Magnussen nails it – Steve Jobs needs to announce a new AppleTV
This week has been filled with yawner predictions and rumors surrounding the Let’s Rock Apple event tomorrow. It’s become a given that we will get new or updated iPods, and the iTunes rumors seem fairly solid as well. What Apple needs right now is some really exciting news.
Peter Magnussen nailed it in his blog post offering Apple his wish list for what he’d like to see unveiled tomorrow. What Apple needs to do is rock our socks off with something truly innovative for the first time in a long time. He is hoping that the one product not included in the rumor mill will be the star – the AppleTV.
As someone who has held off buying an AppleTV in hopes of having it do more of what I need a set top box to do, I wholeheartedly agree with his wish list. He points out that the impending FCC closure of the analog band to television and requirement that all of us go digital, complete with government subsidies to help TV lover buy new converter boxes and remotes, makes this an ideal time for any company to release a “WOW” product in the television sector.
He had some ideas for functionality of this potential AppleTV 3.0 that were on my list, such as HD (ATSC tuner), Blu-Ray capability, larger hard drive (500GB – 1TB ideally), adding DVR technology to iTunes 8.0, Safari with an optional keyboard, easier and better ways to integrate web video, and back up capabilities with Time Machine (this I don’t care about). The Magnussen dropped the bombshell idea that would really put the pop into an announcement like this, should it happen: iPhone integration.
iPhone integration with the AppleTV would mean that you could use your iPhone as a remote. This would be neat, but it’s the call integration that would have to happen that has me excited at the idea. Imagine if your TV automatically muted itself and paused what you were watching… because you got a phone call. How cool would that be? That might even over ride the AT&T issue for someone like me who would like a shiny new iPhone but who hates being tied to AT&T. Everyone has a price for coming over to the dark side – it seems mine would be TV and cell phone integration.
Related Posts:
