As Apple declare record profits, it's worth taking a more in depth view of their approach to internet TV.
Fundamentally, it's the mother of all walled gardens, but they somehow seemed to have managed to tie in tens of millions of users without their noticing.
However, recently my wife decided that she'd like to carry an instructional DVD that she owns around with her on her iPod. Easy, I said, give me a moment...
Three days later I finally found a utility that did the job reasonably seamlessly.
As regular readers of this blog will know I'm still astounded that I can only copy music from one of my computers onto my iPod and that the Apple TV is restricted to its own services.
Maybe what is telling it that the store offers six million songs, but only 550 television shows and around 500 movies.
Any other company building such closed networks would be lambasted and pilloried in the media; they would be accused of sinister motives and would quickly have to backtrack. But such is the power of the brand that very few people have noticed that, by stealth, Apple is becoming tomorrow's most powerful media network (they're already the most dominant global network in the audio industry). In the MeTV era, they have managed so far to make old models work and stick.
But the question remains - are they going to have to open up to be successful with video ? They certainly need to make life easier for people who have spent good money on their overpriced devices.
Fundamentally, it's the mother of all walled gardens, but they somehow seemed to have managed to tie in tens of millions of users without their noticing.
However, recently my wife decided that she'd like to carry an instructional DVD that she owns around with her on her iPod. Easy, I said, give me a moment...
Three days later I finally found a utility that did the job reasonably seamlessly.
As regular readers of this blog will know I'm still astounded that I can only copy music from one of my computers onto my iPod and that the Apple TV is restricted to its own services.
Maybe what is telling it that the store offers six million songs, but only 550 television shows and around 500 movies.
Any other company building such closed networks would be lambasted and pilloried in the media; they would be accused of sinister motives and would quickly have to backtrack. But such is the power of the brand that very few people have noticed that, by stealth, Apple is becoming tomorrow's most powerful media network (they're already the most dominant global network in the audio industry). In the MeTV era, they have managed so far to make old models work and stick.
But the question remains - are they going to have to open up to be successful with video ? They certainly need to make life easier for people who have spent good money on their overpriced devices.
Comments