Apple Facing Down Challenges in TV

Ars Technica reports: Apple TV has been a persistent loser from a company that usually only tolerates winners. It's clear that Apple wants to do something "in the living room," but damned if it can figure out exactly what that is. Yesterday, Apple took another run at this thing, announcing an "all-new" Apple TV.

As with any new electronic gadget, I must be of two minds about the new Apple TV. The first, most difficult question is, will the new Apple TV be a successful product for Apple? The second question is easier: is this a product I want to buy for myself?

For any consumer electronics product, the degree to which those two questions have the same answer is dictated by—for lack of a better term—one's geekiness. Mine is substantial. I have not wanted any of the Apple TV products (including the one released yesterday), and thus far, none of them have had much success in the market either. But does that mean that an Apple TV designed to my specifications would be a hit? The easy answer is, probably not.

But pondering the prospects of a cheaper, smaller, streaming-only, renting-only, iOS-based Apple TV device in the rumor-filled weeks leading up to its announcement yesterday has changed my mind. In this particular case, I think my desires are actually very well aligned with the mass market—and continue to be at odds with the products Apple has decided to create.

It seems to me that Apple has been trying to recreate the success of the iTunes Store with its Apple TV efforts. Success in the digital music market had a familiar set of requirements. The experience had to be easy, the content had to be there, and, of course, the price had to be right. Apple knocked these down one at a time with iTunes, starting out as a Mac-only product, adding a hardware component to ensure a smooth end-to-end experience, and getting content owners on board with a combination of guile ("Hey, it's only available to Mac users, a tiny percentage of the market. If things get out of hand, at least it'll be contained, right?") and trademark Steve Jobs persuasion ("Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?")

That worked for music because Apple was first on the scene. Legal digital music sales that non-geek customers could understand and use successfully didn't really exist before Apple's iTunes/iPod combination arrived. Apple had time to grow its music business organically, with very little competent competition. The end result for consumers was simple, comprehensive access to almost all the content they wanted, at prices they found acceptable.

The landscape in the living room is very different. It's not a green field where Apple can plant its digital seeds and grow them into a beautiful walled garden. It is, to use Steve Jobs's own word, "balkanized." Even before Apple dipped its toe in the water with the first Apple TV in 2006, the living room was a battlefield scorched by decades of competition between broadcast networks, cable and satellite providers, and a whole raft of consumer electronics makers.

Apple's failure to recognize this reality has been and continues to be the root cause of Apple TV's woes. Pulling an iTunes—creating a "flagship" experience that comes to define the entire market—is nearly impossible to do in such a crowded, well-established market, but Apple seems to be determined to keep banging its head against this wall.

To read more, please see the full story at Ars Technica.