Apple Nag

I’ve used your products primarily since March 1, 1984 when I bought my first original Macintosh and ImageWriter printer. I was proud to be a Mac owner because it was so superior to the alternatives.

In the subsequent years leading up to the present time I became a Mac bigot. Everything else was not only not good, it was trash and I wondered how anyone could use that crapola.

Then Macs started going downhill with quality problems in the hardware and software. Macs just sucked less. I stopped doing unpaid sales and evangelizing for you and kept pretty quiet. When people asked me what kind of computer to get, I would no longer say, “Get a Mac”, I’d say, “What do you want to use a computer for?” I often told them to buy a PC.

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Was it all the way back in 2002 that you guys first starting talking about the Digital Hub. That’s seven, count ‘em, years ago. When do you think we’ll see it come to fruition?

You have made steps, for sure, because we’ve got Macs, iPods, iPhones, Apple TV, and a monitor or two. That covers desktop and mobile computing.

There’s iLife and MobileMe to tie the hardware together giving us personal web site creation, photos, home movies, the ability to burn DVDs (those old fossils), and to share content with our family, friends, and the world on the Internet.

iTunes is a big part of the integration for music, movies, TV shows, podcasts and syncing to the other devices like iPods and Apple TV. In many ways, the features are targeted at making you more money than what’s best for your customers (don’t get me started on the 2G Shuffle and iTunes 8.1 fiasco).

It sure looks like you’ve got a hub strategy. Yet, you don’t promote the hub concept anymore. Is that because it would handcuff you into implementing features that would be detrimental to maximizing your profit margin?

Let’s talk about the rough edges and one huge group of people you’ve left out — family.

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The more I use my Apple TV, the more I wish you’d stop treating it as a hobby and go pro. I mean, I’d be paying the same price regardless, right?

iTunes decided it couldn’t sync with my Apple TV because it could not connect. But wait, why was it still in the sidebar then? Was there some delay in realizing it had lost touch with the Apple TV? If so, then why wasn’t the device removed from the list as soon as it realized it couldn’t connect after I asked it to sync?

The first step was to quit iTunes and relaunch. The iTunes menu bar remained even though the Dock said the app had quit. Sigh.

After relaunching, the Apple TV showed up in the list of devices, but still wouldn’t sync. I guess that means I’d have to reboot the Apple TV.

Now this is where I get annoyed.

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A couple of nights ago, I was browsing the iTunes Store from my Apple TV and found your $1 movie specials. I opted for the $2 HD version of Rain Man.

This is a good deal considering the price of regular rentals that are between $4-$6. It’s not a great deal because you don’t have the enormous expenses of a bricks-and-mortar store, but fair given the high market prices.

When I looked at the list of Top rented movies, wouldn’t you know it but all three $1 rentals were in the top 7 movies.

I know you don’t have complete control of pricing, in spite of your best efforts, but perhaps someone at the movie studios will figure out that they can make a ton of money by having reasonable prices.

The Apple TV purchasing experience is fantastic, something you’ve really done well (except for trying to find a movie). I’m technologically savvy enough to know how to use The Pirate Bay and Bittorrent to find almost any movie I want to watch. But, it’s a horrible experience trying to download some low-res video with all the hassle of worrying about seeds and wasting my ridiculously low Rogers data cap by uploading back to the torrent. It takes hours before I can start watching, days for a pseudo-HD movie. It’s not worth the hassle.

Why would I inflict that upon myself when I can watch an HD movie on my Apple TV for $2, and start watching it a couple of minutes after I decide to do so?

So I don’t pirate movies because my time is valuable. I subscribe to Rogers Video Direct, operated by Zip.ca. But, I have to wait days, weeks, or months for a DVD. I have limited choice over what movie arrives and have to wait a long time for new releases.

Is everybody in the movie studios and yourselves daft? Can’t you see you’re walking away from money? Price online downloads at a reasonable amount and everyone — everyone — wins.

Since rolling back to iTunes 8.0 from your infamous iTunes 8.1 “downgrade” (at least for the 2G Shuffle), I’ve been experiencing a plethora of errors when syncing to Apple TV. It seems the database must have been screwed up somehow, even though I restored it from your own backup.
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I was converting some TV shows over to Apple TV format to view in the comfort of my living room instead of yet more hours in front of the computer, and noticed that the aspect ratio was wrong. The original content had been originated for HD so the broadcaster left the top and bottom black bars in the standard def signal. I actually prefer to see all the content rather than the clipping that happens with pan-and-scan, so I don’t mind this.

When I use my Elgato EyeTV 200 box, it allows me to playback and select various aspect ratios to view the standard def content on a widescreen monitor or TV, effectively removing the black bars. This is yet another feature that is missing from the Apple TV.

You keep saying the Apple TV is only a hobby. I don’t think I’ll buy another one, or recommend any friends to buy one, until you remove a lot of these nagging limitations. It’s time to turn your hobby into a business.

The Apple TV is a funny beast. It’s supposed to be a media player but only handles a small subset of the media formats out there. Stranger, it doesn’t handle media formats that your other applications handle, like QuickTime or DVD Player.

The strangest omission of supported media types is the old VideoTS folder used by DVDs. If DVD Player can view videos stored on disk in the VideoTS folder, why are you not supporting that with the Apple TV?

You let me look at public flickr and MobileMe content, but not private content. You don’t even give us the option to log in to view private content.

What about the numerous other photo-sharing sites out there. To a point, you can’t support them all, but not even Picasa? You partner with Google for other things, like maps on the iPhone and looking up addresses in Address Book, but no support for Google’s Picasa photo-sharing?

A positive user experience is all about consistency. Please make an effort to reduce the Apple entropy.

When I turned on my Apple TV awhile back, it informed me that there was a new update, 2.3.1. That’s it. No other information.

I had to go to your web site to find out what it was all about. You are aware that the Apple TV does have a display and is capable of communicating text to us users, right? Why make us look this up on a computer? That wastes our time.

Well, at least you did give us some information in the article. That’s quite a bit different from many other OS updates where you use cryptic statements that there are “stability improvements”. Don’t we deserve more information? Are you trying to hide something?

Not that I’d modified my Apple TV, but it did break those who had installed Boxee. In case you haven’t noticed, when we gave you money for the Apple TV, it became our property. It doesn’t belong to you anymore. It seems you’re suffering from separation anxiety and just can’t let go.

The Apple TV has so much potential that has been unrealized. Sort of like the Mac Mini, that everyone really wants as their media device, but can’t afford.

I must be the only person using an unmodified Apple TV, without all the unauthorized enhancements like Boxee. You know, the mod that you broke with the 2.3.1 update.
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