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There have been some reports in the press recently that Steve Jobs considers Apple TV to have been something of a failure. I say he’s totally correct.
Apple TV, shown here in the middle of an epic, epic fail
Despite its current high level of fail, there are many promising aspects to Apple TV that give me some hope for the future. The machine itself is stylish, works well and is, of course, easy to use. It’s powerful enough to handle 720p — which is more than enough for Internet-derived content, for the time being.
The problem is, once again, that Apple refuses to accept the world doesn’t begin and end with QuickTime and the iTunes Store. Whether or not his proprietaryness Lord Jobs likes to admit it or not, there’s oodles of video online, most of it encoded in DivX, XviD or H.264/x264. None of these formats would present a massive problem for Apple TV — even the HD variants. So why doesn’t the hardware support them?
I could live with using iTunes — a program I really hate with every fibre of my being — if I was allowed to import all the other media on my computer and play it through Apple TV, without first hacking the whole thing.
The other problem in the UK is that there are no movie downloads or rentals available. That’s totally inexcusable, because Microsoft has managed it for the Xbox 360 — and, I might add, allowed DivX support. So the problem clearly isn’t the licencing, it’s the conditions Jobs Inc places on the media it hosts. Pull your finger out Steve, we expect better.
