That’s what we got with yesterday’s Apple Macworld 2008 keynote speech. With few exceptions, a lot of baby steps in the direction of a genuinely integrated media lifestyle. Apple is publicly acknowledging that they now have the capabilities to create something revolutionary, but either the content providers or Apple themselves are too timid or not ready to deliver. It’s been over six years since the iPod was launched and we’re still not there. Here’s why:

iTunes Movie Rentals

It was quite an achievement to get all major film studios on board at launch for rental. Obviously they’ve seen where things are going with film (7 million sold to date), music (4 billion tracks sold to date) and probably TV shows too, but they’re still not ready to kill off physical media. Instead we get the 30 day wait between DVD release and rental release, probably to keep the physical stores happy and there’s the higher price of HD content. Quirkiness continues: you can only transfer movies to current generation iPods.

It’s worth noting that iTunes Plus (which has a higher quality audio encoding than the iTunes standard) was launched at a premium price. Only when Amazon launched its MP3 store did this premium magically disappear.

The 24 hour viewing window is a poor decision. Apple are selling convenience here, so shouldn’t it be as convenient to view as it is to buy?

All of this doesn’t matter if there is no content. I’ve witnessed the slow crawl of TV shows onto the international iTunes Stores. The selection of TV shows for the UK is poor and there are no movies. Apple wants to launch movie rentals later this year internationally. Time will tell.

Which leads me on to:

Apple TV Take 2

Yes, it’s identical to the Apple TV sold the day before. Except it has new software, embracing YouTube videos and podcasts, music, music video, TV shows and films. Yes, this software enables users to buy content direct from the iTunes Store and download it to their Apple TV. No computer required. It’s a pity then that the storage capacity still peaks at 160GB. And how do you back it up? Oh yeah, you synchronise content to a computer (which isn’t required).

Because the hardware is the same, Apple TV doesn’t deliver 1080 HD content. Just the usual 720p. Those HD movies can only be viewed on the Apple TV (probably because of HDCP support on its outputs). Other content can be moved elsewhere. Apple TV now supports (i.e. passes through) Dolby Digital 5.1 (but not DTS).

Don’t believe the hype: you still need a computer to get the most out of your Apple TV and your content. Only when the computer is out of the loop will the Apple TV become a media hub.

So, what of backups:

Time Capsule

Possibly the best thing that launched yesterday. Time Capsule is essentially a wireless hard drive (of server quality) with gigabit ethernet. It’s intended as a central repository of backups, across all your computers and works with Time Machine. Wouldn’t it be great if it had integrated support for Apple TV too?

Conclusion

Content providers need to get serious about what they’re doing in this digital age. If I could have a wide selection of films available for rental or purchase – and at the moment it appears that the studios prefer rental – in the UK at the time of the DVD release (or better still, the cinema release) then I’d grab it. At present the overall solution is a bit half-hearted from a technical and business viewpoint.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to offload content from the Apple TV onto another storage device (e.g. Time Capsule) for backup and extended storage space. If you wanted guaranteed data recovery you could have two external drives, and let a combination of Apple TV and an embedded version of Time Machine handle the backups. Frequently accessed content gets kept on the Apple TV; all the other content gets stored externally and stream-downloaded when its required. Apple TV decides what content to keep where – remember all that metadata that iTunes keeps?

As I said in my opening remark, all the components are available: Apple needs to package them up to make them consumer-friendly and usable.