What do I mean by appliance?
People have asked me this question...I thought it was completely clear, now I know it's not, so I'll explain.
An appliance, is like a TV set, a DVD player, an MP3 player, a microwave oven etc. It's a piece of hardware, designed for a specific purpose.
Let's take for instance Tivo, one of the leaders in tv on demand. In short, Tivo is a cute box (or appliance) that you connect to your TV set, subscribe to their service, and you have TV on demand, DVR, listings, and many other features.
These appliances start out as an idea, then software, and then packaging. The idea is clear in Tivo's case. For software, they use Linux and then, their cute black box with pretty logo. So, they have a piece of software, running in a widely used operating system, inside a marketing-friendly box. That's what I mean by an appliance.
To put it in more simplistic terms, let's explore the building blocks of an appliance such as Tivo.
Exhibit A: Myth TV
Myth TV is a software solution, that "wraps" the necessary functionalities to use your computer as a "media center". With Myth TV you can have tv shows, music, photos, watch dvd's, rip dvd's, download torrents, etc. Myth TV is freely available, and you can download it and use it yourself.
Now, let's add some business sense to the equation. We say "Neat, this is a great product, but the user needs to install Linux on his/her computer...that's not gonna happen...unless, we can find a way to help them with the task". If we can find a cost effective way of putting together a computer with all the software (Linux and Myth TV) pre-installed, people may be willing to buy it....after all, that's what Tivo is doing...they just don't tell you that they run Linux because that's a "need to know"...and users don't need to know.
Great, let's look for a packaging for our product. MicroATX motherboards are the smallest I know of that can run Intel/AMD processors, so we look around to see what we find, and we find this:
Click for larger image
This case is excellent for our purpose, since it even has card readers, so we can feed memory cards directly from digital cameras into the "media center".
We make some custom modifications to the software...to make it more appealing..and to make it ours...branding if you will, and the end result, a packaged product... An Appliance, named Hannibal.
An appliance, is like a TV set, a DVD player, an MP3 player, a microwave oven etc. It's a piece of hardware, designed for a specific purpose.
Let's take for instance Tivo, one of the leaders in tv on demand. In short, Tivo is a cute box (or appliance) that you connect to your TV set, subscribe to their service, and you have TV on demand, DVR, listings, and many other features.
These appliances start out as an idea, then software, and then packaging. The idea is clear in Tivo's case. For software, they use Linux and then, their cute black box with pretty logo. So, they have a piece of software, running in a widely used operating system, inside a marketing-friendly box. That's what I mean by an appliance.
To put it in more simplistic terms, let's explore the building blocks of an appliance such as Tivo.
Exhibit A: Myth TV
Myth TV is a software solution, that "wraps" the necessary functionalities to use your computer as a "media center". With Myth TV you can have tv shows, music, photos, watch dvd's, rip dvd's, download torrents, etc. Myth TV is freely available, and you can download it and use it yourself.
Now, let's add some business sense to the equation. We say "Neat, this is a great product, but the user needs to install Linux on his/her computer...that's not gonna happen...unless, we can find a way to help them with the task". If we can find a cost effective way of putting together a computer with all the software (Linux and Myth TV) pre-installed, people may be willing to buy it....after all, that's what Tivo is doing...they just don't tell you that they run Linux because that's a "need to know"...and users don't need to know.
Great, let's look for a packaging for our product. MicroATX motherboards are the smallest I know of that can run Intel/AMD processors, so we look around to see what we find, and we find this:
Click for larger image
This case is excellent for our purpose, since it even has card readers, so we can feed memory cards directly from digital cameras into the "media center".
We make some custom modifications to the software...to make it more appealing..and to make it ours...branding if you will, and the end result, a packaged product... An Appliance, named Hannibal.
posted by Alco at
Saturday, December 09, 2006
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