Went to the Bellevue Square today. Ran into Zach, last place I’d expect to see him, not sure why, always thought he was way too cool for “the mall”. Walked by the Apple store and noticed they had a big screen in the window showing off The Incredibles, Julie didn’t seem to mind going in to take a look at the Apple TV so we did. Some idiot kid at the other demo unit played some music at full volume and got everyone staring including the “big fat security guy” **. Don’t think the kid could figure out the context sensitive remote.

First thoughts were the album art looked pretty, reflections are getting old though hardly could complain. Also I don’t know anyone other than myself and those others that know me who actually have proper album art. So I kinda figured that this would ruin the pretty experience for most people since apparently not many buy crap off iTunes anyway.

The UI was simple and all, couldn’t really complain. It did remind me of the Freestyle days of Media Center with a 2007 Apple UI. Julie even commented that she liked the verticle UI vs. the 4 way UI of Media Center in Vista (she’s only just started using that since we got the DCT up and running). I pointed out that Media Center had a verticle UI from the first version until recently.

Watched some demo video, thought the OK Go video looked like crap, loaded up The Incredibles, thought that looked incredibly bad.

The unit itself was nice and small. No smaller than the actual physical boards and additional hardware inside the v1 MCX units though. For those who don’t know they actually made these units bigger than they needed to be so they’d stack well with DVD players and other equipment.

One thing I did note was how bloody hot the thing was, I picked it up to take a look at the back and thought to myself, “oh great here comes more Engadget posts with pictures of heat stressed and cracked Apple TV’s.

We left the Apple store. Headed to GAP walked by the RED stuff, including the $60 fake leather wallet (note to the youth of today, giving and helping is not some “cool trend”, quit being so superficial… yes, that means you Ms. I only eat two bites of my salad and drink my Evian so I can look like a proper Abercrombie girl). Bought some trousers and a shirt…

Really can’t help but think that there’s something profound happening with people these days, haven’t decided if it’s a good or bad thing. Did stop and wish I had time and the ability to do nothing but contemplate crazy stuff day and night and not have to worry about work and all that. Saw Reign Over Me, which was pretty good imho.

Anyway back to the Apple TV. Some I’m sure will buy it because it’s a great solution if you’re a iTunes or Mac person. Great fine, shut up already. It’s a different approach than the Media Center and Xbox 360. Personally I think in the long run it’s a easier but less fulfilling solution. I don’t see the Apple TV as much of a threat to eHome. In a lot of ways comparing them is dumb. Especially when people sit and compare the 360 to the Apple TV. I’m not going to get into it yet since I’ve still got this massive post I’ve been putting off revising and finishing that goes into my thoughts about the stupidity in being a fan boy of x. One line summary would be, who the hell cares what you use as long as it works for you.

Lastly, I honestly can’t understand why anyone would be happy with what they’re paying for in a iTunes + Apple TV solution or similar. I know there’d be a lot of pissed off business big wigs in the world if the following were to happen. On the flip side what’s more important? Keeping those filthy rich jerks at the MPAA and RIAA happy or keeping a couple billion customers pleased? Maybe we’d be without a bunch of those new teen movies and the Avril Lavigne’s. Maybe there’d be media, information, and content overload with anybody and everybody contributing. Maybe we’d end up paying more for our connections to that content, and maybe because of that Comcast TV wouldn’t exist and instead we’d be paying $90/mo towards a 30/5Mbps IP connection.

When I look at the content the real businesses are putting out, and compare it to what’s available on the underground, there’s just no question which is the better experience.

Go through legit channels and you get DRM, various technical restrictions, low quality, less selection, slow distribution (time to release), unreasonable cost ($10 for a license to a low quality digital movie as an example), you’re working to earn the extra money to stay legit.

Go through the underground and you get, no DRM, no restrictions, excellent to lossless quality, seemingly limitless selection, near instant distribution, virtually no cost, you’re doing a bit more of the work since you have to find good sources and maintain your P2P status, your technical ability needs to be above average, you deal with sometime poor content sources, there’s also illegality of it.

In my honest opinion neither are good solutions. What is however is a system totally different than we have today. It’d probably mean a whole lot more P2P but run by businesses isntead, probably a lot more targeted advertising, fatter IP pipes, the death of DRM, the MPAA and RIAA pulling their heads out of their asses, and people paying flat and reasonable service fees for usage. It’d mean Instant Winner could be bigger than Muse if enough people enjoyed it, and not some idiot record exec. It’d mean Independent films being dependent on the quality of their content and not the contents of their pocket books.

Who knows what else it’d mean, what it’ll all look like, if and when things will make a polar shift.

It’s fun to think about. Big picture thinking always is.

** When you need a bit fat security guy at your store at all times you’ve got serious issues.