This week Macworld saw the launch of the Apple TV (formerly iTV), on the surface it's a pretty good device allowing wireless transfer of video, music, podcasts and photos from up to five Macs or PCs to your swanky HDMI compliant TV set all for a relatively reasonable $299. Many people might immediately realise that this is not a new idea, in fact I had a device that performed a similar task about 3 years ago (albeit using SCART) and at the time both wired and wireless versions were available. Actually I don't see this as a problem, there were MP3 players before the iPod and that didn't stop Apple becoming the market leader, Apple have a knack of doing things better than the competition and have got a great reputation when it comes to usability and reliability.
Despite all this, I'm not really impressed with the Apple TV and as it stands I doubt it will have the impact that everyone expected. The single biggest drawback of the Apple TV is that it doesn't play all of the popular video formats, it will play anything that iTunes plays but nothing more. This means that any video you already have in other formats, be it snaffled from bittorrent, downloaded from the web, ripped from DVD or captured from camcorders will not work without going through the laborious process of re-encoding. This is more than most people want to do and the kind of people who really need a device like this probably use multiple formats and probably have stacks of DivX and Xvid movies that they'd love to watch on their TV and Apple aren't going to be much help at all.
The secondary factor is that due to Apple's late arrival in this space there are already some pretty good devices out there, though the biggest threat probably comes from their classic rival in the shape of the Xbox 360. For $399 you get a device that can stream video, music and photos from your PC (though you're stuck with just WMV for video), allows you to directly purchase and download TV shows and HD Movie rentals without even touching a computer, comes with a free headset allowing free phone calls to other Xbox 360 users, also supports video calls with the webcam accessory, and on top of all that is to date the best selling High-Definition games console on the market with over a hundred titles available.
So the Apple TV has a big hill to climb but if anyone can push it up that hill
then surely Apple can. One light at the end of the tunnel which might
generate some additional sales is the already mooted prospect of installing
Linux on the Apple TV and using a Linux media player distro to do the rest -
now that might just make me buy one.
Well, after about 4.5 seconds worth of thought I've decided to put my words where my mouth is (doesn't sound right but you know what I mean) and say what I think is gonna go down in 2007, this time in no particular order...
- Print Media Feels The Burn
I may be mildly premature with this one, but I can feel it in my bones - the carcinogenic newsprint will hit the fan sometime soon and I think 2007 will be the beginning. I'm sure print media has already had some reaction to the Internet and most of the UK broadsheets have pretty decent websites these days but for certain classes of publications I can foresee a major decline. For instance, I hardly buy gaming magazines these days for two main reasons, (1) the news is usually 3-6 weeks out of date by the time they go to print, (2) the reviews and articles are so full of marketing bullshit and rubbish games regularly get good reviews because the mag got an exclusive demo/interview/shag and finally (3) the demos are all downloadable now so why bother paying for them? I'm absolutely sure that those points apply to most monthly tech magazines and one other 'primary factor' in the decline is that newspapers / magazines are full of writers who write about things they barely understand. Have you read any 'generic press' articles about IT, gaming or technology lately? If you're really interested in something (anything) then you'll probably find a decent, articulate and well-informed blog / forum / news site on the web that's 100 times better than some pokey journo trying to meet a deadline. - Nintendo Kick Ass
With the recent launch of the Wii and the massive public interest coming from traditional non-gamers I really think Nintendo are onto a winner (see: I Love My Wii) and Sony have still not really got their act together. I'm still not ready to predict final winner in the battle but by the end of 2007 I would not be surprised if Nintendo are on top. - Watching The Computer
People are going to spend much more time in 2007 pointing their LCD-hungry faces at computers this year than ever before. This includes consoles, high-def video players, IPTV, mobile TV as well as the traditional fare such as YouTube, Google Video and the web. - The Corporate World
After some relative calm I can see things turning bad for a major tech company this year, obvious choices would be people losing their identity such as AOL or Sun but perhaps it won't be such a good year for people like Dell or Yahoo. I predict that a few more social networking sites will be acquired by media companies this year, possibly bebo or facebook - also predict it won't do them much good. - Operating Systems
Last year started the war of next-generation consoles, 2007 sees the war between next-generation operating systems. With the release of WIndows Vista and later in the year Leopard (Mac OS 10.5) this does look like an interesting year, I also foresee more manufacturers offering pre-installed (or embedded) Linux than they have in the past. As for the outcome, obviously Vista will win but I'm even more sure that it will be plagued with bugs and security issues throughout the year. I do however still think that Apple will notch-up their market share somewhat in 2007 - from people holding out for Leopard and people who just want something solid, dependable and easy to use and have been slowly wooed by the iPod.
Well, that's the lot - I wish my predictive mental offspring well as they try and navigate the great wide world, and if you should meet one whilst you're traveling through 2007 please stop and say hello.
So, I actually bothered watching the live stream of Bill Gates' keynote at CES - I love insomnia sometimes. All in all it was relatively interesting, I paid special attention to the Xbox 360 section which announced their IPTV service (no details and cynicism/experience tells me it'll be US only). Some cross-platform features of Xbox Live and Vista were mentioned, I like the idea but it'll be a while before it really catches on with PC users. I posted my live notes about the Xbox 360 portion on the forums of the GamerCast Network, if you don't know about them please download and listen to their excellent podcasts, I listen to the Video Game Show, but they also host the extremely popular GamerTag Radio and Uncle Gamer Radio.
There was also a bit of blathering about how great everyone thinks Gears of War is, I personally wasn't that fussed - if they made an FPS that was equally good looking I might be interested but as far as I'm concerned it looks great but plays distinctly average. I heard someone describe it as a pretty version of whack-a-mole and honestly that's exactly what it is.
They demoed some cool features in Vista which should be good once they've been service-packed to hell, my favourite was the integration with the Xbox 360 controller - I've got to find some use for the handful of spares I have lying around. Other than that it was relatively uninspiring, they had the balls to mention both Urge and Zune even though they're both different incompatible products trying to achieve the same aim.
