Not knocking this article at all, but my minor gripe is with the title.
The original "Modest Proposal" was a satirical article suggesting the Irish eat their children. If this essay is actually following that style, then it's far too subtle for my radar.
I plead guilty to being too clever by half. Playing off the Swift original, but using the word "modest" quite literally, not with irony. This is a modest proposal for an Apple TV...
But... there's no word play, there. You're just using the actual meaning. I was confused by the title, because I started the essay expecting satire, and then I had to context switch when I realized there was none.
I don't see it. Sure Apple could do it, but usurping all of the companies that are filling its pockets right now with media payments would not necessarily be the best course of action.
I don't know how a company like Apple could do this and not piss off their media partners. "Don't worry ESPN! We don't need you for our new content streaming appliance, but we'll still sell your content on our other App store!". Somehow I don't think Apple is quite ready to open the floodgates on something like this.
Apple is either going to do an Apple TV with all of their content in tow or not at all.
But after reading that rather interesting profile of Samsung earlier today[^1], I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see Samsung enter the ring before Apple did. Copy the best ideas from the PS3/PS4, copy the best from the upcoming Xbone, try not to give in to feature creep[^2] this time, and they might have a shot.
I think most people overcomplicate what the next Apple TV should be and we confuse the service model with the device.
Just open up the current Apple TV to developers. iPad didn't have many purpose-built applications before it launched, and now most major broadcasters, cable networks target the platform. Open it and they will come.
If Apple spends the cash for NFL rights, I would hope that they can find a way to add playoff games, show preseason and Thursday/Friday/Saturday/Monday games, and eliminate all blackouts.
I don't care if the price goes up somewhat to compensate, but its absolutely aggravating when you're paying real money for this and you get a crappy product. There's no worse feeling than curling up to watch a game and finding out its blacked out.
yes, apple should embrace distributed live streaming and make it really easy and google glasses or apple glasses should support it. These guys are doing it right now: http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/bittorrent-live.html
It has been on the drawing board for years, we are still hosting websites on single servers... slowly moving to 'clouds' (owned by single companies).. but we should really be moving to media swarms.
The original "Modest Proposal" was a satirical article suggesting the Irish eat their children. If this essay is actually following that style, then it's far too subtle for my radar.