If a consumer were looking to play music from his iTunes library on his laptop or desktop, to the speaker system attached to his home theatre setup, what other options exist besides the AppleTV?
This is not a joke. I really would like to know.....
perhaps if they lower pricing of shows and movies. I can find seasons of shows on ebay on dvd for less then i would pay on iTunes and then i can dump the sets on ebay or amazon after i'm done and save even more.
If they made apple tv a media entertainment center it would take off. Throw in cable card, tru2way, DLNA, browser and other features like the iphone apps and you have a winner.
How about porting that kick ass visualizer from os x, i'd rather see that on my screen then the boring album art.
What Apple needs for Apple TV is a distribution deal that will allow iTunes to provide a better service than cable currently does. Once they have that, Apple TV becomes very attractive as is. You would buy Apple TV just like you buy a digital cable box now. To get that deal though, Apple has keep Apple TV low profile. Content providers are attached to cable, but they are also greedy. If Apple can convince them that a better iTunes deal will bring them more customers outside of the living room they might go for it. That is precisely why Apple is using the iPad to negotiate 99 cent episodes instead of an improved Apple TV. Once Apple gets the deal they need, they can bring out the new and improved Apple TV and make their push into the living room.
No, thank you! Apple has already caused rise of e-book prices.
I prefer the way Netflix does its business - small monthly payment and unlimited online view of movies. Or even Hulu's way.
The sheeple here will tear you down for your comment thou... they gave up their will for freedom and prefer to be obedient regardless of what they are fed.
If a consumer were looking to play music from his iTunes library on his laptop or desktop, to the speaker system attached to his home theatre setup, what other options exist besides the AppleTV?
Airport Express. I have one in the living room attached to my sound system there, and one in the bedroom too. I'm even thinking of adding one in the bathroom for shower audio.
I hate to say this but I'm very close to giving up on cable....and forgoing F1 this season....and only watch movies....Maybe I can bit.torrent HD F1 races...not sure though.
I've already given up. The only channel I realy need is SPEED channel. And I not sure about F1 races - may be will watch some in bars, may be download some.
I'd prefer to pay fixed amount of money for very limited choice of channels I choose myself
Hot damn! Tim Cook is a man who really gets it!! Great to hear that Steve Jobs' guiding philosophy emanates throughout the entire company. Love love love Apple.
"Hobby" is code for something. It's a feint. The fence sitters who listen to the blabber from the whiners that ATV "sucks" deserve to remain in the dark.
Apple is obviously testing the waters and/or making deals before making big changes. In the mean time, ATV owners know how good ATV is. I'm one of them.
This is not exactly on topic, other than it being my prediction of how Apple's focus on simplicity will play out for "multi-tasking" (aka background Applications that weren't written by Apple).
In middle-to-late March, Apple will host an event demonstrating iPhone/iPad OS 4 ? like many are predicting, it will include a dashboard-like feature. Developers will be able two write two types of dashboard widgets:
Standalone ? simple widgets such as the weather widget that is on the Mac OS/X dashboard as well as the similar one on the current iPhone.
Application Widgets ? These have a full application associated with them, but also have a widget that you can display quickly.
The "Application Widgets" will allow the user to run apps in the background. So, for example, Pandora could write a widget that is connected to their app that will keep playing music in the background and display a set of play/pause/skip controls along with the name of the song playing, etc. Apple's own iPod/Music app will have a dashboard widget for controlling it as well.
The user will probably determine which widgets to place "on the dashboard" in way that is similar to the Mac OS/X dashboard interface ? they will press something and a set of available widget icons will appear at the bottom of the screen and they will be able to drag them onto the dashboard.
Anyway, my prediction... we'll see how I do in a month
---
By the way, they will not demo the 4th generation iPhone in March, they will wait until April or May.
I like this. This is a fantastic solution for neatly circumventing the problem of how to show novice users what is running in the background ? if its a background process, it has a widget.
And the physical screen size would limit the number of widgets you could show, which limits the number of apps which could run in the background, which reduces the of battery drain.
Having App screens and search screen and a widget screen might make things a bit complicated though.
Decoupling internet service providers and television content providers is probably one of the toughest things to do, but that is exactly what we need to happen if we ever want truly great online content distribution, be it from iTunes, Hulu, Netflix or something else. Making Apple TV better than it is now is trivial when compared to getting a content deal that is competitive with cable.
Precisely. For example, Time Warner owns HBO, CNN, CW, Warner Bros., The WB, Cartoon Network among many others. They also happen to be the internet gatekeepers for many people through their Road Runner service.
Given that equation, is it any big surprise they, and their ilk, will fight tooth and nail to obfuscate the conversion to a truly internet driven media distribution environment? Until we, as you say, "decouple" content owners and internet access providers it will be guerilla warfare between the owners and the consumers.
Who wants to bet that they're developing a secret OS X that runs on ARM?
HINT: They have, it's not a secret.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kotatsu
Curious how Apple seem almost completely uninterested in the living room. Microsoft, Sony, Netflix, and others will own it for decades to come.
I think Cook's comments made it clear they're far from completely uninterested
Quote:
Originally Posted by ghostface147
It must suck to be a developer not knowing when Apple will switch processor platforms. I know if I was M$ or Adobe, I'd hate to rewrite everything again to support a new instruction set.
You might want to check your facts, but just as Apple made it easy for developers to transition from OS 9 to OS X with the classic environment and the itermediate carbon frameworks, they made it easy to transition to Intel with the Rosetta virtualisation layer and Universal Binaries (which is why they kept trying to emphasise the importance of moving everyone across to XCode before the switch.
But MS and Adobe were about the slowest two to provide OS X support and the slowest to provide universal binaries. They failed were everyone else succeeded.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Woohoo!
Apple wants to sell content, media etc. They want iron clad DRM control.
Which is why DRM is optional on iBooks (at the publishers discretion) and Apple lobbied the Music industry for years to drop DRM. Even though Apple told them before it all started that DRM wouldn't work.
What Apple needs for Apple TV is a distribution deal that will allow iTunes to provide a better service than cable currently does. Once they have that, Apple TV becomes very attractive as is. You would buy Apple TV just like you buy a digital cable box now. To get that deal though, Apple has keep Apple TV low profile. Content providers are attached to cable, but they are also greedy. If Apple can convince them that a better iTunes deal will bring them more customers outside of the living room they might go for it. That is precisely why Apple is using the iPad to negotiate 99 cent episodes instead of an improved Apple TV. Once Apple gets the deal they need, they can bring out the new and improved Apple TV and make their push into the living room.
If that happens, I don't see what the point is. Essentially Apple becomes another version of a cable company. Instead of the cable company's box, you'll have AppleTV instead. All that happens is you switch from one overlord to another. Not exactly a revolution.
Personally, I'd rather stick with cable. At least with that I can buy a CableCard compatible box of my choosing (like the TiVo I already own). At least I'll have some level of choice, which is something Apple will never provide. The TiVo provides the same functionality as an AppleTV (some not as pretty as Apple's solution) and exceeds it in many other areas. And unlike Apple, TiVo seems dedicated to actually improving their product.
And I kind of doubt 99 cent episodes are going to be the latest shows. Nor will it be HD content, which kills the concept of home viewing via AppleTV. Likely catalog stuff ($0.99 for episodes of Knight Rider, yay!!), so it's really not going to be all that compelling. Not to mention, every other download service will get moved to those same prices so it won't really be a win for Apple.
Apple TV = Hobby primarily because cracking the Oligarchy of the Broadcast media is a bit tougher than cracking the music industry. If Apple can deliver lower cost shows and broadband speeds and penetration rise they could be onto something but right now the infrastructure isn't ready. I know of so many areas where Comcast is the only "real" broadband company.
There is also another battle it has to fight, mostly against game consoles and DVRs which have building up to and in many ways exceeding the AppleTV's media extender capabilities. Since these are sold with games being a money maker and often sold with little to no profit Apple's re-entry into the living room is touch from every angle.
They certainly can't drop the living room but they'll need something killer to win it. Creating an SDK seems to be the only thing I think of that is a golden ticket.
Quote:
The A4 - I'm glad he mentioned the part about Apple custom designing their North and South Bridges. Apple back in the day used to custom make many of their ASIC chips at great expense. They now are smart enough (and have the size and shipment numbers) to go the custom route and save money in the process.
Mac OS X has plenty of life and we're now moving into a future where Cocoa has ascended to Chief of frameworks and the iPhone platform is expanding into other products. We should continue to see good scalability from this OS.
Damn right! Use that chip anywhere and everywhere you can. Home Server to AppleTV. I would expect the next iPhone to have the same ARM CPU, but underclocked.
I love it. I bought one. But, 3 things could make it perfect for me: A DVD or BlueRay drive, increased support for other video formats, and the ability to actually USE the USB port without paying a 3rd party for the privilege (to plug in my 1 TB USB drive with all my ripped DVDs).
Who wants to bet that they're developing a secret OS X that runs on ARM?
Quote:
Originally Posted by columbus
HINT: They have, it's not a secret.
You know what was meant, the full Mac OS X, not iOS X.
Quote:
Originally Posted by columbus
I think Cook's comments made it clear they're far from completely uninterested.
I think actions speak louder than words. In an industry where significant upgrades are expected annually for actively sold devices, the AppleTV hardware sold now is the same as what was originally introduced in 2007. That's three years with only a hard drive bump, and only occasional & relatively minor UI updates and feature additions.
"Hobby" is code for something. It's a feint. The fence sitters who listen to the blabber from the whiners that ATV "sucks" deserve to remain in the dark.
Apple is obviously testing the waters and/or making deals before making big changes. In the mean time, ATV owners know how good ATV is. I'm one of them.
I agree. Even mentioned the AppleTV in the way he did leads me to believe that it won't be long before we see a new one. I'd like it to be demoed next month with the assumed iPhone OS 4.0 demo, but that seems unlikely for many reasons. Maybe before the actual G4 iPhone special event. I hope it's soon because it's more interesting to me than the iPad.
The AppleTV was great when it came out and has gotten better for no extra cost but it's definitely lagging behind the PS3, 360, and TiVO, as well as the Popcorn Hour and other standalone media extenders in the mix now. Any ideas how they can make it the must have home theater appliance? Or perhaps they won't have to if they just use an ARM CPU and iPhone OS with a new BackRow to run it. It's not like it's a bad investment for them with so much cross development.
Having App screens and search screen and a widget screen might make things a bit complicated though.
I'm guessing that double-clicking the home button will bring up the dashboard — which will be combined with the search screen... so there will still be the search bar at the top of the screen, but the widgets will be below it unless they do an actual search. Basically, there will be a "search widget" permanently at the top of the dashboard.
I clearly remember Apple promoting the purpose of AppleTV as, "If it's on iTunes, it's on your TV". ATV is a "value added" accessory for iTunes content. This is why it will never have a TV tuner card. Apple doesn't intend it to deliver content from any source other than iTunes.
You might want to check your facts, but just as Apple made it easy for developers to transition from OS 9 to OS X with the classic environment and the itermediate carbon frameworks, they made it easy to transition to Intel with the Rosetta virtualisation layer and Universal Binaries (which is why they kept trying to emphasise the importance of moving everyone across to XCode before the switch.
It sounded like it was a bit of a Catch-22 at the time. They couldn't say why people should switch without giving away the secret, the impression I got was the advice to switch wasn't persuasive enough without explanation as to why.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison
The A4 - I'm glad he mentioned the part about Apple custom designing their North and South Bridges. Apple back in the day used to custom make many of their ASIC chips at great expense.
Didn't they have to do this? Did they even have access to appropriate chips that suited their needs? It wasn't like the x86 world at the time where there were half a dozen chipset makers.
No, thank you! Apple has already caused rise of e-book prices.
I prefer the way Netflix does its business - small monthly payment and unlimited online view of movies. Or even Hulu's way.
Unbelievable! You like paying as close to nothing has possible, I would have never guessed. Let me know when those services with their current pricing schemes become legitimate cable replacements. You completely missed the point of my post.
Comments
If a consumer were looking to play music from his iTunes library on his laptop or desktop, to the speaker system attached to his home theatre setup, what other options exist besides the AppleTV?
This is not a joke. I really would like to know.....
If they made apple tv a media entertainment center it would take off. Throw in cable card, tru2way, DLNA, browser and other features like the iphone apps and you have a winner.
How about porting that kick ass visualizer from os x, i'd rather see that on my screen then the boring album art.
What Apple needs for Apple TV is a distribution deal that will allow iTunes to provide a better service than cable currently does. Once they have that, Apple TV becomes very attractive as is. You would buy Apple TV just like you buy a digital cable box now. To get that deal though, Apple has keep Apple TV low profile. Content providers are attached to cable, but they are also greedy. If Apple can convince them that a better iTunes deal will bring them more customers outside of the living room they might go for it. That is precisely why Apple is using the iPad to negotiate 99 cent episodes instead of an improved Apple TV. Once Apple gets the deal they need, they can bring out the new and improved Apple TV and make their push into the living room.
No, thank you! Apple has already caused rise of e-book prices.
I prefer the way Netflix does its business - small monthly payment and unlimited online view of movies. Or even Hulu's way.
*high five
The sheeple here will tear you down for your comment thou... they gave up their will for freedom and prefer to be obedient regardless of what they are fed.
Is that you, Dick Cheney?
If a consumer were looking to play music from his iTunes library on his laptop or desktop, to the speaker system attached to his home theatre setup, what other options exist besides the AppleTV?
Airport Express. I have one in the living room attached to my sound system there, and one in the bedroom too. I'm even thinking of adding one in the bathroom for shower audio.
See http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/
I hate to say this but I'm very close to giving up on cable....and forgoing F1 this season....and only watch movies....Maybe I can bit.torrent HD F1 races...not sure though.
I've already given up. The only channel I realy need is SPEED channel. And I not sure about F1 races - may be will watch some in bars, may be download some.
I'd prefer to pay fixed amount of money for very limited choice of channels I choose myself
Apple is obviously testing the waters and/or making deals before making big changes. In the mean time, ATV owners know how good ATV is. I'm one of them.
This is not exactly on topic, other than it being my prediction of how Apple's focus on simplicity will play out for "multi-tasking" (aka background Applications that weren't written by Apple).
In middle-to-late March, Apple will host an event demonstrating iPhone/iPad OS 4 ? like many are predicting, it will include a dashboard-like feature. Developers will be able two write two types of dashboard widgets:
- Standalone ? simple widgets such as the weather widget that is on the Mac OS/X dashboard as well as the similar one on the current iPhone.
- Application Widgets ? These have a full application associated with them, but also have a widget that you can display quickly.
The "Application Widgets" will allow the user to run apps in the background. So, for example, Pandora could write a widget that is connected to their app that will keep playing music in the background and display a set of play/pause/skip controls along with the name of the song playing, etc. Apple's own iPod/Music app will have a dashboard widget for controlling it as well.The user will probably determine which widgets to place "on the dashboard" in way that is similar to the Mac OS/X dashboard interface ? they will press something and a set of available widget icons will appear at the bottom of the screen and they will be able to drag them onto the dashboard.
Anyway, my prediction... we'll see how I do in a month
---
By the way, they will not demo the 4th generation iPhone in March, they will wait until April or May.
I like this. This is a fantastic solution for neatly circumventing the problem of how to show novice users what is running in the background ? if its a background process, it has a widget.
And the physical screen size would limit the number of widgets you could show, which limits the number of apps which could run in the background, which reduces the of battery drain.
Having App screens and search screen and a widget screen might make things a bit complicated though.
Decoupling internet service providers and television content providers is probably one of the toughest things to do, but that is exactly what we need to happen if we ever want truly great online content distribution, be it from iTunes, Hulu, Netflix or something else. Making Apple TV better than it is now is trivial when compared to getting a content deal that is competitive with cable.
Precisely. For example, Time Warner owns HBO, CNN, CW, Warner Bros., The WB, Cartoon Network among many others. They also happen to be the internet gatekeepers for many people through their Road Runner service.
Given that equation, is it any big surprise they, and their ilk, will fight tooth and nail to obfuscate the conversion to a truly internet driven media distribution environment? Until we, as you say, "decouple" content owners and internet access providers it will be guerilla warfare between the owners and the consumers.
Great point.
Who wants to bet that they're developing a secret OS X that runs on ARM?
HINT: They have, it's not a secret.
Curious how Apple seem almost completely uninterested in the living room. Microsoft, Sony, Netflix, and others will own it for decades to come.
I think Cook's comments made it clear they're far from completely uninterested
It must suck to be a developer not knowing when Apple will switch processor platforms. I know if I was M$ or Adobe, I'd hate to rewrite everything again to support a new instruction set.
You might want to check your facts, but just as Apple made it easy for developers to transition from OS 9 to OS X with the classic environment and the itermediate carbon frameworks, they made it easy to transition to Intel with the Rosetta virtualisation layer and Universal Binaries (which is why they kept trying to emphasise the importance of moving everyone across to XCode before the switch.
But MS and Adobe were about the slowest two to provide OS X support and the slowest to provide universal binaries. They failed were everyone else succeeded.
Apple wants to sell content, media etc. They want iron clad DRM control.
Which is why DRM is optional on iBooks (at the publishers discretion) and Apple lobbied the Music industry for years to drop DRM. Even though Apple told them before it all started that DRM wouldn't work.
What Apple needs for Apple TV is a distribution deal that will allow iTunes to provide a better service than cable currently does. Once they have that, Apple TV becomes very attractive as is. You would buy Apple TV just like you buy a digital cable box now. To get that deal though, Apple has keep Apple TV low profile. Content providers are attached to cable, but they are also greedy. If Apple can convince them that a better iTunes deal will bring them more customers outside of the living room they might go for it. That is precisely why Apple is using the iPad to negotiate 99 cent episodes instead of an improved Apple TV. Once Apple gets the deal they need, they can bring out the new and improved Apple TV and make their push into the living room.
If that happens, I don't see what the point is. Essentially Apple becomes another version of a cable company. Instead of the cable company's box, you'll have AppleTV instead. All that happens is you switch from one overlord to another. Not exactly a revolution.
Personally, I'd rather stick with cable. At least with that I can buy a CableCard compatible box of my choosing (like the TiVo I already own). At least I'll have some level of choice, which is something Apple will never provide. The TiVo provides the same functionality as an AppleTV (some not as pretty as Apple's solution) and exceeds it in many other areas. And unlike Apple, TiVo seems dedicated to actually improving their product.
And I kind of doubt 99 cent episodes are going to be the latest shows. Nor will it be HD content, which kills the concept of home viewing via AppleTV. Likely catalog stuff ($0.99 for episodes of Knight Rider, yay!!), so it's really not going to be all that compelling. Not to mention, every other download service will get moved to those same prices so it won't really be a win for Apple.
Apple TV = Hobby primarily because cracking the Oligarchy of the Broadcast media is a bit tougher than cracking the music industry. If Apple can deliver lower cost shows and broadband speeds and penetration rise they could be onto something but right now the infrastructure isn't ready. I know of so many areas where Comcast is the only "real" broadband company.
There is also another battle it has to fight, mostly against game consoles and DVRs which have building up to and in many ways exceeding the AppleTV's media extender capabilities. Since these are sold with games being a money maker and often sold with little to no profit Apple's re-entry into the living room is touch from every angle.
They certainly can't drop the living room but they'll need something killer to win it. Creating an SDK seems to be the only thing I think of that is a golden ticket.
The A4 - I'm glad he mentioned the part about Apple custom designing their North and South Bridges. Apple back in the day used to custom make many of their ASIC chips at great expense. They now are smart enough (and have the size and shipment numbers) to go the custom route and save money in the process.
Mac OS X has plenty of life and we're now moving into a future where Cocoa has ascended to Chief of frameworks and the iPhone platform is expanding into other products. We should continue to see good scalability from this OS.
Damn right! Use that chip anywhere and everywhere you can. Home Server to AppleTV. I would expect the next iPhone to have the same ARM CPU, but underclocked.
Who wants to bet that they're developing a secret OS X that runs on ARM?
HINT: They have, it's not a secret.
You know what was meant, the full Mac OS X, not iOS X.
I think Cook's comments made it clear they're far from completely uninterested.
I think actions speak louder than words. In an industry where significant upgrades are expected annually for actively sold devices, the AppleTV hardware sold now is the same as what was originally introduced in 2007. That's three years with only a hard drive bump, and only occasional & relatively minor UI updates and feature additions.
"Hobby" is code for something. It's a feint. The fence sitters who listen to the blabber from the whiners that ATV "sucks" deserve to remain in the dark.
Apple is obviously testing the waters and/or making deals before making big changes. In the mean time, ATV owners know how good ATV is. I'm one of them.
I agree. Even mentioned the AppleTV in the way he did leads me to believe that it won't be long before we see a new one. I'd like it to be demoed next month with the assumed iPhone OS 4.0 demo, but that seems unlikely for many reasons. Maybe before the actual G4 iPhone special event. I hope it's soon because it's more interesting to me than the iPad.
The AppleTV was great when it came out and has gotten better for no extra cost but it's definitely lagging behind the PS3, 360, and TiVO, as well as the Popcorn Hour and other standalone media extenders in the mix now. Any ideas how they can make it the must have home theater appliance? Or perhaps they won't have to if they just use an ARM CPU and iPhone OS with a new BackRow to run it. It's not like it's a bad investment for them with so much cross development.
Having App screens and search screen and a widget screen might make things a bit complicated though.
I'm guessing that double-clicking the home button will bring up the dashboard — which will be combined with the search screen... so there will still be the search bar at the top of the screen, but the widgets will be below it unless they do an actual search. Basically, there will be a "search widget" permanently at the top of the dashboard.
You might want to check your facts, but just as Apple made it easy for developers to transition from OS 9 to OS X with the classic environment and the itermediate carbon frameworks, they made it easy to transition to Intel with the Rosetta virtualisation layer and Universal Binaries (which is why they kept trying to emphasise the importance of moving everyone across to XCode before the switch.
It sounded like it was a bit of a Catch-22 at the time. They couldn't say why people should switch without giving away the secret, the impression I got was the advice to switch wasn't persuasive enough without explanation as to why.
The A4 - I'm glad he mentioned the part about Apple custom designing their North and South Bridges. Apple back in the day used to custom make many of their ASIC chips at great expense.
Didn't they have to do this? Did they even have access to appropriate chips that suited their needs? It wasn't like the x86 world at the time where there were half a dozen chipset makers.
No, thank you! Apple has already caused rise of e-book prices.
I prefer the way Netflix does its business - small monthly payment and unlimited online view of movies. Or even Hulu's way.
Unbelievable! You like paying as close to nothing has possible, I would have never guessed. Let me know when those services with their current pricing schemes become legitimate cable replacements. You completely missed the point of my post.