Apple TV

For my final project in Com 435, I decided to choose the Apple TV as my technology. Apple TV sparked my interest when my younger brother told me about how it was number one on his Christmas list. He commuted to high school everyday and as a result had a bunch of movies, television shows, and music videos on his iPod that he would watch on the train. The only place he could watch these movies were on his iPod or on his computer, but if he wanted to watch them anywhere else or share them with anyone else he couldn't. Then Apple devised Apple TV to solve this problem. Even though my little brother will have to wait a little bit until the price of Apple TV goes down, the idea of Apple TV is very cool! Apple TV looks similar to a tiny cable box and only needs an HDMI cable cord to hook into the box and the TV to work. It works with Ethernet or Wifi to give you access to iTunes, Youtube, Flickr, or your Mobileme on your television. You can rent or buy movies on demand or access your library of movies from iTunes. If you plug in the Apple TV into your computer, as you would your iPod, you can sync it up to work like an external hard drive to save all your media from your Mac onto Apple TV. If you have an iPhone or iPod touch you can download the Remote app to control your Apple TV. This Remote app even allows you to control say your iTunes from anywhere in your house! This technology is an example of convergence of technologies. Internet, television, and computer are all converging into one technology to give the viewer more control over what they watch. Will Apple TV affect the business of Cable, Satellite, and normal television stations programming? It might have a slight affect, but television providers should not be too worried. The fact that people have to pay to watch their shows does give free television programming and DVR an advantage. But Apple always seems to find a way to revolutionize technology, especially their own, so only time will tell!