Macsimum News: Apple's hits and misses in '07

There is nothing wrong with the AppleTV that a 5mb patch couldn't fix. Let me buy content with it and open it enough to add more QuickTime codecs.

My guess, however, is that they expected to roll out rentals shortly after releasing the ATV but something got held up. I fully expect to see an upgrade in the coming weeks.

What's sad is that I totally forgot about AppleTV. For a product that had such hype behind it that's a surprise.

The real miss is that the iPhone gobbled up so much dev that it hurt nearly all of the other product lines.

Biggest Hit - iPhone, natch. I might not be getting one any time soon (cold day in hell and whatnot before AT&T gets my money), but it was undoubtedly THE tech product of 2007 - not just from Apple, but from everybody.

Biggest Miss - I do agree with the Apple TV. I like the idea - I think the idea is superb, I think the execution was severely flawed, and while I have no doubt that plenty of people have it and love it - there was absolutely no compelling reason for me to get one, because unless I hack it to bits - it cannot access any of my non-iTunes or MOV media. That makes it useless, as almost all of my videos are in AVI containers. If I can (and have been able to for over three years) access that information from both of my TiVos, and I can also access my photos, my MP3s, AAC files (not iTunes, but everything else) from TiVo - why should I invest in Apple TV?

That said, an AppleTV and Mac Mini combo is something I would definitely buy.

one of the biggest misses, that i've yet to ever see mentioned even once anywhere, is the fact that they came out with these gorgeous new iMacs all pretty in silver and black, yet failed to change the color of the keys on the keyboard to black too! it's the exact same keys as my black macbook has, so wtf??? that's been bugging me since they came out!

I'm sure the ATV is a great product for what it does, but I just need it to play more codecs and VIDEO_TS folders from shares. I swear I'd buy 3-4 if it did this.

I don't need or want live TV from it (especially with the limited remote). I just hate the fact that Itunes only "accepts" Apple formats. I refuse to reformat everything and import it into Itunes. Even if Flip4Mac worked on it that would be great (I'm not sure if that's possible now)

Ditto on the AppleTV. Except for whiners who think they need yet another DVR, the critter is satisfying as any other advances in home media.

HDTV is still limited by available content. So is AppleTV. We don't have content providers stampeding into IPTV - well, at least not in the US.

But, my wife and I watch about 8-12 hours a week of downloaded regular programming via AppleTV on the big screen in the living room. It's choice #1 - because of podcasts like Cranky Geeks or Tekzilla or GigaOm - before we switch over to the HiDef DVR and DirecTV.

Hey, we're both geeks.

I agree with Willux on the Apple TV. We have a new baby and the Apple TV has been great. Showing the grandparents a slideshow on the big screen along with baby movies is nearly priceless. We've watched movies (from iTunes or moved over from DVD), podcasts, youtube favs, and of course having all of our music available is excellent.

I can see a number of ways to make it even better, but what we have right out of the box is well worth what we paid.

Perhaps the Apple TV detractors are measurbators?(http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/7.htm)

Biggest miss for me came in around Sept/Oct when Apple started cracking down on iPhone hacking and unlocking -- it wasn't so much the fact that the hacks broke, but what they said about it, followed quickly by their introduction of their ringtone policy. Their stance on user freedom sounded like everything that made me leave Microsoft for the Mac platform many years ago. Dare I say they surpassed even Microsoft and started acting like a wireless carrier. Of course they quickly retracted from a lot of those positions, but for a while I really felt betrayed and was embarrassed to have been such a vocal supporter of a company that would act that way.

I don't actually have an iPhone, so it was only important to me in a philosophical way. In fact when I bought a new phone right after that, I got a Windows Mobile phone instead because I TRUSTED MICROSOFT MORE to let me use it as I saw fit.

That's what I'm going to remember about Apple in 2007. I think maybe they just went through a phase and are over it now, but it's sort of like when a friend does something really nasty to you, and you forgive them but you know your friendship will never be quite the same.

I dislike how the Apple TV always gets listed as a failure for apple, i have owned one now for about 6 months and since obtaining it i have not used, purchased or even looked at a DVD. On this front alone steve succeeded in simplifying my Media experience.

What the hell is with the flood of big black connect comments?

Racism thords me.