5 Ways To Fix Apple TV

The idea of making an internet and media centered machine has worked for many companies; WebTV in the 90s (sold to MS), TiVo earlier this decade, and XBMC on the hacked XBOX.

Thus begs the question, why is the Apple TV failing?

I think Apple was too accustomed to fan boys instantly humping every new product thrown at them that they were unable to cope with having to try to work for Apple TV's success. Apple. I love you more than any other company in the world, but your Apple TV SUCKS. It's ok though, I'm here to help you, here are 5 ways to save the Apple TV.

1. Leverage alternative video types.

This is so simple. The reason why mp3 players were successful was because they played the most popular audio codec. If you go to piratebay.org, you can see that almost every movie has tens of thousands of seeds, with upwards of hundreds of thousands for popular anime like Naruto or Bleach. This is EXACTLY why XMBC was so popular, it was able to play any video file, streamed from any computer. In order for Apple to facilitate this, they need to open up iTunes to different types of videos, specifically .avi and .mkv files. Further, they have to make it as easy to drag-and-drop new files into the library as mp3s.

From a legal stand point there should be no differentiation between .avi files and .mp3 files. The same case can be brought for both. From a viral standpoint, this is the number one and most important step.

2. Subscription all-you-can-view videos

There was unanimous acclaim for Netflix's new streaming box, Roku. It's priced at $100 and leverages existing subscription fees to allow unlimited access to Netflix's online library. Apple has enough leverage to port the exact same model, and it should.

3. Ads stitched into mainstream movies and videos.

This will mimic Hulu. Even the exact same content is a good start. The inherent problem with watching Hulu is that the quality is sub-par and it's not as comfortable as watching on the TV. These things can be fixed by predownloading videos with stitched in ads. Hollywood and Apple need to understand that viewers are not adverse to ads, we're adverse to shitty content and having good content isolated in a very limited viewing window.

4. Opening up the Apple TV platform and power

The Apple TV is basically a full-fledged Mac OSX machine. They should leverage that and allow the Apple TV to run in OSX mode. Then they can merge the Mac Mini and the Apple TV into a single product. This should sell well to developers and consumers on a tighter budget. If that is too cannibalistic, I would suggest at least porting a couple of the more popular applications to Apple TV. Specifically, Safari and Preview.

5. Enable Timemachine

Apple TV has pretty good size HDD. Some people might not want to store hundreds of videos at a time. It seems to me that if Timemachine were enabled, it would make the Apple TV exponentially more useful.

Best of luck Apple, either way, I'll love you forever (pending you release a new Macbook Pro by the end of the month).