Comments on: Apple TV: Why?

By: Mokka mit Schlag » Mac Mini to be Discontinued? Say it isn’t so!

Mokka mit Schlag » Mac Mini to be Discontinued? Say it isn’t so! — Fri, 25 May 2007 19:10:27 +0000

[...] a cable card, and DVR software; and the Mac Mini could become the digital hub that AppleTV so much isn’t. We need more Minis, not less. Please Apple: don’t kill the Mini. « NetBeans 6.0 M9 [...]

By: Joseph E. Davis

Joseph E. Davis — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 19:57:34 +0000

I bought one for the following purposes:

1. As a convenient way to host and display a library of children’s videos that are repeatedly watched and where the physical media is always scratched and destroyed quickly.

2. To easily display family photos on a large screen.

3. For video podcasts, trailers, and (maybe later) other downloads.

By: VHF

VHF — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 17:58:14 +0000

You are not the market for this product. It is more like an iPod for the living room. First and fore most the content everyone is complaining about is likely pulled from web sites or via P2P without copyright permission. Expecting full support every codec under the sun isn’t realistic given the lawyers involved in any content player( or for that matter Apple’s own need to push the iTunes store )….

Yes, it is overpriced and it doesn’t do everything we want. But for many it is exactly what they want, which is an easy way to bring content to their living room. I might even consider it if it was $99 rather than $299.

It would be nice if the hardware and content verdors got together and really fixed the mess that has become of the living room entertainment system and maybe we were expecting too much in hoping Apple could do it.

By: Colin

Colin — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:46:21 +0000

I’m still waiting for a method to play *in iTunes* the Xvid avis that can be found on Bittorrent.

Anyone?

Colin.

By: Elliotte Rusty Harold

Elliotte Rusty Harold — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 04:09:25 +0000

If they want to cut out the cable companies they’re going to have do a lot better job of delivering a lot more content. They don’t have 1% as much content as the cable company or even my local BlockBuster does. + Cable and satellite companies often give away boxes to sell subscriptions. Apple’s charging big bucks for the box.

I just don’t see how the AppleTV is any way competitive with cable and satellite. Would you consider replacing your cable with an AppleTV? Would anyone? Until Apple can provide 100+ channels 24 hours a day, seven days a week including my local channels, they aren’t even playing the same game.

By: Jerry Kindall

Jerry Kindall — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 03:25:03 +0000

Apple doesn’t want to put a TV tuner into the box, they want you to download your TV programming from them. They want to cut out the cable and satellite companies, not work with them.

By: Tim Patterson

Tim Patterson — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 03:07:59 +0000

Bob Cringely thinks he knows and wrote about it in his weekly PBS.org column.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070216_001673.html

By: Jeffrey W. Baker

Jeffrey W. Baker — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 18:12:13 +0000

I think cracking it open and hacking it is pretty much the entire point. It has most of the features of a mac mini, plus some extras, at half the price, in a package only half as large and without the external power brick. It will run Mac OS or any other full-blown operating system. So it can basically do whatever you want it to do. That seems like enough reason to me.

I tend to agree that the included software and the state purpose are pointless. But in the context of the quest for compact and quiet computers, this is an excellent product.