Ok, maybe the little black box won’t arrive in every single home, but unlike the 1st-gen AppleTV, the 2nd-gen announced today is going to sell like buttery hotcakes slathered in maple syrup.
So what’s different?
it’s a third the price of the original. A third. This is the biggie — The drastically dropped price removes it from the realm of “jeez, I could buy a small TV for that price” and places it into the realm of “hell, that’s less than most Blu-ray players.”
it’s stealthier. At a quarter the size of the original and stealth black, it’s so unobtrusive most people won’t even know it’s hooked up tot he TV.
It streams. This is the other biggie. No worrying about whether the AppleTV library is synced with the MacBook library — because it’s all one library. It’ll provide your iPad or iPhone with a massive screen for viewing podcasts or photos or whatever. And the music-streaming’s a nice plus.
More and cheaper rental options. TV shows are cheaper — at a buck, a third the price of the original; then there’s Netflix access, which, by now, must be the premier way to view rentals (and certainly a hell of a lot cheaper than iTunes for movies).
And the downsides? iTunes movie rentals are ridiculously steep, but that’ll most likely drop after the inevitable vociferous and prolonged stream of complaints about the pricing and comparisons with Netflix; and the fact that AppleTV caps out at 720p is a big deal to those with 1080p units — most likely paving the way for a 1080p version of AppleTV next year — but it’s not a problem for those with 720p TVs, and some 1080p owners won’t care. After all, iTunes rentals aren’t available in rez higher than 720p.
The biggest bummer will hit those with extensive libraries stored on an external drive: Since there’s no USB port, getting content from drive to TV is going to be more of a pain than it ideally should be.
That aside, Apple has a winner, and it seems like our readers agree; as of this post, just over half of those taking our poll say they’ll pop for a new AppleTV, compared with about a quarter who’re unsure and 18 percent who say they won’t.
