DISCLAIMER: This whole post is a little foward looking. Many homes today do not have high-speed Internet connections, due to cost, availability, etc. I am writing this from the standpoint that most people who will buy the products/services mentioned here have high-speed Internet access, wireless network routers will get faster, and that network service providers will continue improving network speeds for faster downloads over time. I know the company I mention here is counting on it... That said, this argument doesn't include all sides of the argument, it is just my rant on what I believe is an oversight and/or perhaps unnecessary requirement that hinders my digital life.
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Apple yesterday announced several cool new products, including the new iPhone and Apple TV. I am very excited about the iPhone, but won't go into that here. What I want to talk about right now is Apple TV.
Basically, Apple TV lets you stream your movies and TV shows from iTunes (on your computer) over a wireless connection to a Apple TV box connected to your widescreen HD TV (which are now in 1/3 of all US homes). It also allows you to preview and download movies and TV shows directly to your Apple TV box - all through that wireless connection. With 40 GB of storage (which is less than some iPods provide today), Apple says this will allow you to store up to 50 hours of content. However, if you are downloading movies and shows in high definition/high resolution, the amount of time/content goes down considerably.
The Network is the Computer
My question is, why does Apple TV need this storage capacity at all? I work for Sun Microsystems, which touts the vision "The Network is the Computer." One general interpretation of that vision says that if people are connected through the network to computing power, the average home user does not need to have their own storage and processors and software on a big home computer or, worse, multiple computers - they just need access to the network via a simple device, through which providers can give them all of these services, content and more. Google provides applications for office productivity for free, through a Web browser. Yahoo and others provide free email. Apple and other companies provide free or low-cost storage over the network to store and back up all of your data (from music to photos to documents to movies). NBC and Disney provide content. Almost everything an average user needs is available and stored over the network, and that increases every day.
I believe this vision applies to the new Apple TV. If Apple thought more like Sun, or even Comcast or Qwest, we wouldn't need a ton of storage on Apple TV to download and store our programs. We could access everything over the network.
Forced to Buy More Storage?
Why make customers go through all the pain of downloading and storing their movies and TV shows at home? As resolutions go up, and the number of movies and shows you own goes up, your need for data storage at home will go WAY up. Which means you will have to keep buying more storage devices and capacity for your house. That's costly, even as storage prices drop, and it's risky - what happens if your storage devices are damaged and lose their data?
Why not have everything available over the network? You can still "own" your copy of The Incredibles, you just don't need to buy more and more storage capacity to store your copy at home, along with the other movies you own (not to mention if you want to back up all those copies, which you pretty much have to do if you want to protect them). You just buy access to that content, from the providers, over the network.
Instead of an arbitrary 40GB of storage, you could have a small amount of storage to cache, let's say, 20-30 minutes of video, in case the connection is slow, to ensure constant streaming. Once you start watching, it begins downloading 20-30 minutes ahead of where you are in the program, in case your connection is slow and it can't stream in real time. And it could save the previous 20-30 minutes, so you could pause, rewind, etc. It could even do that for your top 10 videos, without needing a fraction of that 40GB. Would you really need the entire video sitting in storage on the box? 10 videos? What if you want to own 100? Where do you put them all? Right now, you would have to buy a separate storage device and keep them all there (not immediately available).
And if you need to download a copy of The Incredibles to your iPod or iPhone, so be it, they still have the built-in storage capacity to handle that when you are not on the network. Let Apple or Disney or some central content or network provider store it (and back up copies in other locations, in case of disaster), and you buy permanent access to the movie over the network...which you can then access from anywhere, if you bring your Apple TV box along with you and have a network connection (which, essentially, owning an Apple TV box presumes).
Released from House Arrest
This means that Apple TV becomes mobile - not just something I can use only at home. I could bring my Apple TV box with me when I travel and watch my programs from anywhere in the world, as long as there was a decent Internet connection. And if I didn't want to bring the box with me? Watch my programs through a Web browser or iTunes, on any device connected to the network (laptop, iPhone, etc).
I Know I am Missing Something
There are probably very good reasons why Apple TV is designed this way. The people at Apple no doubt looked into this (or are looking into it for future versions), and decided, for good reasons, this was the way to go. It's just that the idea of having to personally store AND back up all of the movies I would want to "own" over time is mind boggling. Why not let Apple and/or Disney/Paramount/etc do all that storage and back up for me, and provide me with access to the content I have paid for?
Please, Just Sell Storage to the Providers, not Me
From a Sun employee perspective, doing it this way sure would make it easier for us to sell our enterprise storage products to the big content and network companies, instead of letting Maxtor and Seagate get all that action from home users. I really, really would prefer to not have to keep buying new, bigger storage devices - both for cost and convenience.
As I mentioned in a posting from last month, I decided to make the switch from PC to Mac. After 22 years of using PCs running a Microsoft operating system, I retired my 6-year-old Dell Dimension 4100 PC and, instead of buying another Dell, I went to the Apple store on Christmas Eve and purchased a new MacBook Pro.
