Apple TV a game changer or just another walled garden?

Stan Beer
Friday, 23 March 2007 06:22

Opinion and Analysis

After having watched an early episode of a popular TV show on my PC, I'm more convinced than ever that something like Apple TV was inevitable. Apple TV is obviously a great product and will sell well. However, it is not the game changing product that everybody outside the Apple US-based iTunes walled garden needs right now.

There is no doubt that the US iTunes site is the best online entertainment store in the world. Unfortunately, the rest of the world can only look at the US site enviously and shake their heads at the pathetic local iTunes video offerings available in their countries.

This is not all Apple's fault of course. Much of it is due to the ridiculously backward global distribution policies of content providers who are still living in the pre-Internet days when the US got everything first and the rest of the world had to wait months. And they wonder why piracy proliferates outside the US!

Given that most of the world can't get access to the US iTunes store, Apple cannot really expect its lovely new device to sell particularly well outside the US until Apple realizes that the rest of the world wants what the US has right now. Simutaneous global distribution is one area where Microsoft beats Apple.

Getting back to Apple TV, like the iPod, it is obviously a superior product but at the moment it is elitist. You need to have a wide screen TV - how many of us have one of those? You need US iTunes access to make full use of its capabilities - great for US residents. And of course you can forget about streaming anything to your TV that's not iTunes.

Another slight criticism that no doubt will be corrected in time is that the 40GB hard drive is a trifle small. The main problem, however, is one that will probably never be corrected - Apple's obstinant refusal to open up its hardware to the wider Internet.

This is a real pity because Apple is first and foremost a hardware company. Given the IPTV revolution taking place on the Internet with sites like Joost, a computer to TV wireless streaming and storage product like Apple TV has the potential of being the game changer everyone has been waiting for. However, the game is not likely to change from behind Apple's walled garden.