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Apple TV Effort Said to Be Led By iTunes Creator
Way too much smoke gathering for there not to be some kind of fire. The real question: just how far along is this project?
Steve Jobs telling Walter Isaacson, “I finally cracked it” sure sounds promising. But in the 60 Minutes episode about the biography, Isaacson notes that the one area Jobs would have liked to transform was television — indicating that it may not happen. Of course, Isaacson could have just phrased it that way since Jobs unfortunately will not be around when the transformation happens.
Hardware and software are one thing. Apple will eventually get to where they need to be on those, no question. The true question is the content. An Apple television is great. An Apple television that transforms the television landscape in the same way that Apple transformed the mobile phone landscape is what we really need.
If Apple can’t get there, this may be just another project being worked on at Apple that doesn’t see the light of day. But Jobs’ comment and all this smoke sure seem to suggest otherwise.
I have no doubt that Apple could build a perfect television but I don’t know if they can acquire the content rights to make it worthwhile, that’s a big hurdle that costs a lot of money. Netflix learned this the hard way. The music industry wound up being transformed by iTunes, can Apple transform the movie and television industry the same way?
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NERD ALERT! Okay, admittedly I shouldn’t be so excited about this, but just watch this video of a new iPad app that displays your iTunes music library as a 3D galaxy! This blows any previously created iTunes visualizer out of the water, ocean, and planet— literally. If you were to project this at a party, your friends might even stop dancing just to look at it. It’s Friday. Get your geek on!
Planetary, a free iPad app from the data-artists at Bloom, is jaw-droppingly, eye-poppingly gorgeous. It analyzes your iTunes music library and visualizes it as a 3D galaxy, where artists become stars that form constellations, albums are planets orbiting those stars, and individual tracks are moons that spin around the planets. It’s “music of the spheres” made stunningly literal. But according to Bloom, it’s so much more than that.
Full writeup from Co.Design.
(via fastcompany)
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“I made that user base a social network. User bases love social networks.”
“Good! But can we make sure it’s nowhere near as useful as Twitter or Facebook?”
“Sure—let’s limit it to iTunes users! Actually, let’s make it an extension of the iTunes Store.”
“Now you’re talking. How about if we set it up so basically all it does is push people to buy downloads?”
“That might be a good idea. Let’s make sure its users can’t do anything much aside from hyping iTunes Store tracks to each other.”
“Cool! But of course users are going to be able to stream each other’s favorite songs and playlists, right?”
“Not so fast. 90-second clips are anyone really needs, right?”
“Right! Oh, man, watch out, Zuckerberg, this is gonna be huge.”
(Source: TIME, via matthewknell)
