Comment by magic_haze | Hacker News Reader

Comment by magic_haze | Hacker News Reader

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I don't get it. This is the exact same model Roku, Google, Xbox, Ouya et al are trying to follow, and so far, they've all had limited success. Even Netflix and Amazon had to give up chasing after content and had to resort to making their own. What makes Apple's attempt so different from all the others in this area? (No sarcasm intended, I'm genuinely curious.) What leverage do they have that can guarantee them the kind of instant success that the idevices had?

I guess integration with their other products is one advantage, but really, most other consoles have smartphone apps as well, and they're nothing special. The integration with Airplay that TFA touts seems rather dubious... isn't that just normal QOS any old router can do?

EDIT: The most obvious advantage, I guess, is the large corpus of devs who are willing to rewrite their apps to target a new form factor. No other company right now commands that sort of manpower, and that, indirectly, may be enough to convince content owners and game publishers to target their platform.

The idea doesn't matter nearly as much as the execution of said idea. Roku product is OK from the little that I've seen, but they haven't put in the marketing or the branding effort to hit it big. Google didn't even pretend to know what was going on with their TV attempt when it came to content. Xbox/Ps3 are fairly terrible UIs, and don't respect the user enough, as they assume that the user is going to be a 15-35 year old male gamer, with attendant good-enough UI. Amazon seems to try to hide their streaming business, I apparently have a subscription through Prime but haven't streamed a single thing because I can't consistently find out how to browse it. (Please don't tell me how, my point is that Amazon has not made streaming a focus.)

If, and this is a big "if," Apple can make this easy, and generate enough noise, and most importantly of all get critical content provider momentum, they could see significant market penetration. What's clear is that the traditional tech media has been absolutely terrible at judging products' potential at their initial launch, at least when it comes to Apple.

What makes Apple's attempt so different from all the others in this area?

Because literally with the press of a button you can make the video playing on your iPhone or iPad appear on your HDTV.

Because you just plug in the Apple TV and hook it to your wireless network and it shows up on your iOS devices instantly as a recipient for video and music streaming.

No setup. No confusing configuration. It just works.

It's the same reason that Apple was the first company to really get video calls to work. Other vendors and phone companies tried to get video calls to work...and some of the tech crowd certainly made use of it. But Facetime was the first video calling system that made it ridiculously easy for non-technical folks to use.

This.

I have an AppleTV and a ChromeCast. I have a bunch of (legal) rips of the Simpsons.

On the ChromeCast I have to load a single video in the Chrometab every time. The playback isn't always smooth.

On the AppleTV, I drag VNC to the display, hit full screen and watch all day. The playback is smooth and hassle free.

The ChromeCast is more portable, but not by much. If the AppleTV was USB powered I would consider traveling with it.

Apple has half a billion users with active credit cards.

Most realistic answer. Much better response to the question of how can Apple execute the product better than others than gushing about Apple's marketing team.

I think the biggest advantage for Apple is that they have the most popular content distribution platform, and they don't care if they make a profit on content. That makes them pretty attractive to content producers.

If you think of app developers as content producers, you can see how well Apple is already doing with partners.

having a hundred billion dollars in the bank helps, that and a near monopoly on good tablets if not a real one.

They could always cut a deal that makes some studios jump, something for a few years to lock them in.

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