AppleTV shipping?

Monday, March 19, 2007 by Dave Winer.

Apple has been pushing updates of iTunes with features that tease about AppleTV, but today they came right out with a fairly complete pitch for the imminent product, which some think will ship later this week, perhaps as early as tomorrow. 

I just got an email from Ole Eichorn saying he got a notice from Apple that they've shipped his Apple TV. So that's it, whatever it is, it's shipping. 

I feel like I've done my homework, not sure if I'm going to get an AppleTV, it depends on how heavy the DRM is. I suspect it will be pretty heavy. I've had an iPod since they came out, but I've never bought a song at the iTunes music store, because of the DRM. I also have a Mac Mini on my TV, acting as my Internet-based DVR. I pay Comcast $115 a month for subscriptions to all the services I use. 

In a rational world, we'd be building apps off this site as we're building on Twitter. It's really rich, but we're too scared of Hollywood to work together on this. Or at least I'm too scared. But I admire what they're doing, esp since they just added excellent RSS support. I may go ahead and design some software that automates BitTorrent for a friend (who will remain nameless) who is a Gilmore Girls fan who thinks its silly that she has to remember to download the program every week. I know Azureus has RSS support, but as it's implemented it's way too technical for even me to configure properly, and it's hopeless to try to explain to a person who knows how to use a TiVO, which is all the technical expertise that should be required. The UI should allow a user to express their desire the way my friend expressed it -- every time there's a new episode of the Gilmore Girls, get it for me. Not 204 copies of last week's show produced by different people. Just the one I always get. With EZTV doing quality control, the problem is close to solved for TV shows. And for movies there's Axxo. Don't know who he is? It's worth learning.  

The point is this -- the open DRM-less world is tantalizingly close to delivering the nirvana we seek, entirely as a labor of love. If we somehow could get clearance from Hollywood to go ahead (unlikely) we could take the last few steps to make it user friendly. Compare that against what Apple will offer us in the next few days. Maybe Apple will challenge Hollywood, the open letter from Steve Jobs offers a sliver of hope. We'll be watching, very carefully.