Apple TV Open to Developers - MacWorld Prediction

I was talking with Sean Tierney of Jump Box at cocktails after Social Media Club last night about how the cable/television industry needs to change their ways.  Oh … by the way Sean is a fellow All Saints and Brophy alum … small world.  Anyways, we were discussing convergence, CES and the upcoming MacWorld.  Apple has already announced their eight core Mac Pros which leaves MacWorld wide open for something pretty revolutionary.  People have speculated about movie rentals through iTunes since movies were for sale through iTunes … predictable.

He brought up though, and I agree, that something needs to happen with the Apple TV.  It’s adoption has been meager to say the least, and not a whole lot of exciting things have been going on with it.  Apple has a history of keeping their software and hardware closed. Keeping the OS X/iTunes/iPod/Apple TV combination proprietary is a way for them to control their media supply chain.  But if you think of the Apple TV and Front Row as a platform it completely changes the game.  We think they will open up both of these, giving application developers a way to get their content to every Mac/Apple TV on the planet while making it accessible from the 10 ft. interface at the same time.  We already have YouTube content formatted for it.  What if any online video/photo/email/rss website were able to develop for Front Row/Apple TV.  This would motivate people to buy Apple TV’s, giving owners access to free content.  It would also give people more of a reason to buy a Mac Mini and hook it up to their TV’s, as well as allow people to rent and buy movies from iTunes straight from the couch.  What if Hulu built an application for it?  Think of the consequences.  Cable companies would soon become only Internet providers.  Instead of paying $100/mo. for cable TV service we could access the plethora of content availble on the Internet in a usable way.  Talk about convergence!  I can’t wait.