But the iPod phenomenon didn’t happen overnight, people forget.  The scrutiny every new Apple product arouses seems to ignore that.  The iPhone?  Skeptics say it’s too futuristic, too expensive, won’t have the same mass appeal as the iPod, and the space has too many well-heeled, deep-pocketed competitors.  AppleTV?  It cuts out too many consumers with the HDTV limitation, it’s unnecessary, and again, too many competitors with too much expertise in the field. 

Whatever.

And I’m no Apple junky, either.  I own an iPod and nothing else.  But Apple has already taught everyone a lesson it seems poised to teach again: Good timing with consumer products has more to do with well-timed anticipation than anything else.  In other words the timing should fall just before something erupts.

The iPod was introduced just before everyone was willing to make a $300 portable music player mandatory as a mattress.  Is the iPhone coming around just before high-end, all-in-one cell phones explode?  Is AppleTV happening just prior to large scale PC-to-TV conversion?  History says the odds are good, though some may argue the iPhone is a tad late.  The jury’s still out.

But anticipating a trend doesn’t mean starting one, either.  Apple didn’t invent the portable music device, they won’t be the first to launch a high-end, all-encompassing cell phone, and the basic premise of AppleTV isn’t groundbreaking.  Apple is the weatherman who predicts it’s going to rain when the black clouds have already started rolling in.  But the way that weatherman beats competitors is with a better looking show.  And nobody beats Apple’s show.

So will AppleTV become the name of the PC-to-TV concept?  Maybe.  After all, what are people calling PC-to-TV?  Nothing succinct and catchy enough, at the moment.  And the criticism about the HDTV limitation is immature.  Apple’s right: HDTV is the future; a future, by the way, that is coming on faster than people think.

And the iPhone?  That one seems more difficult.  The cell phone industry is perhaps too established and its evolution is perhaps too fast for one device to rename the whole damn thing. But don’t put it past them, either.  I don’t think people would’ve guessed the name iPod would become a word 5 years ago.  Good anticipation predicts that sort of thing.