There is no denying Apple has a history of making great and innovative products. Apple has even shown they are capable of taking a product that either has done well prior to their entry into the market (Smart Phone) or one that has struggled to find a place (the tablet) and then leapfrog their competitors. But despite my penchant for buying anything Steve Jobs sells I have to say no to AppleTV.
The first iteration of AppleTV was a flop. About the only thing it was good for was linking your TV/Entertainment center to your Mac, and there were many cheaper solutions already on the market for playing your iTunes playlists on your stereo. Fast forward to Wednesday’s much anticipated announcement. Many predicted we would see a new AppleTV, and there was a collective intake of breath as we saw the famous “One More Thing” but the excitement soon faded as Steve unveiled Apple’s vision. At least at my desk.
The new version of AppleTV is smaller and there are a couple of new features, but it doesn’t do anything that isn’t already available by another manufacturer with one exception. You can push content from your iPad to your TV. Apple at least understands we want all of our devices to be connected, but they do not appear to understand much more than that. Perhaps they do not know about Roku, Boxee Box, that Youtube is testing movie rentals, or that we already get Netflix through our game consoles. And yet despite this lapse in judgment I do believe Apple has the pieces to make AppleTV a compelling product.
AppleTV needs to be based on iOS so it can bring the App Model to our TVs. For too long we have been slaves to the Cable and Satellite companies and their over priced packages. It doesn’t make sense to purchase a package of 50 channels you don’t want to get the one channel you do want. Let the content creators sell Apps or partner with websites like Hulu to publish their content. I would be much more open to buying an HBO app directly from HBO or even subscribing for $15 a month instead of paying a cable company $40 a month. Plus the App could allow you to access the content at anytime, from anywhere. Allow consumers to use the internet connection they already have to consume the content instead of paying another company $60 to $120+ for another connection to watch 3-4 shows.
I believe the future of media consumption is a la carte and the app model is the easiest way to implement that. Sure it would have been a big risk to introduce such a revolutionary concept into the world, and Apple would have no doubt made enemies. But Apple has built a company on taking bold steps and being leaders in the industry when it comes to new ways of doing the same old stuff not just followers. Of course the Cable and Satellite companies are going to fight it. They have said all along why they do not want to sell bandwidth, but in the end we as consumers want more control over our digital media.
I think Apple missed a golden opportunity to once again revolutionize a product we all have in our house, and in doing so may have just handed this product to Google. Google has already announced that their GoogleTV coming sometime this Fall will be based on Android and will indeed run Apps. Just in time to help us forget we got excited about what AppleTV could have been.
