The personal disquiet of

Mark Boulton

October 12th, 2005

Apple’s missing link

{title}No real sur­prises with Apple’s latest product releases. A video iPod, an updated iTunes (selling video no less) and an updated iMac (fea­tur­ing integ­rated iSight). Per­haps the most inter­est­ing product in all of this is the iMac’s new Remote and the applic­a­tion called Front Row.

Front row seems to be a TV friendly applic­a­tion for brows­ing your media (pho­tos, DVD’s, movies etc) with the pre­vi­ously men­tioned remote. All good so far.

{title}But Apple seem to be under the assump­tion that people will watch films on their com­puter. True, some people will. Most people won’t how­ever. No mat­ter how much ‘cool’ you throw our way Steve, an iMac is not a telly. Yet.

For years I think Apple have missed a vital com­pon­ent in the iMac — a TV tuner, or now built in digital free view. This tech­no­logy already exists as a third party peri­pheral, it really isn’t too much bother to include it. Then your aver­age stu­dent would have it all — TV, DVD player and com­puter now sport­ing a rather con­veni­ent remote. The trouble is, Apple haven’t done that and we’re left with a big gap in the march to convergence.

That gap is a some­thing that has been doing the rumor rounds this week. A video Air­port Express. 

If Apple were to release this (and put a digital tuner in the iMac), it won’t really be a sur­prise to me, but coupled with Apple’s mar­ket­ing savvy and the suc­cess of the iPod, it has the power change the way people watch TV.

So, Apple, here’s what you need to do:

I have an Air­port Express and it’s already changed the way my wife and I listen to music. We don’t use CD’s any­more. We save space by not hav­ing oodles of jewel cases every­where. My wife and I have dif­fer­ent playl­ists for dif­fer­ent things etc. It’s all good. So, ima­gine what would hap­pen if Apple were to do all of this. We could have quick access to all our digital pho­tos for when the Parents-In-law come round, we could also down­load the latest film to watch (if, like us you live nowhere near a video store, this kind of thing would be a God­send). This list goes on and on.

Mind you, if you were to ask my wife, she would say ‘why do we need that?’.

Good point.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 12th, 2005 at 7:16 pm and is filed under Apple.

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12 Responses to “Apple’s missing link”

  1. Kevin Marsh said on: October 13th, 2005 at 4:47 am

    Actu­ally, I think the next step for­ward would be a set-top box (like a mini) with HD out­put and optical audio, the Front Row inter­face, lots of hard drive (Xserve RAID?), and a TV tuner. There you have it–perfect media center!

  2. Kev Mears said on: October 13th, 2005 at 7:20 am

    Does this mean that another input device that you have to con­sider when design­ing inter­faces has arrived? 

    Along with the “Nin­tendo Revolu­tion controller”:http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000077059062/ the apple remote her­alds a genre of input devices that have char­ac­ter­ist­ics quite dif­fer­ent to design for. 

    My son now has the dilemma of what to save for. 

    a PSP

    an Xbox 360

    or THE ipod (as they are nam­ing it) 

    He’ll need to get a few more paper rounds to stump up for all that equipment!

  3. Lode said on: October 13th, 2005 at 8:58 am

    Indeed, a TV tuner would be nice. 

    One thing I loved about the present­a­tion was the com­par­ison between the Apple remote (6 but­tons) and the Win­dows Media Cen­ter remote (40+). “That’s what Apple is all about”, Jobs said.. and I think he’s abso­lutely right. 

    What dis­ap­poin­ted me is the res­ol­u­tion of the down­loaded shows. 320x240? I thought this was sup­posed to be ‘the year of HD’, Steve? Even the video stream of his present­a­tion was in a higher resolution. 

    When I’m mov­ing out of my par­ents’ nest I really can see me buy­ing an iMac+TV Tuner instead of a TV. Now if Apple would release a nice DVR-like add-on (be it built-in or a small, Apple-like device). I don’t care much for Win­dows Media Cen­ter (and neither does the rest of the world, or so it seems), but an iTunes-like way of watch­ing tv and man­aging recor­ded pro­grams sounds great. Given that Jobs expli­citely men­tioned the Microsoft media plat­form when intro­du­cing Fron­tRow, I don’t think this can be too far away. (Unless he wants us to buy every pro­gram trough ITMS, even though I’ve already paid for my cable.)

    For the Bel­gian read­ers: wouldn’t it be great if this was integ­rated with the Tele­net Digital Plat­form (sucky as they may be)?

  4. Mark Boulton said on: October 13th, 2005 at 10:00 am

    Kev — You’re abso­lutely right, TV is a very dif­fer­ent envir­on­ment to design for, but we are going to see those boundries con­tinue to blur if you believe all the con­ver­gence hype. 

    Per­son­ally I don’t see it as too much of a prob­lem. As a designer you should famil­i­ar­ise your­self with the tech­no­logy of the media you are design­ing for and also how the product will be used. 

    Lode — I think you’re right, this kind of this isn’t too far off from a hard­ware point of view. What is lack­ing is the infra­struc­ture (such as iTunes Store and all of the asso­ci­ated DRM issues). It’ll come, but not for a year or so.

  5. Tim said on: October 13th, 2005 at 3:39 pm

    Mac have seemed a bit slow on the uptake of this — MCE from microsoft has been around since 2001. The latest ver­sion is very good — provided your pre­pared to curse and swear loads to get it work­ing.  So why haven’t Apple made a product to com­pete with MS. Then they really would change the way we do home entertainment.

  6. Steve Williams said on: October 13th, 2005 at 4:53 pm

    For me, Apple needs to be sup­ply­ing the video con­tent in HD — espe­cially con­sid­er­ing LOST is so eas­ily down­loaded via P2P in what passes for HD in the States, also minus ad breaks! 

    When that hap­pens, I’d use it. 

    I would des­per­ately love Apple to release a media streamer that could wire­lessly couple to a TV, PC, Pro­jector and Audio Sys­tem — allow­ing you to choose what got sent where using wire­less tech and a single simple remote!

  7. Vodstock said on: October 14th, 2005 at 7:05 am

    Another good art­icle, Mark — thank you — but all this focus on Apple is start­ing to con­cern me, even though it may be justified.  

    Inter­net TV and related enter­tain­ment seems to be end­ing up in the hands of one com­pany with few other play­ers on the scene.  Yes, there is com­pet­i­tion (Archos, Orb, etc. are head­ing in the same dir­ec­tion, I believe), but they need to step up a gear.  Your art­icle tells Apple what they need to do, but I’d also like to see oth­ers listen to your advice. 

    As much as I love Apple for their unique­ness and pro­gress in this area, I don’t think any­one wants to see another IT monopoly.

  8. matgorb said on: October 15th, 2005 at 8:49 pm

    At least in Europe, there is a prob­lem about integ­rat­ing a TV tuner, it is called TV licence. 

    If Apple decided to put one in every iMac, it would mean that in the­ory every iMac owner would have to pay it even if they don’t use the TV.

    This is why I think the TV will stay an option and right now Apple is prob­ably happy to have oth­ers doing it. 

    In Fin­land, the licence is 200?/year, and in the UK I believe it is 120? (then again BBC is nice), a lot to ask from people on top of the price of the machine.

  9. some guy said on: October 16th, 2005 at 4:15 am

    i haven’t watched TV in eight years, and i don’t want a TV tuner in my Mac for the same reason i don’t want a radio in my iPod.

  10. With Interest said on: October 18th, 2005 at 11:57 am

    Do you think Apple’s stocks will go up as a res­ult of the video upgrades they are making?

  11. Mark Boulton said on: October 18th, 2005 at 12:02 pm

    I think so, at least for the short term. Not sure if that will be a dir­ect res­ult of the video iPod’s though. I think it will prob­ably be more to do with the Apple’s gen­eral mar­ket strength at the moment just con­tinu­ing to rise.

  12. Graham Sanders said on: October 21st, 2005 at 3:57 pm

    I think Aper­ture is the next big thing myself:

    http://www.apple.com/aperture

    Will be sav­ing my penny’s for this, looks really, really nice. Take the time to listen to the pro­files too:

    http://www.apple.com/aperture/profiles/?kluetmeier

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