Apple TV--An Attempted Revolution

Although not having received anywhere near the publicity of the iPhone, Apple has another product in the works, scheduled to be released sometime this summer. The Apple TV, a device designed to wirelessly hook up your computer to your television, aspires to bridge the gap between the internet and the entertainment industry.

The Apple TV is a small device, looking something like the Apple computer cube that is already on the market, which features a 40 gigabyte hard drive, an Intel Pentium M processor, and a WIFI chip. The idea is this: you buy movies and TV shows from iTunes, hook up the Apple TV both to your home wireless network and your television, and sit back on your couch and watch the movie. In the words of Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer, "We believe we are providing a new, better way for people to seamlessly and wirelessly enjoy their digital lifestyles."

There are a few problems with this business plan, though. First off, there is the problem of content. Despite the desperate contract negotiations that must have taken place between Apple and the media giants, the library of movies and TV shows on the iTunes library is pitifully small, and each piece of content is expensive, rather more so than on PPV cable stations. What if you already have media files? In order to play them, you will have to go through the tedious process of converting them into Apple's format. It looks like the Apple TV makes a poor substitute for a TV.

Additionally, along that line of thought, there is the problem that the internet is just not nearly as fast a means of transferring data as cable TV is. Movies come in file sizes near and over one gigabyte, taking from half an hour to all day to download, depending on your internet connection. This lack of speed is compounded by the problem that none of the content for the Apple TV is available live. For people hoping to watch a baseball game, Apple TV would not be terribly helpful.

Clearly, the $299 Apple TV isn't going to compete with traditional cable TV. The fact is that people aren't really going to care where their television is coming from, just so long as it is there. Although the Apple TV is a neat idea, which doubtless would appeal to many technophiles, it simply can't compete. It is simply too much for Apple to hope that people would ditch their traditional cable subscriptions in favor of the likes of the Apple TV.

The idea of internet TV is not a new one, and in fact has been tried many times. One recent example that comes to mind is MovieBeam, which, using its own expensive device, allows users to watch one of rotating collection of one hundred movies it has available on a pay per view basis. Needless to say, the service has not caught on. People are still subscribing to pay per view cable service and renting movies.

By launching this new product, Apple seems to be hoping to accomplish something that is at best a generation of computer technology away.