layout: post title: "Hints for Apple: Tablet coming, please give us iPhoto for Windows" created: 1069939140 categories:

• Mac
• Multimedia PC
• Wireless, Cellular, and Mobile

I love it when the Apple rumour mill starts whirring! Cringely figures that the Apple Tablet will be the link between your PC and the TV, using a pre-standard version of <acronym title="Ultra-Wide Band">UWB</acronym> -- a very high speed Personal Area Network (PAN) wireless spec that will be capable of streaming video.

Next up, BusinessWeek Online pleads with Jobs to come out with a version of iPhoto for Windows.

Read on for some article quotes and my take.

So Cringely figures that the tablet should have digital hub applications as their killer app to drive sales beyond just the "comfortable" market of graphics professionals.

The tablet PC killer app for the mass market is functioning as a digital hub, a general concept both Apple and Microsoft have been pushing for a couple years. It's the idea that your computer ought to control your TV and your stereo and your VCR. The only problem has been that there isn't a good way to link these things all together, and even if we do, that digital hub isn't anywhere near your TV, at least not yet.

I just don't see it. A dedicated multimedia PC or home server driving the TV through a 10ft interface seems much better than a tablet -- the tablet can be just another client. His thoughts on UWB and Apple are interesting to speculate about, though.

Just like everyone loves iTunes and the iPod, it seems like everyone loves iPhoto, too. BusinessWeek figures there's a fair bit of money in it for Apple:

So how big a market could this create for Apple? That's hard to tell. If Apple could convince even 3% of all digital-camera buyers to purchase iPhoto software next year -- say, for $30 -- then it would grab revenues of $45 million. That could conceivably climb to $100 million or more within a few years if Apple manages to merely maintain that market share.

With the only real contender against iPhoto that I've seen being the Adobe Photoshop Album, this could definitely work.

The article also covers some of the potential downsides of releasing more programs for Windows -- such as a decrease in demand for Mac hardware -- but the fact that all these programs come bundled for "free" with every Mac means that sales won't be negatively affected. And perhaps, as Windows users see more of the cool apps on the Mac side, there might be more switchers.