Getting Technical with AppleTV
Originally published on macresearch.org, around 2007. Reproduced from the author's archive; some links may no longer resolve.
Getting Technical with TV
Two weeks ago, I became the proud owner of a 160GB TV. I felt a bit guilty when I bought it, because I thought it might end up just being a cupboard filler, like the PSP I bought last year. I held out for as long as I could, but in the end, I just had to have it.
Two weeks on, and I have few regrets. I’ve added my iPhoto library to it, and a few of my kid’s favorite videos, saving me from the disdainful task of walking to the DVD cabinet, snapping the DVD out, opening the DVD player, inserting the disc, closing the player, and returning to the couch. Now Pixar is just a couple of clicks away. Heaven.
But that’s not the best thing about my TV. The best thing is that it opens up a whole new world of media to me, including video podcasts and Google TechTalks (link no longer available). Sure, I could watch these already on my computer, but for some reason it’s just not the same. Last week, I watched Merlin Mann’s Google talk (link no longer available) on managing your email, and last night it was a 3 hour debate between the developers of Ruby on Rails and Django, both first class web development frameworks.
Why am I getting excited about this stuff? It’s because my choice in media is no longer shackled by the mainstream to American Idol and Friends. By definition, the mainstream media shows things that of interest to mainstream viewers, the lowest common 80% of the market. If you are interested in niches, like Macs, or developing web sites, or high-performance computing, then you will find very little to amuse you on your TV.
That was, of course, until TV made its appearance. Now I can find all sorts of stuff that interests me, and recline on my sofa while I watch, as if catching up with the latest episode of The Bold and the Beautiful.
The only drawback is that now that there’s an on my TV, it’s getting addictive. I regularly watch to the early hours. It’s having a negative impact on my family life and productivity at work. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that there’s never anything on the TV after all…