I got mine this weekend. It’s worth getting just to see how a really well-designed product works. Apple TV IS really well designed, in part because it explicitly doesn’t do certain relatively complicated things.

1) The first iPod model that came out did NOT have iTunes Music Store (hard to remember), so you only played MP3 files on it. It was also locked to a single computer, so if you changed computers, you lost whatever was on your iPod. This was the predecessor to the Fairplay DRM — a really simple way to guarantee to the music labels that Apple wouldn’t enourage piracy.

Apple TV, likewise, will only synchronize with one computer. If you switch which computer you sync with, the stuff on the hard disk inside Apple TV gets overwritten. At first, I thought this was stupid, in part because my computer leaves the house when I do. But then I realized it was brilliant because syncing with multiple computers is much harder to make work for both Apple and the consumer.

2) All that said, synchronizing that much data (movies are about 1.5GB each; TV shows are 200-500MB; and so forth) takes a LOT of time on a wireless network. If you’re used to using Firewire or USB 2.0 with an iPod, be prepared for a whole different dimension. I started syncing my iTunes data yesterday around 10am. By the time I unplugged to go to the office, the Apple TV had both movies and about half the TV shows. And syncing is really pretty dumb; it goes one media type at a time, so still no photos on the Apple TV.

3) That said, there’s nothing wrong with this product! The screen resolution (HD only) is spectacular so that movies and TV shows I buy on iTunes look better than anything else on my television, possibly even including the Blu-ray DVDs I’ve watched on my Samsung DVD machine. Photos are brilliant (once they all get there). And music is as good as the sound system on the television.

In fact, you begin to think that maybe Apple will end up being the delivery mechanism for real HD video. The company has no legacy to protect from being a cable or satellite or broadcast network. The selection of movies they have on iTunes is already pretty good. And you don’t have the issues of protecting consumers from their own media that the Fairplay system creates for music listeners. (I’ve stopped buying music on iTunes since I can’t use it anywhere else.) Video is different than music: Watch it once or maybe twice and you’re finished with 99% of the video that exists. For the other 1%, go buy the DVD.

4) The industrial design of Apple TV is beyond brilliant. It’s small enough that it will go anywhere and pretty enough that it fits just fine sitting by itself in front of the television (not in the stack of stuff underneath). My television has an HDMI plug, so it was the easiest thing in the world to install: Plug in power, connect to the TV, turn it on.

This is the most satisfying experience I’ve had since the first time I got my TiVo to work — and the installation time was about 2% of what it took to get that TiVo to record its first show!

Update April 1, 2007: 1) Michael Chang (comment below) was correct. Apple TV can show HD resolution, but iTunes doesn’t deliver movies and video in that resolution. 2) I solved the only-one–HDMI-slot by buying an HDMI switch, but this stuff is expensive! The switch ($141 including tax) and a 4-foot HDMI cable ($108) cost almost as much as the Apple TV ($299). I didn’t shop around, so I’m sure the BestBuy guy just gave me the most expensive stuff. But that’s the business model for Monster, isn’t it?

The news this weekend is that InfoWorld will not be printed anymore. I was editor twice, in 1983-84 and again 1991-96, so this seems like it would be sad. But it’s actually anti-climatic and precisely for the reason that makes being a VC now so much fun: computers don’t matter anymore.

InfoWorld was fun because computers did matter. Personal computers mattered in the eighties; every week new models and features came out and it was exciting to participate in the reporting of those events. Networked computers mattered in the nineties and it was fun to be a key evaluator of new products for enterprises. Now that stuff is just a commodity: Personally, I’ve stopped caring about which processor Intel is making and am way beyond caring about new versions of Windows or new client applications. Instead, the action has moved entirely to network based services delivered over the internet.

I shudder to think that I even thought it was important to forecast in 1991 that the last mainframe would be unplugged in 1996. Sure, I was wrong and mainframes kept plugging away and, indeed, are continuing to plug away as we speak. But does anybody care, except the people who sell them and buy them and have to keep them running?

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