Fortune writes: Lost amid the fanfare over the new iPad announced yesterday was a rare flop, the sleepy little black box called Apple TV.
A few days ago, Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson admitted that he purposefully omitted details about Apple's forthcoming television from his exhaustive account of the visionary's life. Yesterday at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the team Jobs tasked with carrying Apple into the future also left those details out. Instead, the company announced a new Apple TV that's every bit as disappointing as previous versions — only now in crackling high-definition.
Initially, some rejoiced at the fact that Apple's living room appliance, as well as the iTunes movie and television store it connects to, are finally embracing 1080p, the highest high-definition standard out there. (Previous iterations were only capable of displaying the inferior 720p.) In reality however, the update only brings Cupertino's little black box up to speed with competing devices. The standard has long been offered by the likes of Roku, Vudu and a dozen other devices. iTunes users will certainly benefit from the set-top box's integration with Apple's iCloud services, but this was a feature so expected that pundits barely bothered to predict it ahead of time.
What could have been is much more interesting. Apple rumor mongers frothed over anticipated upgrades of a more radical flavor. Top on the list was integration with Siri, the iPhone 4S' intelligent personal assistant, a better remote control, even an FM radio tuner. None of those came to be. Yet Apple can hardly be blamed for falling short of expectations, many of which are impossible to meet. And, to create a more robust device would surely have bloated the box, not to mention the $99 price….
… While it may seem like Cupertino is ignoring Apple TV apps entirely, don't bet on it....
More? Check out http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/03/08/apples-lonely-dud/?iid=SF_F_River
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