I decided to take the backseat so to speak and read some other people’s opinions before doing my write up on Macworld. Granted I had my opinion already made up, but was just curious as to what the first impression was from everybody else’s point of view. I have seen some interesting arguments and conversations taking place. Especially around the Apple TV/iTunes movie rental announcement.
But first, there were a couple of things that I was personally looking for in this years’ Macworld keynote. One was updates to the iMac, specifically around the optical drive. I was curious to see if Apple would put a Blu-Ray drive in the iMac to support High-Def discs. I was particularly hoping for this since I am planning on making an iMac purchase this year and would love to have a Blu-Ray player built into it.
The other announcement I thought would come was the 3G iPhone. I have heard some complaints from folks about the speed of the iPhone while browsing on AT&Ts non-3G network. I was interested to see if Apple would take the opportunity to fix this ASAP. Looks like we will have to wait on this one, but we have heard from AT&T that this is inevitable.
I was also hoping for High-Def content through iTunes. This is something that I have heard rumored before and I think would be really cool. Now with High-Def content I mean both audio and video. In the Audio catagory the content could be offered in Apple’s Lossless format (I still think Apple should offer this). The Video of course would be in HD resolutions (1080i/p, 720p). We did get HD content but in the form of movie rentals and not in the form of content you can own. So I kinda got what I was looking for there. =)
So now lets talk about what matters…. what was really announced at Macworld!
First on the list… Time Capsule:
I think this was a very straight forward addition to the apple lineup as Apple was missing a home NAS device from it’s products. This also fits very well with Time Machine and the MacBook Air (which I will get to in a future post). I really like the idea of eliminating the wires, have one hard drive that stores all of your data (photos, music, movies, etc.) from and backs up all of your macs in the home!
iPhone and iPod Touch updates:
This was also pretty straightforward and I think Apple found a great way to work around the lack of GPS hardware with the current iPhone. They did this using Google’s Cell Tower Triangulation technology as well as SkyHook Wireless’ WiFi Hotspot location database in tandem.
As for the iPod Touch, I feel this part of the Apple fan based was cheated. I would be very annoyed to have to pay 20 dollars for a software upgrade for additional functionality, when people buying the device for the same price I paid get the functionality for free. I don’t understand Apple’s reasoning in doing this.
Apple TV Take 2:
This is the announcement that I have read the most opinions on so far. One example , is Thomas Hawk’s great post about Apple TV here. Most folks were looking for an improvement to the device that would include DVR functionality. I don’t fault Apple for not delivering DVR as a feature. This does not make business sense at all with Apple’s product story. Apple would like users to buy content from iTunes rather than obtaining that content through other sources.
There are a couple of other points that Thomas makes in his post where he compares the Apple TV to the Xbox 360. For the record, I don’t necessarily agree with Thomas’ postion on this. First of all, the Xbox 360 is a game machine with media center functionality. It is NOT a DVR on it’s own. Apple TV is not a gaming machine (yet!?=) ) but is centered around media center like functionality. The DVR argument does not hold up when compared to xbox 360. For the Xbox 360 to get content from TV you need a media center PC with a TV Tuner card installed to record the content from OTA sources or Cable then use the extender like the Xbox 360 to stream it to your television. The Apple TV can do the same thing if you get a TV Tuner Card for your Mac such as Elgato’s Eye TV. Then Apple TV is one for one the same feature set as Xbox 360 except for the games. In fact the Apple TV one-ups the 360 as not requiring a PC to get content! You can join xbox live and get content through that service with the 360 but I don’t believe it is as vast as iTunes’ collection. (Please feel free to comment and correct me if I am wrong here)
I don’t see the DVR sticking around long. As broadband gets faster and cheaper, I can see many people just getting their content from iTunes or another Digital Download service and possibly canceling services such as Cable and Satellite TV. I for one I have thought of it already and still do from time to time. I don’t have much time for just sitting and watching what comes on TV anymore. I do read reviews from time to time if I hear about a particular show that I might be interested in. But I find myself waiting a period of time and watching the TV series once they come out on DVD. This could work great for me using iTunes as I could buy episodes as I have time to watch them. And if I use iTunes vs the DVDs I can watch the shows sooner as it takes time for TV series to make it to DVD after it airs. TV Shows appear on iTunes 24hrs after being originally aired.
One can still make the argument that they prefer cable with a DVR and I can understand that, as the content on iTunes does not include EVERYTHING that is on TV today. But I am not writing off Apple TV just yet. I can see in the future as this technology matures that iTunes could come up with monthly subscription rates for certain shows or groups of shows, and it could be used in lieu of cable or satellite TV.
All of this, and I have not even talked about the movie rental functionality that was announced. I really think Apple has made getting the content simple and with the offering of HD content they have at least got people thinking about doing this, which at this stage is goodness for Apple and iTunes.
For those photography buffs (like me) out there both Flickr and .MAC photos can be accessed straight from Apple TV! I really like this, as I can browse my photos and all my contacts photos (and did I mention my contacts’ contacts photos!) all from the comfort of my own couch and displayed on my wonderful Widescreen HD TV.
Now everything is not in place by any means here for Apple, some things I would like to see is more of a subscription based model (as mentioned above), kinda like Netflix where I can watch a certain amount of content in a given month rather than paying per download. Also, I would like to see HD content that I can own rather than rent. TV shows in HD would be great!
I for one am impressed with Apple TV so far and am seriously considering purchasing one in the future!
As Steve mentioned himself, we are only a couple weeks into 2008, there are 50 more left for Apple to innovate! I can’t wait to see what they come up with.
