About this AirPlay thing
While watching the keynote the other day, the one thing that stuck out at me was AirPlay. The grown up version of AirTunes. I bought an AppleTV because it just seems so exciting to me, and I’ll try to explain why.
The whole concept of pausing a video and then having it appear on your tv just screams THE FUTURE to me. Like in Minority Report when they slide content from one screen to the next. It opens up whatever you’re watching to be shared by everyone around you. The iPad already feels very communal, it almost begs to be passed around and the content on it shared with others. But this says “let’s all watch this together”.
The only problem is that they didn’t say much about it. How embedded into iOS is the feature? Is it only available in the videos, iPod, and photos apps?
Imagine if it wasn’t limited. Think if from any video view you could tap a button and it magically appears on the tv. Instead of the AppleTV needing an app store, you could use the multiple video apps on an iPad or iPhone. It keeps all of the direct controls in your hand which means you wouldn’t have to work everything around that little remote.
Maybe there’s no app store for the AppleTV because the only thing you can really do around that remote is watch videos, so most of the apps would be video streaming apps cutting into it’s rental service. But what’s better than you renting a few movies and tv shows from Apple? Buying an iPad or iPod touch from apple, then buying apps on top of that.
On other AirPlay devices that are coming out, wireless speakers and such, is that limited? Or will I be able to stream Pandora or Rdio through my pocket and into my speakers? And if I can do that for audio, why not for everything else?
You could run a game’s video through it. A quiz game where the questions come up on the TV and everyone answers on their own iOS device. A driving game where you use your phone Mario Kart Wii style.
Because AppleTV is iOS based (according to Jon Gruber at least), I have no doubt that it will be jailbroken. This opened up the iPhone in a million awesome ways when there was no app store, and I think it’ll do mostly the same here.
There are things that I don’t like about the AppleTV, but this post is not for that. This post is for thinking about the future.
