From the wire: PC World©

" Apple Will Rule the Living Room by 2013, Forrester Say

Apple will rule the living room in five years, analysts said Thursday as they slapped down the Tarot cards to predict what the company would be up to in 2013.

"The home destination is where Apple wants to roost," said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research who co-authored a report released Thursday grandly titled "The Future of Apple Inc."

According to McQuivey and his Forrester colleague, J.P. Gownder, Apple will leverage its existing products and services -- ranging from the Mac to its retail Apple Stores to the Genius Bars in those stores -- to be one of the companies that unites home audio and video with information technology.

Among Forrester's predictions are those that bet Apple will:

Crank out a home server that "doesn't contain the word 'server.'"

Produce an all-in-one super remote -- something Forrester's dubbed "AppleSound" -- that controls everything musical in the house, including iPods , the home stereo and audio-playing computers.

Sell network-enabled digital photo frames and room-specific "clock radios" that stream images and tunes from the server.

Extend the AppleTV into Blu-ray territory, or morph it into an Apple HDTV line.

Offer in-home installation services for all this gear, using its Genius Bars as a starting point.

Revamp its Apple Stores into retail outlets that push the digital living room/digital lifestyle.

And amp up iTunes so it ties together digital content with cloud-based updates, remote management and editing.

Apple's Ambitions

We haven't fabricated anything out of fantasy," argued McQuivey. "There's nothing from 'Star Trek' here. But Apple clearly has bigger ambitions than just the Mac base, so we started thinking about the ways it could get there, and then how they could do that by going to the next level, and then the next level after that ... "