Check it:
This is what I was greeted with when I followed links on Apple's website to their knowlegebase. I guess they must be on to my scheme to free the minds of deluded computer users from the grip of Steve.
Seeing I'm on a Mac-bagging train of thought, can I just sing the unpraises of Apple's iTV? While I entirely agree with bringing the computer to the living room TV, there are so many products out there that do such a better job of the small feature set this product is set to provide, and they do it without locking you into ONLY being able to use iTunes and ONLY letting you play content bought from the iTunes store. Not to mention they offer you a much, much broader feature set. Steve himself calles it an "iTunes player" in the keynote, and basically that's ALL it does. Plays stuff shared in your iTunes library on your TV.
Now, I've done a little bit of talking to people, and it seems to me that the number one problem that needs solving in the living room is not how to get your iTunes library onto your TV, but how to cut down on the number of devices, and therefore remotes, that you have to deal with. So wouldn't it be sensible to make a box that can do everything via just one remote? Not only that, but if that one remote had like a stupidly limited number of buttons on it, it would even fit in with Apple's "we make stuff for idiots" mentatlity that seems to permiate all their products.
But see, they won't compete there - because Windows Media Center already does the whole all-in-one thing, and does it INCREADIBLY well. It's just silly the way Apple go about things. Compete, Apple. Make a media center that does everything Windows MCE does, but better. I dare you. But they won't... the pansies. :P
3 comments:
Apple's iTV is an unreleased product. Of course Steve Jobs' focus is going to be on its role as an iTunes audiovisual streamer, but that doesn't mean that ONLY content from iTunes will be capable of streaming to it. Take the Airport Express, which is Apple's current product for streaming Audio wirelessly. Sure, Apple's documentation only mentioned iTunes as the source, but that doesn't mean there aren't a heap of products like Airfoil (http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/) that let you stream ANY audio to it. And so, I predict, it will be with iTV. The iTV has a built in HDD, so you'll be able to load it up with content. I predict that you'll be able to dump any content on there if you want, including DivX. I want one, even though the missing feature I was hoping for was DVR capability through a built-in tuner.
Oh, and the correct URL for Apple's knowledgebase articles is http://www.apple.com/support/
While the ability to make it non-exclusively an "iTunes player" may be useful, that isn't really my point. My point is more that a "digital video file player" is a nice idea, but making a box that JUST does that seems crazy. I don't know about most people, but my TV has 3 inputs, and they're all taken. Why not chuck in a DVD drive also (at a manufacturing cost of like $2.15) and remove the need for a seperate DVD player? I think all in one is the way people should be headed, and promoting a device for playing such an exclusive subset of media seems crazy to me. But, like you, my boss has already said he wants one and regardless of what it does or doesn't do, all the Mac users will buy it, and so those sales will be used to demonstrate the success of Apple's unique concept, which of course is just a cut-down version of something that's been around since before 2003. Awesome.
You know, I wasn't nearly so bitter about Macs before I started working in a predominantly Mac environment... it gets to you. *shudder*
rofl (at the last paragraph of your comment)
Post a Comment