Apple TV Ships This Week; Mossberg Likes It
After a delay. Apple TV hits living rooms this week heralded by a rave review from the Journal’s Walt Mossberg. The $299 wireless set-top with “carefully limited” functions worked great” in 10 days of testing, Mossberg and colleague Katherine Boehret report, adding, “we can easily recommend it for people who are yearning for a simple way to show on their big TVs all that stuff trapped on their computers.” Their verdict: “it’s a beautifully designed, easy-to-use product that should be very attractive to people with widescreen TV sets and lots of music, videos, and photos stored on computers. It has some notable limitations, but we really liked it. It is classic Apple: simple and elegant.”
Intentionally limited: “It can’t receive or record cable or satellite TV, so it isn’t meant as a replacement for your cable or satellite box, or for a digital video recorder like a TiVo. It can’t play DVDs, so it doesn’t replace your DVD player. Its sole function is to bring to the TV digital content stored on your computer or drawn from the Internet. Like a DVD player, it uses its own separate input on your TV set, and you have to change inputs using your TV remote to use it.” Set for widescreen, it doesn’t work with most older sets and it’s best for HD. (The included remote sounds like the weakest link, no pun intended.)
Yet to come: It does not stream much directly from the internet, only clips and trailers. It’s not directly interactive with the iTunes store. Material has to be downloaded to a computer before it can be played through Apple TV. Mossberg expects that to change even though Apple wouldn’t confirm it: “We fully expect Apple to add the capability to stream or download a variety of content directly from the Internet, and that this new capability will be available on current Apple TV boxes through software updates.” That can be done on Xbox 360, they admit, but “the comparable Xbox costs 50 percent more than Apple TV, is much larger and stores only half as much material.”
Target users: Apple TV isn’t for “that small slice of techies who buy a full-blown computer and plug it directly into a TV, or for gamers who prefer to do it all through a game console. And it’s not for people who are content to watch downloaded TV shows and movies directly on a computer screen. Instead, it’s for the much larger group of people who want to keep their home computers where they are and yet enjoy their downloaded media on their widescreen TVs.” And, yes, it worked fine with Windows including Vista.
We’ll be hearing a lot more about Apple TV over the next few days. If you’re in the vanguard drop a line in the comments about how it goes.
Update: FT: Pre-order customers are getting shipping notices but Apple is only repeating its intention to ship mid-March. (I checked the Apple store and orders are promised to ship in 3-5 days.) Forrester’s Josh Bernoff plays the role of skeptic, saying the limited downloads available through iTunes could limit the appeal and that Microsoft is “way better positioned to succeed” in this area.
Update 2: Speaking of Xbox 360, Engadget is reporting that a new black Xbox 360 Elite is on the way with a 120G hard drive and HDMI. Price: $479.
Mossberg likes it..what a suprise.
Well, I did wonder if there's a way to do blind "taste" tests.
Link to the story at uncle Walt's Ptech site, no sub required:
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20070321.html
Wow, Walt Mossberg likes, scratch that, LOVES an Apple product? That's like saying water is wet or the Pope is Catholic. It kind of goes without saying. The only difference is how overflowing with praise he will be, and how much space he will dedicate to a review.
Let's see, intentionally limited, and this is of course a positive? Until of course the AppleTV 2 comes out, and fixes some of these intensionally limited features, and it will once again be hailed as a masterpiece of elegance and simplicity that only Apple can dare conjure up.
To me, Walt Mossberg today officialy became an Apple shill. He has really lost credibility with me by dismissing the obvious and major advantages of the Xbox (includes DVD player and game system) and by not even mentioning Tivo, which downloads directly to the box from a store (Amazon) with much wider selection and includes a DVR. It's one thing to say you tried them both and like one better but to just dismiss them like this is completely absurd. Mossberg manages to spin everything Apple's way, characterizing their deficits somehow as "simplifying" strengths. What he has to realize is that he is only as important as he is credible. And if he stops being at least semi-credible, he will stop being important.
And "one more thing" if you will. As Edgar has pointed out, Mossberg totally gives the Xbox zero credit for what it does. He mentions that it is much more expensive than the AppleTV (which it usually is Apple that is more expensive), but leaves out that the Xbox plays games too. So, you take an Xbox system, be able to do all of the same stuff as the AppleTV, get a great game system, an available HD DVD player, and a bustling Xbox Live experience. Which one should I buy again?
Edgar, for me, Mossberg lost all credibility a long time ago when he devoted a multi-page review to the video iPod. I can only imagine his review of Leopard.
Give the AppleTV credit, as Mossberg did, for being well designed.
That being said, the top of the TV is a lonely, forbidding place. Hardly anything grows there. If something as cool as a TiVo couldn't get to 2 million consumers in 8 years, how well will this thingy do?
/josh
classic apple: slick but closed.
and radically unlike the iPod, there are already great ways to get the content i enjoy on my PC (not just content on my PC's hard drive but ONLINE content) on my TV
i got a Wii a month ago, fired up the Opera browser on there, and started playing my music, my downloaded movies, my podcasts, my home movies, and my youtube favorites – because i have a free piece of software on my PC from orb.com
my friend steve does the same thing through his Xbox
my buddy nick does the same thing through his PS3
anyone seriously think apple's going to sell as many apple TV boxes as there ALREADY are game consoles out there, already ready to play PC content on the TV?