I guess Sony has my living room.

From what I understand.

An OS gives a GUI to allow easier access to the hardware that OS is responsible for.

Apps are the tools used to actually run procedures within the OS, I have some Cisco under my belt so I'm familiar with concept. I do have a history in application design also but it's not something I pursued. However I've lived for quite some time within the technology industry to know the certain characteristics found within specific professions.

That's really why I wanted to avoid that on going explanation. The guys who like are technology gurus wont sit for anything that they understand that isn't being used how they understand it. Logical - egomaniacs, usually anyway, sometimes you just meet up with nerds who are too busy with their own findings to take the time to understand ideals.

If you want to have an expansive conversation about technology Plaupis, your not going to find one here, anything you do find here will be rational but you will not want to - as rational as you are yourself. Like you find technology fun and your profession is within that field, I find humans fun and my profession is within that field. I find value to be much higher in how a person reacts over what the object was intended to be. That is mainly where I stood through the entire thread and also why I kept saying I'm not debating.

Home as an OS? I just had a picture of it in my head and how it would work, I said before that I have a general understanding of what an operating systems functions are: XMB would probably be layer 2 while Home is layer 1, the entire OS would be running online, and XMB would be a fast way to get to what you wanted to get to. That's what I figured my friend was talking about when he mentioned the idea.

I coincidentally ran into an article on the same subject not even a month later and then heard it mentioned by an old friend who works within a pretty well-sized investment firm in Britain, I figured that they must of cought some internal buzz but this was almost a year ago.

That's my refference for why I would claim Home could become a 'virtual' OS.

By the way now that I think about it, your totally correct... it's been a while since I worked with computers in that capacity and I do recall the term virtual being used for such things as mounting drives. Which makes sense also, but that's clearly not how I'm using it.

that is wrong.

the year didn't start in june 29th 2007.

it sold 5.5 but thats split between 2007-2008 Q1 & Q2

that means their market share its LESS than 0.5% worlwide.

nokia n95, LG shine and viewty, have outsold it by alot

Actually, I'm not really a tech guru myself, and you're perhaps mistakenly thinking I am. My profession is not really within the technology field, I find both technology and humans fun and that's why I decided to pursue a profession that is there inbetween. That said, when I'm talking with somebody, I like to know that we're actually talking about the same thing, and when certain things have a well-defined and widely used meaning, it's the easy way to stick to those meanings and not redefine words and/or concepts.

As for virtual, the difficulty is that within this context it could refer to virtual reality and virtual worlds, but when used with virtual OS, the context is different. Home as an operating system for a virtual world? That makes some sense, but then the operating system would not mean the same as traditionally. There's too much virtual stuff going on to really come to grasps here... Home OS would run on top of some other OS, making it virtualized, and Home OS would be the OS of a virtual world... I admit it, I'm not making sense of that much virtual things.

What would the Home OS actually do? Do you happen to have a link to the article you mentioned, I'd be interested to read it?

I seem to recall a statement from Apple from before iPhone was launched, something along the lines of them striving for a 1% market share. Anybody else recall this?

This is a nearly worthless thread but that information is really interesting.  Would you please quote your sources?

Whoa. I find that information highly suspect. In the past, I know Apple was making huge profits on iPod but not the iTunes Store. I doubt that has changed.

As for the iPhone, it was calculated at launch they were making ~$1000-1500 from each sale once their cut from AT&T was added in (now their contract is done differently). I can't remember the exact number but it was obnoxiously high.

Sorry, but I call BS on that. Apple can't be turning the profits they do and sell their iPods/iPhones at a loss, especially when it contradicts things I have read in the past.

I don't even recall the name of the article, I just remember kind of remember the general point.

I'm actually much more interested in news from Nintendo on most ends so you'll have to forgive me for not remembering it at all. I could never have imagined such a non-issue becoming what it is now.

I believe the article was on Kotaku at that time I read their news often enough for it to be theirs but I'm not certain, scrounging around in archives isn't fun stuff.

I'm not saying your a tech guru I'm saying that persona is what is attracted to posts like this.

Of course you can't actually redefine it... just take a step back to communication 101, words are meaningless but language is rule governed.

I broke the rule by using Virtual OS to represent a app that runs like a GUI in virtual space and uses XMB as a quick select guide menu.

Context is the rule that governs language and in this case I used Virtual to describe software, of course you can have a virtual drive but Home would be a GUI with indepth functions and XMB would be a quick selection menu.. lets mix it with Ribbon and XMB would be amazing in that aspect. (Ribbons content changes based on the users enviornment.)

But now were talking about layers and at what point are we talking about what is seen and what doesn't need to be seen. It's rare that the user will need to go into the registery of any OS but in Windows that is accessible. Registeries are the GUI back bone of every live function that computer makes. If Home gives all of this functionality then it's layer 1, XMB would be for simple issues. That's how I pictured it after the forementioned experiences.

This is why I could say XMB was easier to use than 'Carbon', as I've used them both, and should XMB make the move to being layer 2 of an OS then I would believe it very easy to navigate.

I'm just amazed at how this string of responses has managed to stay on topic.

Either way these three sources of mine could be wrong but if they are right, Apple will have a lot of competition for living room dominance.

They make a profit in how they market themselves and should they continue to push themselves toward making their products look like the 'cool thing' then they will be challenging the incumbents for the core demographic. If they should move into the console entertainment business, they would end up competing with Nintendo or going after an undone market.

I would wonder if the usual Core market or traditional business model rakes in around 29 million users Since August 2006 while the new market has brought in 30 million, and thats on consoles alone, any more competition would put way too much strain on the core market.

(If you add hand helds the numbers get much higher.)

But should Nintendo achieve 50% market share by the end of this year it would mean the acceptance rate has increased in the new business model. So I'm sure Apple would gun for that...

Now I think I'm finally beginning to understand you. So, in this vision of Home OS + XMB, the XMB would be actually more akin to the Dock in OS X or the Start menu in Windows, in that it would contain the most frequently used and most important functions/apps/whatever. It would be a kind of shortcut menu, with perhaps context dependent elements in it. Am I in the ballpark here? If I am, that doesn't sound bad at all.

And for other things, the 3D world would have the controls and interactions built-in.

I myself am more of a fan of attaching the controls direct to the element/context they belong to, but the Ribbon style has support and obviously MS did a huge amount of user testing while developing it. Anyway, a 3D world would not function very well with the buttons and menus laid out on the sides of the screen, which is the traditional GUI pattern, I suspect a better way would be to have the controls on the items, or directly around them. Although, without a mouse or some other pointer, I don't know how well it would work... Anyway, if anybody is interested, what I mean can be seen in a free program called CMapTools.

Your first paragraph was dead on, which is why I think it would be cool if Home or Sony to clarify did make an OS, for their hardware, if Sony continues their style of driving the bleeding edge. (Their new style) then Home must be it, but the 3d world and how that would work with the simple but indepth functions of a windowed OS would have too many vents before you could get anything done. That's when I read the article where a developer (3rd party) noted that Home litterally had sub parts to it, similar to the structure of a drop tree style used into directories on Windows., that's when the online functions hit me, that the foreseen Home may use some manner of search just like on the internet today, to get to each branch. But my main thing was that XMB would keep it's current simplicity, meaning I would buy that OS, which is why I said I'm viewing it like a consumer. Having something else search for you is much faster than clicking on serveral layers or branches or icons.

Beyond that what this Home could bring to the plate that Windows hasn't brough yet.. the possibilities resemble the new possibilities developers who embraced the Wiimote faced. Specially now with the 1:1.

As for the pointer, I'd figure they are gunning for Eye toy to work as a pointer, but that's just me speculating now and nothing else, I have seen software using it as a pointer in action... it's not user friendly in my opinion though.