An unlikely highlight of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ holiday season line-up, the rejuvenated Apple TV gets its Irish release later this month and it’s fair to say this time people actually care. Costing a not unreasonable €119, the pocket-friendly media streamer is nothing new technically, but the way in which Jobs wants you to use it could intrigue early adopters and satellite subscribers enough to clear space for yet another box under their HD TVs. Just as the iPad turned out to be more than just a giant iPod touch, Jobs is hoping user experience will trump spec once again. The trick this time is persuading even a fraction of iTunes’ 160 million users to adopt a rental model for consuming movies and TV. Despite competitive pricing for the hardware and content ($4.99 for movies, 99c for individual episodes) is this a niche too far for Apple to successfully develop? Can Jobs change everyone’s mind about how to pay for content? Does he care so long as he’s happy with his latest creation? Most likely, yes and yes would be the short answers.
Flop?
The history of the Apple TV is a short and not so sweet one. Dogged by criticism and poor sales since its release in 2006 Jobs – who considered the project a ‘hobby’ in the first place – has admitted that maybe it was too ground-breaking a device to achieve mass appeal, and in a way he was right. Slow Internet connection speeds pretty much ensured any video content users had was downloaded from peer-to-peer networks in standard definition. Hooking a PC direct to a television direct was as good an option as any and iTunes had yet to full tap video content as iTunes wasn’t carrying any. The idea of connecting another storage device to a home network held little appeal and a price tag of $229 ensured niche status. The subsequent proliferation of media streaming devices that did the same job at a fraction of the price, and Internet television platforms like Panasonic’s Vieracast and Samsung’s Medi@ 2.0, meant the Apple TV slipped from hobby to plain embarrassing status. The solution? Don’t change the technology, change the user.
A quick glance over the slimmed-down Apple TV yields little in the way of technical achievement. A minimalist creature it comes with four connections: HDMI, infra red, Wi-Fi and mini-USB. The remote control will be familiar to Macbook users and app junkies can even control it from their iPhone/iPod touch. As with all things Apple it’s novel, simple to use and, thanks to iTunes and Netflix integration, has a direct line to the kind of content the likes of Iomega and AC Ryan just can’t compete with. The punchline is the storage factor – it has none. By working off a rental/streaming model the Apple TV can afford to have such a small form factor while still playing up its HD content. One hopes Sky is taking notes for its next generation of Sky+ boxes; a move to the cloud might not be the worst idea.
Game on
Having seen the enthusiastic response from commentator in the press and by early adopters on Twitter, Apple is guaranteed an initial surge of interest and strong first-week sales. The real test will come in the range of titles available through iTunes. Right now the choice is somewhere in the limited-to-useless bracket and US Netflix users will be glad of having a substantial back catalogue to choose from.
The real competitor for the Apple TV won’t be from conventional streaming devices floundering in the absence of good content; nor will it come from Internet-enabled TVs, which are bought for picture quality and sound over flickr integration; but from Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE platforms. For the past year Xbox LIVE has been consistently adding to its portfolio of content partners such as Netflix and Sky, and has its own video rental service where points from gaming can be used as currency. This is before mentioning Facebook, Twitter and Last.FM and the arrival of a new entry in the Halo franchise on 14 September.
The face-off between Apple’s demographic and Microsoft’s gaming community certainly has a delicious, if familiar, quality to it. Such a conflict would also be an interesting test of just how strong Microsoft’s successful gaming community is in relation to the might iTunes, with its base of 160 million users versus a more compact 20 million. The difference is Xbox users already have the hardware in their hands, if the Apple TV shifts a fraction of that it will be considered a success.
When it comes to raw numbers and market penetration you would have to put your money on Xbox LIVE to beat Apple hands down, but you can never discount the loyalty of the latter’s fanbase. The race to get quality content from the Web to your TV just got a whole lot more interesting.
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