TripEnglish:

elephant:

how did they communicate the vision with out products ?

It was actually very elaborate! They play acted "a day in the life of a B&O owner" with narration and a real stage. They included existing products, new products, and future products, but they spoke conceptually about how things fit together, how media moves from device to device, room to room, etc. and the expectations of the overall interface.

excellent !

something better than a powerpoint slide then ! something that required serious thinking - a good sign

I wish they would capture that in their virtual world show room ... but then some cheeky buggers would probably steal their ideas and then get the march on them

TripEnglish:

There are a few things that are better left out of the discussion at this point, but in the coming few years we are going to be rolling out the sort of eco-system that many here have been looking for. I don't know if I've mentioned it elsewhere, but one of the other dealers put it very concisely: "This is the first time in years that the products are actually as cool as they look." 

I don't recall you saying that before ... a nice quote.

I said a week or so ago that we are at an inflection point in the industry that will require some tough calls by B&O seeing as their R&D budget is limited

I suspect both the fruit company and B&O use focus groups to seek to understand how people want to live ... but what if there are various camps/tribes of users ?  I suspect there is a group that is comfortable with dealing with the idiosyncratic behaviour of technology (e.g. "look at a list of TV shows that are file names like 'The_Seven_Ages_of_Britain.s01e03.mkv") whereas others want a bookshelf of DVD covers than they can dip into.  And perhaps there are other categories/classes of users.

I suspect B&O will strive for making it magical and intuitive with the underlying technology (the geekiness) invisible.  At the same time I hope they embrace some degree of openness so that as much of our content can be consumed by the B&O ecosystem.