People said similar things about the computer, television and many other technologies that are not commonplace in business or education. It's early, but the trends are there. Intel has their My Wifi PAN stuff, but good support for new technology like that typically doesn't materialize until there are millions of devices pushing a use for it - Airplay is going to be one of those technologies that drives this whole area to finally get cleaned up.
Maybe my recollection is different than yours but didn't many of those technologies actually come from commercial and professional applications only to be adapted to consumer use? I know the ENIAC and UNIVAC were 29 and 24 years respectively before the Altair 8800 and more than that before a
practical personal computer. And the
Ethernet, GUI with a pointing device,
laser printer,
WYSIWYG text editing, object-oriented programming, bitmap graphics and even the personal computer concept were all results of Xerox PARC looking to develop products and technologies for business applications.
That is the way things were for many years where business, research and government applications were what justified the investment in researching and developing new technologies. Then people using those technologies and products at work wanted to apply them at home and companies started seeing the potential profit in also adapting them for consumer use. As the consumer electronic market grew that changed and the potential profit started to be more in the consumer applications. That meant companies developing technologies and products specifically for the consumer market and only adapting them to professional and commercial applications if the related markets and profits justified doing so.
I think another significant change occurred when the developers of some of media technology and related products also became involved in the media content. Now they had a vested interest in developing technology and products that supported and protected their content which often included proprietary content delivery and protection methods.
The net result of all this is products and technologies that were developed for the consumer market without any consideration for or plan to adapt them to other applications. In fact, some of the related developers and manufacturers probably intentionally avoid being the next Xerox PARC or diluting their consumer brand names and thus limit the potential of their technologies and products being applied to other applications.
Creating market consumer demand is a very strong tool in creating associated markets but it can only go so far before the
practical considerations of those other applications intervene. Those considerations may be details such as
connector types or more encompassing issues such as the ability to be applied in larger scale systems and commercial environments or even the simple fact that rapid obsolescence that may be acceptable in consumer electronics is not viable for most commercial and professional applications. And I think we are getting to where those considerations becoming a factor for many new media technologies. I am encountering an increasing number of commercial and professional end users that have been through the process of trying to integrate consumer technologies and experienced the related challenges. I also think that
HDMI/DisplayPort/Thunderbolt and HDCP woke the professional and commercial AV industry up to the fact that things have changed and they can no longer be purely reactive to what goes on in consumer technology.
So I'm not sure that some consumer technologies will have the impact on professional/commercial applications that some believe. In fact I'm actually seeing a
bit of a backlash from both professionals and end users against trying to integrate some consumer technologies and products into markets and applications for which they were not intended.
