ne"}

Get Better Gear!

Premier Sponsors

TechRestore

Other World Computing

Top 5 Free Apps

Release Date: August 05, 2009
Genre: Games
Release Date: May 22, 2009
Genre: Games
Release Date: August 29, 2009
Genre: Games
Release Date: March 27, 2009
Release Date: August 07, 2009

iTunes New Music Releases

Release Date: September 29, 2009
Genre: Rock
Release Date: September 20, 2009
Release Date: September 15, 2009
Release Date: August 25, 2009
Genre: Rock
Release Date: August 25, 2009

Top 5 Paid Apps

Release Date: April 22, 2009
StickWars $0.99
Release Date: March 31, 2009
Genre: Games
Bloons $0.99
Release Date: April 05, 2009
Genre: Games

Discover New Music

  • Music Has The Right To Children

    • 10 out of 10
    • Boards of Canada
    • This one will haunt you. From the first notes to the last, their sound surrounds you. BOC has put out a fantastic catalogue, and this album is a great starting point for a new listener. Jump straight
  • King James Version

    • 4 out of 10
    • 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

  • Abnormal Anonymous

    • 8 out of 10
    • Congo Norvell
    • Very few albums manage to capture snapshots of a quality of life in the manner that Congo Norvell's sophomore record, "Abnormals Anonymous," does.

      Comparisons to the Velvet Underground are

  • Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

    • 8 out of 10
    • Arctic Monkeys
    • Get on your dancing shoes
      You sexy little swine

      -Arctic

  • One Word Extinguisher

    • 8 out of 10
    • Prefuse 73
    • It's an album about a breakup, done with beats instead of mopey lyrics. But the beats are raw, and the emotions are there, even if there aren't many words on top of it. While possibly not Scott Herren

Reader Specials

Visit Deals On The Web for the best deals on all consumer electronics, iPods, and more!

News

Apple TV Will Have to Change Quickly

Apple had plenty of time to refine the iPod over the years. However, the TV and movie industries are moving fast, new technologies and services emerging, and the Apple TV will have to adapt and improve much more quickly, according to Business Week on Thursday.

The Apple TV fits a certain profile for the viewer. If they buy a lot of content from the iTunes store, they’ll be happy. For others, with different viewing habits, it may not fit. These days, there are lot of different viewing styles, and the way people watch TV is much more fragmented, Arik Hesseldal wrote. Right now, the Apple TV just doesn’t fit in with his habits.

Much more important however, are the different technologies that are driving those viewer profiles. Joost is one of those sources that has recently emerged. Despite the fanfare about Joost, Mr. Hesseldahl isn’t so sure Joost has what it takes to take on video downloads. Even so, it’s a technology that will fragment people’s viewing habits.

All the initiatives by the studios and the carriers is leading to even more fragmentation, and that has led some analysts to believe that purchased video downloads are dead end. "Forrester Research (FORR) analyst James McQuivey raised some eyebrows this week when he published a report on the video download business," Mr. Hesseldahl wrote. "He got some flack from Apple lovers for observing that paid video downloads, including Apple TV, look to him like a dead end."

Of course, Apple is a company that keeps a close eye on technology. Moreover, they’ve already announced that they’ll be publishing updates for the Apple TV. That’s the software side. On the hardware side, the size of the hard disk in the currently shipping Apple TV seems to be somewhat anemic for HD, and that future is arriving rapidly.

The key now is the cable operators and their experience with delivering what customers want. "It doesn’t take much to imagine cable operators offering services that give customers the video they want, wherever they want it, whether on the flat-screen TV in the living room, the desktop PC in the den, or on the notebook computer that’s in a hotel room on a business trip," Mr. Hesseldahl wrote.

The conclusion was that the iPod, while it flourished in a market that needed coherence and simplicity, and had years to evolve, is not a good model for the Apple TV development. The BW final observation provided an astute alert for Apple. "But I think the Internet video market circa 2007 is changing much faster than the digital music market circa 2001. Apple can’t afford to wait one year, let alone two, as it did with the iPod. No one hoping to conquer this business can."

Post Your Comments

  Remember Me  Forgot your password?

Not a member? Register now. You can post comments without logging in, but they'll show up as a "guest" post.

Commenting is not available in this section entry.