Opinion on the AppleTV/YouTube Deal

Filed in archive Internet TV on May 31, 2007

A day after this blog quoted Fortune magazine saying that Apple TV is "a dud," Apple announced a deal with Google to show YouTube videos on the Apple TV device. Business Week wrote that by joining forces, "the electronics maker and search giant just extended their lead" in bringing Internet entertainment from the PC to the TV.

OnlineMediaDaily says that for Apple, "the obvious upside is that Google content could help sell more Apple TVs." Yeah, right, that's just what was holding the device back: the pent up need to see piano-playing cat videos on my big screen television!

But people obviously disagree with me. Tim Bajarin, president of technology consultant Creative Strategies, says that YouTube clips should help Apple sell more of the iTunes-compatible devices. "With YouTube, [Jobs] might have struck a new nerve and in the process gotten more interest," he says.

The only way that a TV-connected device like Apple's can drive more hardware sales would be if YouTube became a video-on-demand, hi-def repository of premium content. YouTube is anything but that choosing to specialize in lo-def, lean-into, user-generated content that cannot be found anywhere on television.

Now if Apple recruited a Web-based TV services like Joost, then we might be onto something.