AppleTV Take 2: Maybe the Second Time Apple Gets it Right

We reported about the AppleTV last year and we had mixed feelings about it. We loved the ease of use and the fact that unlike so many other devices on the market it just worked. One of our biggest pet peeves is that for this sector to take off devices need to just work. Not everyone likes to hack up little scripts to get their device to auto NFS mount their media server. Most people just want to plug the device in and start using it. This is were the AppleTV has crushed everyone else. We have not see a simpler setup and an easier way to get a device to find all your media then the way Apple has done it. It is in this ease that our main complaint lies.

We are not fans of being forced to use iTunes for all of our media. Call us commitment phobic, but we don't like being tied down to one technology. We have a large collection of DVDs ripped to .ISO as well as a bunch of other random formats. Having to use iTunes means that we need to covert all of our media to fit the model that Apple wants us to follow. This is probably fine for like 90 percent of the users, it just bothers us.

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Apple to Announce Major Update for AppleTV at MacWorld 2008

Well it looks like the good people over at AppleInsider have learned that Apple plans to to announce a major update to their media streamer, the AppleTV. Apple can not be happy with how the AppleTV sold in 2007 and we would guess is looking for ways to boosts its sales and get its foot more firmly in the media streaming market. There has been a lot of rumors floating around that iTunes will be updated as well to allow for HD movie rentals so a new AppleTV that can take advantage of this online rental option would make perfect sense.

As with most rumors there is very little in the way of concrete information, but with Macworld just a few days away you can be sure that this rumor will be answered soon, so stay tuned.