So we might as well Kersplat this, eh?
A good decade after the second incarnation of the AppleTV (1st = Pippin, 2nd = unreleased AMP, 3rd = AppleTV, 4th = AppleTV MK2), Apple is as adrift as it was at the start. Mind you, in the intervening years, it gained the tremendous advantage of the iTunes store, not to mention becoming the consumer platform we all thought it could be.
But our favorite fruit has still managed to blow it, in chunks, out all its orifices.
If, on the one hand, it continues to piss off developers and allies left and right for reasons that seems as much rationalization as rational (Adobe, cough, Google, cough cough), it also has failed in key markets, television being the biggest of them.
Steve introduced the new AppleTV as his hobby and it shows. Put in his place, I would've developed Front Row as a truly powerful interface… perhaps leveraging Plex, and then distributed it on every Mac. I would've encouraged game development, finding some common framework between the iOS and the MacOS. Ok, so no Warcraft on iPad, but Angry Birds on the Mac Mini, I mean why not? Some kind of kick ass version of the Wii that requires you to buy iPhones or iPod Touchs should be all you need, no? Nice built in accelerometers there. Maybe some other form factors (Rock Star?) too.
And yes, I might've come up with an AppleTV along the lines of the one the Steved One came up with, but frankly what's the point? Google has the right idea, dude: get it on TVs. The trouble is that Google has been awfully bad at UI lately. It's something we don't think about, but it's also true. Every hit produced in house (quick… what's the last one) is accompanied by a dozen misses (Wave anyone?). I don't see what they'll be able to do.
Oh and maybe there'd be a version that would be in between the two, a $400 2TB expandable NAS (with hybrid SSD-HD's of course) that had brains enough to run some stuff, maybe iOS+ at least.
In contrast, this bit of news just passed me by while I was away…
http://elan.plexapp.com/2010/09/02/plex-and-the-future-of-television/
Plex is not only my favorite of choice for HTMac setups, it's going to be an option on the next wave of LG TVs and Blu-Ray players.
Plex still has some rough patches, but it's really remarkable at how clean it is too. After playing with XBMC and Boxee, both of which seem to grunt, groan, and leak steam everywhere, Plex is much, much more. And LG chose it because it's open? Interesting.
All of a sudden, it looks like Plex will be in a lot more living rooms than Apple will be at the end of the year 2011. And as per the other thread, don't count out Roku, which seems to be heading into ethnic programming, which is very, very smart.
Bahoot! Kersplat.
Thank goodness it's still just a hobby. I guess that's because the Steved One knows he has no clue, eh?
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2010 08:34PM by bahamut.
