Why must I keep being proved correct?

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Steve Jobs and his iPhone successfully stole the limelight from the Consumer Electronics Show this week, which meant the attendance of a former Apple chief in Las Vegas went almost unnoticed.

John Sculley, whose ten-year reign at Apple began when Steve Jobs, then chairman, recruited him in 1983, took part in a debate with Bob Metcalfe, the co-inventor of Ethernet, on the future of home automation – and whether Apple would enter this market.

Mr Metcalfe is now chairman of Ember, a home automation player which sponsored the debate along with one of its customers Control4. He spoke of a quintuple play in the home – the triple play that has been coined for service operators offering TV, telephone and internet service, and then mobility services and home automation being added to the mix.

The killer application that could kick-start home automation would be energy management, he predicted, with new-home builders the most likely to propagate this.

Mr Sculley, who is currently chairman of digital identity company IdenTrust, professed to knowing little about the subject and emphasised it had to be made simple for the consumer.

“I’m still intimidated when I walk into a room and there are three or four remote controls and I have to use two of them and I don’t know which two,” he said.

He also said he had no idea whether Apple would attempt or be successful in home automation, but Apple’s techniques could be applicable in making the technology successful.

“The iPod is not sold as technology, there’s really no mention of it, it’s sold as you would sell fashion – it’s about style, it’s about fit and finish. The winners [in home automation] will be those who start with the user experience and not the technology.”

by Chris Nuttall for the Financial Times

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