micah t collins

Apple TV will stop being a hobby when…

• it comes with a dock connector for connecting to third-party televisions, afterall, TV screens are rendering devices for video, like speakers are for audio. Asking them TV makers to do internet (really well) on their own is a still-born proposition, imo. So the cost-effective TV makers should love this.
• the dock connector has a serial protocol for indicating content wants to be played back, allowing TVs to power-up or mode-switch automatically, or per a user’s settings…
• it has iOS SDK support to allow any app on iOS mobile devices to push music, photos, videos 
• it has iOS SDK support to allow iOS mobile devices to instruct Apple TV where to stream cloud content from, because using an iPad to handle streaming down from the internet, then AirPlaying it to the Apple TV makes no sense long term. It’s a battery powered device afterall, and the user will want to multi-task into other apps once they tee-up the content on the TV
• it exposes meta info API for current playback content (title, episode/cast info, current time stamp, etc) so iOS mobile devices, or app “extensions” running on Apple TV itself…could provide a secondary screen experience, or primary screen overlays, related to currently rendering media

I think when this happens, the 10’ GUI gets less important, and discovery becomes rightfully in the hands of app developers for iPad/iPhone/iPod touch apps. Augmentation and supplementation also become the realm of app developers… as you’d have the means for apps to drive meta-data-driven intelligence, monetization features, and further content discovery.

When variations on this kind of capability happen, I think Apple will stop calling their TV a hobby.