You, Me, and iTV
You, Me, and iTV
Sep 22“What Apple’s up to” in the American living room is a subject that has fascinated me for some time.
Last week, we got a tiny peek at the answer to that question, in the form of the iTV.
Let’s call this for what it is–the BIG move. When the video iPod came out last year, some speculated that this level of entertainment domination was in the cards for Apple. At that point, you could just take video and audio and stick them in your pocket and carry them around.
When Steve Jobs sold Pixar to Disney earlier THIS year, he cemented a relationship between Apple and one of the world’s biggest content providers. Suddenly, that rumored iTunes Movie Store didn’t seem too far off. And we got the movie store last week, too.
But we also got a glimpse at the iTV. And in it, we see our future.
With the iTV, Apple has created a foothold into the heart of the home, the living room/family room/den where the TV lives. The specifics are almost incidental–Bob Iger at Disney has commented in public that the iTV will ship with a hard drive; no such feature was mentioned by Pope Jobs in last week’s keynote. There’s a USB port in the back, so anything is possible, and there could even be a hard drive stashed inside, for all we know. Also missing at this stage: a TV tuner. So it’s not the next iteration of the TiVo…although again, that could change in the next few months.
It’s a start, is what it is. It’s the first step, a cautious one, because if this synergy were to take its full form so soon, it would rock the entertainment industry to its knees. Suddenly, time and placeshifting would connect together to the entire television landscape in a format widely used and understood by people around the world. The iPod’s existing user base would have a reason to buy a device that would give them total control over how, when, and where they experience popular culture. Stars would align, birds would sing, dogs and cats would live together.
Instead, to pacify the raging madmen on the content side of things, who see their carefully-constructed house of cards losing a few decks every day as the proliferation of delivery channels render their antiquated ad-and-ratings-based economy into oblivion, Steve Jobs has just given us stage one of his vision. We get to watch stuff from our computer on the TV–all those iTunes videos, music, and probably stuff in other formats, will beam from our computer straight to the TV. Hell, maybe it’ll even bypass the computer and come to the TV direct if we want it to.
But someday, and someday soon, the rose will reach full bloom. And that, my friends, will be SOMETHING TO FUCKING SEE. I for one can’t wait.
