The headline might be a bit much, especially the
inevitability. Still I got to thinking
after reading this
article on Apple. I instantly thought
cable will be dead over time.
First, for those who aren’t familiar with Apple
TV is a small
box that hooks up to your TV. From that
you can order movies off of iTunes, watch shows from Hulu, stream NetFlix
movies, view anything like photos or movies from any computer in the house, and other
features. My brother has it, and I can
attest it’s very smooth, clean, and easy to use. So why will it end cable?
- Who likes their cable operator? It’s overpriced; you pay $200 a month and watch three channels. Rarely do you find anything worth watching. The customer service is awful. Everyone seems to think they have the worst cable company.
- With Apple TV you wouldn’t deal with any cable company and only buy the box once.
- The business model is not consumer friendly. Most of it is all or nothing and you pay for channels you don’t need. For example, if the Oprah Channel costs Time Warner $1 per subscriber I am incurring that cost even if I don’t watch that channel.
- With Apple TV you would only pay for what you wanted, at least how it is currently set up.
- You can stream a lot of shows now on your computer. You can even stream Bloomberg TV all day live. This adds cheap alternatives at a fraction of the cost.
- Streaming will be easy to wrap into an Apple TV and it only costs $100 at the onset for the box.
- The marketplace is evolving. Record companies, cell phone manufacturers, hardware, software, publishers, etc. industries that all changed because Apple innovated while others didn’t.
- Do you think Apple or cable companies will be quicker to innovate or set the marketplace? Further, Apple products at the very least tend to be the most user friendly, efficient, clean, and glitch free of any on the market. I have a Samsung Blue-Ray player that cost $150 and offers similar features to that of Apple TV, but it is a pain to use.
Will this happen overnight?
No, it might not even happen at all.
However, when I look at the landscape cable seems like easy pickings for
Apple. While I admit Apple TV isn’t
there yet to overcome cable, in time it should evolve. When that happens, I know I won’t be
purchasing cable.
