New Apple Gear

I know what you’re thinking: You’re thinking I’m going to review my new iPhone.

Well, I’m not. At least, not today. I feel I should give it at least one full, four-day weekend before making my assessment.

No, instead, I’m just going to touch on the Apple TV Take 2 upgrade that came down last week.

Basically, I could barely give a hoot about movie rentals because, let’s be honest, most modern movies stink so bad it makes that crap pit I used to play in smell like roses. Still, once in a blue moon a movie comes along that I might be interested in seeing, but not enough to get up out of the chair, so, I can see myself being an occasional Apple TV movie renter. They’ve got Inherit The Wind, a great movie, I plan to rent that ASAP. Also, looking at the available rentals, it feels like there’s less than 200 films – that’s just a perception, but the selection is, at present, stark.

So, completely ignoring the movie rental process, let’s see what’s changed that actually impacts me.

First, the menus have changed. They’ve been rearranged to favor renting movies, which puts my stuff at the bottom of the menu. Bad, but not significant.

Dolby 5.1 content – my content doesn’t have 5.1, and, as my stereo system isn’t even hooked up to my TV, irrelevant. But, that might change because…

The Apple TV is now an Air Tunes device on my network. This is a big Hurrah for Apple. I love Air Tunes. It gets my iTunes out of my computer room and into my family room, which, conveniently, is where my wireless access point has to reside. (Because that’s where the cable modem enters the house.) Unfortunately, it’s no where near the entertainment center, consequently, I had to decide which was more important: Stereo hooked to TV, or stereo hooked to my Airport Express. The Airport Express won because I listen to iTunes far more often than I watch TV and I want my music to sound best.

I’ve always felt this was a great idea but not completely reasoned out. Although I have no formal experiments to back this up, from the consulting I do in people’s homes, my impression is that very few people have their entertainment centers near their wireless access points. Not only do the cable people not care if the cable modem access point is convenient for you, a wireless unit needs to be placed for wireless coverage, not proximity to home entertainment center.

I’ve suspected this is why Apple has been phasing Air Tunes out of their Airport Extreme line. It’s a great technology, but I suspect it hasn’t been as widely adopted as they thought. Apple TV Take 2 solves that. You put the Apple TV in your entertainment center and you are 100% set to listen to iTunes streamed from your computers. Sweet.

Pity that they didn’t think of reversing the process, allowing the Apple TV to send audio to other Air Tunes speakers, but, that’s just a minor thing, that won’t impact most people.

Flickr and .Mac galleries are another improvement which I love. Being able to view photos from iPhoto on the Apple TV was great, but I can’t keep all my photos in iPhoto. There are simply too many. I keep on flickr, where I have unlimited storage. Now the Apple TV can display those or .Mac gallery images, plus it can use them for slideshows and the screen saver. No more wasting space on the Apple TV to keep pictures for the screen saver.

All in all, a good upgrade, and one that might position the Apple TV for a little more respect.

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