Apple TV: Giving TV viewers what they want when they want it

Those guys over at Apple Recon seem to have a good rumor pipeline going. Just the other day, they found an Apple source who said that Apple TV is blowing away expectations, with the first 100,000 units already sold and Apple doubling that number on the next manufacturing run. Current thinking is that Apple will sell a million by next Christmas.

What's the irresistable attraction of Apple TV? Well, Alan Graham over at ZDNet has done the math, and figured out that Apple TV's value proposition is just downright cheaper than buying cable TV service, assuming you only regularly watch a few shows, even if you buy every single show of your favorite series from iTunes (i.e., you don't catch up on them by watching them for free on the Web or the like). Further, watching TV via Apple TV and iTunes means that you get to watch the shows when you want to, not when they are broadcast. And reruns? Well, you own the shows -- watch them whenever you want.

I currently subscribe to both cable TV and TiVO, and I'm finding I'm watching much less TV than I used to. Most of the content Comcast bundles in my subscription doesn't interest me. The TiVO picks up my favorite series shows, and the nightly news, and those constitute most of my TV watching; the rest is DVDs or on-demand TV (which I can also get via iTunes). So remind me again why I need 140 digital channels, especially when 100 of them are watching people yelling at each other.

Blackfriars predicted that an Apple TV network based on iTunes was coming nearly a year and a half ago. And when Jobs introduced the actual Apple TV product, I said that it was a shot across the bow of competing consumer electronics companies. I'm now beginning to believe that that shot wasn't a warning -- it was the start of a slow and steady attack on cable TV's business model, as well as the recent telco must-lose-money TV initiatives. You know what? With Apple introducing a product that gives TV viewers what they want when they want it and for less money than their competitors, it just might work.

Full disclosure: I own some Apple shares.

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