Apple finally released the Apple TV software update that Steve Jobs mentioned at Macworld on January 15th of this year. At the time he said the software update would be out in 2 weeks, which would have been January 29th. But due to various problems (no doubt many defects in the code), they released the software update on February 12th instead, a full 2 weeks after it was originally promised. Before I dwell on the actual software update itself I want to think through this 2 week delay. First, all I can say is WOW, they must have had a lot of problems for it to be delivered after it was promised by the CEO. Either that or someone gave him some really wrong information. Now on to the updated Apple TV. This software update allows users to:
1. Browse and buy music directly from their Apple TV.
2. Browse and subscribe to video podcasts as well as audio podcasts directly from their Apple TV.
3. Browse, buy, and rent movies directly from their Apple TV.
4. Browse photos on Flickr and .Mac directly from their Apple TV.
I played around with most of the fuctionality and have to say that it works as advertised. The only problem I ran into was when I am playing a 30 second song preview, if I pause it, I cannot get it to start playing again. I also decided to rent an HD movie to see if it would be any good. I rented "Live Free or Die Hard", and the download started immediately. Since it was in the middle of the week I didn't test out the functionality that lets you start watching the movie while the rest of it downloads, because once you start playing the movie you only have 24 hours to watch it before it gets deleted. I'm going to wait until the weekend when I can watch it in one sitting.
I also played around with looking at Flickr photos through the Apple TV. I started by looking at mine, and then I branched out to look at photos belonging to people in my contacts list. Overall the functionality was pretty good, but it was hard for me to find the setting to change the music that is played with the slideshow.
Overall I thought the user interface for the Apple TV was pretty well done given the massive increase in functionality. It would be nice to see icons or stars on the movies that are only available for rent. I also think this was a big step forward toward getting wider adoption, but I don't think it will be mainstream until Apple adds dvr functionality. Even better would be partnerships with cable providers to have Apple build the box (cable box, apple TV, dvr) and have people just add an extra few bucks a month to their cable bill for the box. But I doubt that would happen because Apple and the cable companies are competing for movie rental revenue. So Apple could do something like a Tivo/Apple TV hybrid that would probably be widely adopted. But that dvr functionality is not there now and Apple is leaving itself lots of room for improvement for next year's Apple TV Take 3. So overall my recommendation would be to wait for the next version unless the current incarnation of Apple TV just offers too many goodies for you to pass up.
Posted by troutm8 at February 14, 2008 03:55 PM