Believe the hype. Apple’s movie rental announcement is a game changer for the maligned Apple TV, which should finally get some traction after a rough start. We don’t know yet whether the studios will stock huge catalogs of movies, but the iTunes Store-Apple TV-movie rental ecosystem is ready for its close-up.
A brief history of the nearly year-old and just-revamped Apple TV after the jump.
Concept. Apple introduced Apple TV as the work-in-progress iTV in September 2006, launched it at Macworld in January 2007 as “an easy to use and fun way to wirelessly play all your favorite iTunes content from your Mac or PC on your widescreen TV, including movies, TV shows, music, photos and podcasts[,]” and shipped it in March.
Launch. Despite mostly positive reviews, some called it a dud, criticizing its low-resolution downloads that looked crappy but required an HDTVs and its inability to download content independently of a computer running iTunes. By June, one analyst reported that sales of Apple TV were dismal and that Apple was considering dumping it.
Expectations. Steve Jobs hinted that the device needed time to mature, calling it a hobby in May and telling USA Today in June (on the eve of the iPhone launch):
We’ve got two strong legs on our chair today — we have the Mac business, which is a $10 billion business, and music, our iPod and iTunes business, which is $10 billion. We hope the iPhone is the third leg on our chair, and maybe one day Apple TV will be the fourth leg.
Maybe one day? Steve Jobs and everyone else knew Apple TV 1.0 needed a lot of work.
Disappointment. The only movies available were a skimpy selection of catalog titles at $9.99 and up, none were available in HD, you still had to purchase content from your computer and transfer it to the device, and the TV offerings were skimpy and not available the same night as broadcast. By December, one analyst said Apple had sold only only 400,000 units — about the same as the GarageBand loop library CD-ROMs. Enter Apple TV 2.0.
Apple TV 2.0. Rumors started flying in December that 20th Century Fox would make PPV movies available on a new iTunes movie rental store, and rumors of other studios soon followed.
On Jan. 15, 2008, Steve Jobs made a slew of game-changing announcements for Apple TV: a movie rental service with every major studio on board, catalog titles for $2.99 and new titles for $3.99, HD for only $1 more, a 24-hour viewing window, direct purchase of movies, TV shows and music from Apple TV, and a price drop of the base model from $299 to $229.
I will discuss the published features list some potential hurdles to wide acceptance of Apple TV in a future post.
You might want to do a brief re-edit – “Malingered” is not the same as “Maligned”, by a long shot!
You are correct. Change made.
[...] 23, 2008 by Scott Porch Earlier this week, I posted a brief history of Apple TV from concept (iTV), to initial release (1.0) to the update announced [...]
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