SPECULATION: What’s the REAL reason for the AppleTV Delay?


product-product.jpgAs I sit here, a very frustrated man (who was very excited about getting an AppleTV this week) I can’t help but wonder what the real reason for this delay is?

Could it really be that the AppleTV just isn’t ready? Can it be a software issue that they’re just now getting handled? If so, it woudl seem like a delay longer than mid-March would be necessary to fix all of those already produced units….

So, I don’t think that’s it.

I mean, seriously, the AppleTV is basically a smaller mac mini that is running a modified version of Front Row…how hard could it be to get that rolling?

But we’ve all speculated at how strange it is for Apple to release a device that is so completely focused on HD content…when they don’t have any HD content in the iTunes store.

We also know that AppleTV will require iTunes 7.1 (a fact that was originally on the apple website, then removed)…obviously the update could be as simple as making the AppleTV work with iTunes…but, again…could that really be THAT hard? Haven’t they been doing that with iPods forever?

I think the real reason for the delay may be HD content. Not a lot at first, I’m sure, but it makes little sense to me for Apple to release an HD device with no HD content in the iTunes music store…and that may be something that requires enough work to cause this delay…

…or, I could just be looking WWWAAAYYY too much into it…

What do you think?


Kokou Adzo

Kokou Adzo is a stalwart in the tech journalism community, has been chronicling the ever-evolving world of Apple products and innovations for over a decade. As a Senior Author at Apple Gazette, Kokou combines a deep passion for technology with an innate ability to translate complex tech jargon into relatable insights for everyday users.

9 Comments

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  1. I like where your going with this but I think you could take it even further. I read a while back that AppleTV was going to have part in some of the special Leopard features (supposedly it will be able to stream your entire desktop over to your TV if you have Leopard) and everyone is saying that Leopard will be out of the bag in March. Apple may be delaying AppleTV for both HD content and an extra boost for the upcoming Leopard.

  2. Hey, Michael, Andrew, I like where you’re both going with this. It makes me wonder if the Apple TV could act like a terminal to your main computer. Perhaps it could be a cheaper way to put computers in various rooms, such as the living room, kitchen, children’s rooms, exercise room, etc. I’ve heard people wondering about the USB 2.0 port on the back. Maybe for a keyboard and mouse? Might the Apple TV have built-in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR , kept secret, so you can have a wireless keyboard and mouse on your coffee table for accessing your main system via a wall-mouted LCD and the Apple TV? Maybe I’m getting carried away, but that’s got me excited about a product I wasn’t so in to before. I wonder if an Xserve home might be an idea? Cheers.

  3. hey, i was thinking last night, after the vidphone chat with my brother and our dad;

    ok, apple has this iTV they are rolling out where this little sandwich size box sits near your tv, connected to it, and it wirelessly talks to your computer somewhere else in the house, and you can play pictures, slideshows, music, movies, tv shows, videos, etc off your mac through to your tv by using the iTV remote, never having to go to your computer itself;

    another thought is that it has been since last october that isight cameras were off the shelves, and then back for a bit, and then no more; so, where are the iSights???

    so how about if they had an iSight camera + wireless??!! Just stick a little camera and small screen on top of a little box that has wirelsss capability, and it communicates to the outside world wirelessly through your computer, so the device itself now isn’t having to make the broadband connectivity to the outside world; that would work; to this point, any such thing i’ve seen is a stand-alone thing that might plug into your internet or something, but here apple would make the software and the hardware and they all communicate with each other no problems, with their attention to design, simplicity, attractiveness, and ease of use;

    how cool would that be?

    if you have a (broadband?) internet connection, you could use this, even with windows probably, like apple makes itunes for windows so windows people can buy use ipods, which is when they really took off big time;

    can you imagine, just a box no bigger than say a 5×7 picture frame screen on some kind of small compact base, and you probably have to plug it in somewhere, but there you go!

    part of why the itv box is the size it is is that it has a hard drive built in, so they could combine the guts to enable wireless + the isight camera which is small like on the iMac/iBooks + a color screen big enough to be decent but small enough to make sense +++ !!! the touch-interface like on the iPhone !! oooohh! you wouldn’t even need physical buttons !!! except maybe one to deactivate/activate the touch-sensing, like on the ipod and iphone; oh, that would be sweet; one of those techy things we keep waiting for like flying cars and dick tracy 2-way wrist TV’s;

  4. I think that it could be just a marketing ploy. I mean the only thing that everyone has been talking about for the past 2 months has been the iPhone, plus with the litigation with Cisco… it’s not even coming out until summer.

    AppleTV has been overshadowed by iPhone, and this looks like an attempt to generate some buzz.

  5. I’m hoping its so they can roll out HD content on iTunes, I mean it has to come sometime right? Well the ship date fell to March 20th so thats a good part of 3 weeks, lets hope they can stick to that date now.

  6. I don’t think the publicity angle is correct! Apple has many ways to generate publicity already!
    I like the “wait for Leopard to come out to reveal unmentioned functionallity” ploy! It has been speculated that Apple has left the “good stuff” for last mention! Some of this might be how it interacts with the Apple-TV… I like the X-Station like functionallity. I actually use VNC for a very similar functionallity already!

  7. HD Content? I think not… I agree that its inevitable, but if HD content was going to be available at launch, steve-o would have talked about it. The real reason for the delay is most likely a manufacturing issue. That’s the only reason for a delay this late in the game. Makes me think that the first rev of this product may have some quality issues.