Video iPods and iTunes store
Speculation about video iPods and a video iTunes
store finally bore fruit this week, with Apple's announcement this week of an
iPod with a small video screen and availability of music videos and a handful of
TV shows from ABC in Apple's iTunes online store.
These developments, however intriguing, don't
quite match what the speculative hype would have had us believe. The video being
offered is really of rather modest stature. No movies, just a few shorts from
Pixar (wonder how Jobs managed to pull off that deal!) , a slew of so-called
music videos (yawn!), and a five TV shows. Perhaps the biggest surprise was the
price: a mere $1.99 per video download. I wonder if Apple will make any profit
at all at such low prices, considering the bandwith costs of downloading a one
hour TV show. I've heard that a full season of "Lost" is over 4 GBs. That's
around 200 MB an episode—considerably more than a 4 MB song. Yet they only
cost twice as much. What sort of economics are we talking about here? How can
Apple do this and not lose
money?
Another sign that Apple does
plan, eventually, to compete for the Living Room with Microsoft and Sony is the
remote that now comes with the new iMac. While it certainly runs circles over
the remotes for the XBox (in terms of simplicity), is Apple going to use such a
device on a multimedia PC, perhaps shaped in the form of the Mac Mini, which
could be plugged into a TV? And if they manage to pull this off, what sort of
content will they be able to bring to the device beyond music videos and a few
TV shows? And why would they test-run this device on an iMac, which is not meant
to be a living room device? Why is Jobs entering this market so tentatively, as
if he really doesn't have his heart in it?
Posted: Fri - October 14, 2005 at 02:20 PM