On the other hand, Apple’s iTV product promises to be a classic Apple shot at a previously elusive sweet spot. Our computers have become fantastic media devices, holding our songs, our pictures and now our TV shows and movies–but there’s no easy, elegant way to get hold of that stuff while sprawled out in potato-land. iTV wants to be The Way. Instead of trying to be a digital workhorse with DVD drives, a hard disk and a tuner, it’s simply a Wi-Fi-enabled connection machine that cracks open all the stuff in your computer (and potentially, stuff on the Internet) and zips it to the TV set. “The breakthrough came when we realized that we didn’t have to replace the set-top box,” says Jobs. “It’s OK if we adopt the DVD player as our model. Then you can hook up to anything. Just be like a DVD player that happens to play Internet videos.”
From YouTube to boob tube? Could be. In addition to the photos, movies, TV shows and tunes on your hard drive, iTV, with the ridiculously minimal six-button Apple remote, lets you go to the Net to get stuff. Last week Jobs showed only a menu item that pulls in movie trailers, but when you open up your iTunes library, you can also listen to bits of new music recommended by the iTunes store. Is it possible that when iTV ships next year, you may also be able to choose a menu item called Google Video, and then zip through the best of the thousands of user-submitted videos on the search giant’s service? Google’s consumer product chief, Marissa Mayer, tells me that indeed, the two companies are engaged in talks.
It’s inevitable that one day the boundaries between television and the computer will dissolve, but there are endless technicalities to hurdle. Could a simple $299 box really break the logjam? It seems like a stretch–but that’s what people said when Apple set out to change digital music.
