Get Better Gear!
- Madden NFL 10: The Grizzled Veteran from Electronic Arts, US$9.99
- NFL 2010: Rookie of the Year from Gameloft, US$2.99
- UNIEA Intrecciato, U-Pouch and U-Hip Pop iPhone Cases from UNIEA, $34.95, $22.95, $29.95
- Kensington Windshield/Vent Car Mount with Sound Amplified Cradle for iPhone from Kensington, $39.99
- SigFx Energy iPhone Case Contains Smart Battery from SigFx Energy, US$69.95
Top 5 Free Apps
iTunes New Music Releases
Top 5 Paid Apps
Discover New Music
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Once More, with Feeling
- Various Artists
Most musical episodes of TV shows frankly stink. They are usually little more than ill-conceived vehicles intended to let the stars show off what musical talent they have. Once More, With Feeling,
- Depeche Mode
Oddly enough, Playing The Angel is a return to form for Depeche Mode, even though it may well be argued that they never truly deviated from their roots in their more recent offerings. In the
- Rush
- We all know it, right? Well, ya just gotta have it. 2112 finally showed Rush out on their own, doing their own thing, and doing it well, IMHO.
- Harvey Danger
The sophomore effort from Harvey Danger, I was really looking forward to this followup to "Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?" Unfortunately, "King James Version" failed to deliver any of the bri
- Led Zeppelin
- This album bears every flavor of genius from the five records that came before. It is, I believe, the band's finest. With Physical Graffiti, Zep came raging back to their musical home territory -- har
Reader Specials
Visit Deals On The Web for the best deals on all consumer electronics, iPods, and more!
Editorial
Apple TV Descending from Hobby to Fixit Project
Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 4:00 PM - by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
One of the Apple TVs strengths is that its based on Mac OS X. However, thats also proving to be a weakness as well. Consumer electronics boxes in the living room must live up to a higher quality standard than a Macintosh computer.
After I installed iTunes 8, I noticed that the two TV shows I purchased on the Apple TV no longer synced back to my iTunes library. Worse, the "Summary" page in iTunes for the Apple TV was mostly blank and the tabs for Movies, TV Shows, Music and Podcasts were gone. Only Photos remained.
![]() |
|---|
I spent some time trying to get things right again and recover the ability to sync back, but it was clear something was very wrong. I ended up restoring the Apple TV to its factory defaults and updating to version 2.1 of the OS.
After that, the Apple TV page in iTunes looked normal, and I once again had options for Automatic or Custom sync, etc.
Over the last few months, as Ive tracked the stories about the Apple TV, its clear that the typical remedy by Apple, when problems occur, is to refer customers to the support pages, manuals, and discussion forums. Of course, the discussion forums, more often than not, provide a cavalcade of angry customers rather than solutions.
And just today, there appears to be an issue with downloading HD TV shows. The lack of quality assurance testing for HD downloads reminded me of an old Windows Daylight Saving Time bug.
- Is it 2:00 AM?
- If yes, turn back the clock an hour.
- Done.
Of course, when 2 AM rolled around again an hour later, guess what happened?
I recently attended CEDIA where I was reminded that customers in their living rooms dont want to fuss with geeky sounding check boxes with no explanations, forums, debugging, and Apples problematic code. They just want to hit a few buttons and watch a TV show or a movie. And when something does go wrong, they want to have handy, concrete steps to fix a problem. All the sync problems Ive had, and those of other users, suggests to me that the Apple TV needs to be rethought. Version 3.0 should work like a consumer electronics box and have iron clad hardware that achieves specific and modest design functions without fail.
As good as Xcode and Cocoa are, errors and time pressures will continue to seep in so long as the Apple TV is treated as a Macintosh for customers to tinker with, endlessly update and support issues are treated with, "Did you try this? Did you try that?"
Apple never says it, and their pride in customer service wont allow it, but all too often, the end message to the user seems to be: "Good night and good luck."
All my stereo components over the years have had lots of buttons, which is actually okay, and lots of design expertise folded in. The A/V receiver, the Blu-ray player, the HD TV just continue to sit there and perform. But that little white box in the middle continues to need spoon feeding.
My concern is that if Apple doesnt attend to the kinds of problems users are having with the Apple TV, other consumer electronics companies with a lot more consumer electronics design experience will pass Apple by. At CEDIA, I saw Sony, VuDu, LG and others trying to do just that and making progress.
Meanwhile, were all just Apple TV hobbyists. Sometimes, fixup artists.
Recent Headlines
- EA Publishes Original Monopoly for iPhone
- New iPhone Games: Secret of the Lost Cavern Ep 1, New DJ Nights, More
- Musée du Louvre, Art Lite, SketchBook Mobile X and More.
- GelaSkins Intros Tim Burton, Bettie Page, WETA iPhone Skins
- iPhone Gets the Green Light in South Korea
- Qualcomm Hopes to Get In On the iPhone Action
- Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs Lands at App Store


















Post Your Comments