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“He fixed an old design blunder by popping buttons back onto the iPod Shuffle,” Pullen writes. “He completely revamped the Nano, not only making it smaller but more functional. He finally introduced an iPod Touch that’s a true iPhone without the phone, helping a crippled product live up to its full potential. He also pulled an entire social network out of thin air, with 160 million built-in users all raring and ready to LOL.”
“To be sure, it was an amazing display of Apple’s hardware and software engineering might,” Pullen writes. “But in his last at-bat, with the announcement of a revamped Apple TV, Jobs swung for the fences again, this time falling short.”
Pullen writes, “It’s possible, notes Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, that future updates to iOS could extend the new Airplay features to apps such as MLB At Bat, allowing iPads and iPhones to stream video other than iTunes media through Apple TV onto HDTVs. But there’s a good reason those iDevices go blank when Airplay starts slinging their movies up onto a connected television: latency. It doesn’t matter how smart Apple programmers are or how good your wireless connection is — there will be a delay between what’s on your handheld and what’s showing on your big screen, which means this isn’t a suitable workaround for playing Tap Tap Revenge at a mind-blowing 52 inches.”
MacDailyNews Take: Just as Apple TV’s USB port did, the new Apple TV’s micro USB (which Apple reserves for “service and support”) is intriguing. Could Apple have plans for it be used for something beyond “service and support” in the future? The thing does run iOS and it is powered by an A4 chip…
Pullen writes, “Without a hard drive, Apple TV is nothing more than a rental box, which is exactly what Rokus, TiVos, Vudus, and many other console devices already are… Without storage capacity and the ability to add functionality — either through Apple or by other means — the new Apple TV is likely to fall short, too. Yet at $99, it may yet be a hit. But hits are only enough to keep you in the game.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Surely Apple thought about the value of allowing, say, a weather app or the MLB app or umpteen other apps to run on Apple TV, right? It’s so glaringly obvious that there must be something else that we’re not seeing or haven’t considered yet. Anyone have any ideas?
The one missing feature on the device is Facetime integration. Apple has missed out on a powerful selling point. To be able to plug a view cam into ATV to make FT calls and to recieve them would in my view made the device special .Still maybe Airplay will allow this function. Having just a media rental function for TV and Movies is a turn off for myself , I have a Mac mini connected to my TV and Frontrow gives a simple interface for access to my music and films although an expensive option if only used for this function.
Comcast started constricting their pipe in July. Streaming could be a dead horse if cable companies continue to do that.
It’s NOT just a rental box; it’s a streaming box. I currently stream all of my content from a desktop to my 80GB ATV. That way I don’t have to deal with the hassle of syncing and managing drive capacity. Before the new ATV, you had to copy all of your photos – no longer. The *only* thing missing fromIt’s NOT just a rental box; it’s a streaming box. I currently stream all of my content from a desktop to my 80GB ATV. That way I don’t have to deal with the hassle of syncing and managing drive capacity. Before the new ATV, you had to copy all of your photos – no longer. The *only* thing missing from the new device is a drive. People calling this a Roku obviously don’t own a current device. People calling this a Roku are totally missing the value of the device.
The lack of scrolling on the MDN iphone client leads to some very retarded looking posts. Apologies for the confusion.
miss…the bottom line is that tv shows are easily downloadable for free…why would I buy extra hardware and pay $119 CAN for a device I don’t need and then pay 99 cents per epsiode for stuf I am now getting for free and playing from my iMac to my tv…
I’m amazed at all the people who think the Apple TV is a flop because because you can only rent and stream content. The whole worldwide cinema theater distribution system works very well where people pay $10 or so to view a movie, not own a copy of it. Apple is providing a huge amount of content in a very easy to use low cost device– success will depend on how well Apple explains the product through advertising.
Apple TV = Trojan Horse into our luving rooms.
Apple HAS to have some upcoming “reasons and features” planned for this $99 device, other than what’s been announced.
“Stay Tuned!”
I’m an AAPL share holder.
It doesn’t matter what Apple announces. I just buy one to keep the share price going up.
Witness: under my Pioneer Plasma screen there is a PS3, an Apple mini, a 1st Gen TV, a Sky HD box and a Yamaha Receiver/Amp. So now what do I do with the new TV?
Hell! I’ve just proved I’m a fanboy.
Please, everyone. Do the same as I’ve done and keep buying the goodies.
Yawn. I don’t even have a TV. It’s nothing more than a hardware streaming video player old people use.
Computers (that includes the ipad, by virtue of being able to receive input and do computations with it) and the Internet are the future.
The only thing TVs are good for, are watching “movies” in the “living room”. But if you want to do that, you might as well get for 1/4th of the price a high definition project, which will be casting an 100”+ image on the wall, whose video source is going to be, once again, a computer.
*projector
@DOc
“I prefer my (2) old Apple TVs. I prefer to buy and/or convert my DVDs’ movies and shows to watch them multiple times.”
You can do that with the new Apple TV as well, just buy it on your iTunes application. The new TV will stream any movie or TV show you have on iTunes.
The ability to stream my iTunes music to my big stereo speakers in the living room for $99 is a BIG plus.
—— I almost forgot,
hit!
I agree Dave. Thought it was a different design.
I’ve got plenty of Internet b-width 30/3. But what about the 1.5/3mb tops DSL folks. Is that enough for ENJOYABLE viewing. Anyone know what they recommend.
WoW…
This John Patrick Pullenis completely missing the point with the new Apple TV. Did he pay any attention at all during the keynote?
I’ve bought multiple $99 Airport Express units to stream audio. The AppleTV is a $99 device to stream video! Who wouldn’t want that?
HIT
because I just ordered one — even tho I don’t even care much for television. As a lifelong student of appropriate design I want to study this thing in the wild. I will test it on my wife who IS totally into television
— I already learned why iPad was a HIT after I found that I could not pry it out of my wife’s hands.
My major beef, apart from the low-res HD, is that I don’t like renting TV-shows, and I think many people agree. I watch my favorite TV shows over and over. I often keep it turned on in the background while cleaning or even working. Apple can still do this by allowing the customer to buy the shows, but keeping them stored on their servers. So each time the customer wants to look at something he or she just logs in to their account and streams the show to the Apple TV.
But this is typical or Apple’s business model. Allow me to make a sexual simile. Apple’s first offering when launching a new product is often designed according to their ideal: over priced, under specced, crippling software etc. It’s the equivalent of asking the customer to take it up the ass. Only hardcore fans and dumb people will agree to this.
When they don’t sell as many products as they want they release a slightly better version, maybe with larger storage and lower price. ”A while back we released a revolutionary product and we asked our customers if they would take it up the ass”, Steve Jobs will say. ”A lot of people did and that was great. But a lot of people said to us: ’We’re not gonna take it up the ass’ and we listened to that. Therefore we are today announcing a better product at a lower price, and we want to ask you: will you take it in the mouth?”. This is where the product starts to become kind of useful and attract a lot of people who are interested in technology.
Finally, when they have sold a lot of products with high margins and made a lot of money, they will lower the price and improve the specs even more. This is when it becomes a mainstream product and buying it is like taking it missionary style. Everybody does it.
Then there are people who wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. I’m not one of those. I usually take it in the mouth.