I must say that after nearly a year of owning an Apple TV, I’ve come to the conclusion that the device hasn’t been worth it.
That’s an unusual statement coming from me—a hopeless Apple fanboy—and not the sort of thing one often hears regarding Apple products. Too expensive, one hears often; style over substance, heard less these days but occasionally nonetheless.
But not a very good product isn’t all that common. However, that’s my verdict after owning and using (or attempting to use) an Apple TV for some time now. I find myself describing the device with terms like “frustrating” or “inconvenient”, hardly Apple-like terms and much more applicable as a rule to stuff emanating from that corporate entity up north near Seattle. But that’s the situation as I see it.
The Apple TV is designed to serve as a media hub connected to a TV; to that end, it can play video and audio either from its own hard drive or by streaming from an iTunes-equipped computer on your home network. In addition, it connects to the Apple Store for movies, TV shows, audio, and the like, can be used to subscribe to podcasts, and can display photos. It has some distinct iPod/iPhone features, such as the ability to synchronize between the computer and the Apple TV.
Basically, it’s a low-powered Mac running OS X with a custom interface borrowing quite heavily from the Front Row application bundled with every Mac, with some of the iPod/iPhone/iTunes features thrown in for good measure. Unlike a regular Mac, it sports an HDMI connector and can be set to connect at various resolutions such as 1080i, 1080p, 720p, and the like—all familiar to anyone who owns a modern-day high-definition, flat-screen TV.
The idea is good. The implementation leaves a great deal to be desired. I would have to say that my primary objections center around two areas. The first is the hardware itself; it’s woefully anemic. The second is the operating software; some of the design decisions are distinctly problematic, at least for me.
First, the hardware. The Apple TV is skimpy on memory (i.e., RAM), so much so that hard-disc thrashing is nearly constant. There just isn’t enough RAM for the operating system to run comfortably, much less serve video and audio, so the device runs sluggishly and is prone to glacial slowdowns. Upgrading the memory doesn’t seem to be an option. Furthermore, the processor appears to be extremely slow as well, adding to the device’s frequent lapses into lumbering stolidity.
Then there’s the software. Performing a synchronization between the Apple TV and its iTunes-equippepd host computer freezes the Apple TV. Presumably this doesn’t happen while you’re actually playing something, but that is but small consolation. The other night I pressed Pause and went off to the kitchen for a few things. I came back and the “Synchronizing” message was on; even though I’m not actually synchronizing anything between my Apple TV and the computer (I stream everything directly from the computer instead), it sat there for a good ten minutes.
I find the software to be a bit rough around the edges, even with the recent update. For example, videos start playing jerkily for no real reason; perhaps there’s something going on behind the scenes or under the hood, but is it really too much to ask that the Apple TV have sufficient RAM and processor power to handle some background tasks and play a non-HD video at the same time?
I’m also annoyed by the way that the Apple TV gets in the way of iTunes on my computer; if I launch iTunes, before long the “Synchronizing with BuddhaTube” message comes up in iTunes, rendering the program considerably less responsive than before—and this on an 8-core Mac Pro with 10GB of RAM. Besides, I’m not synchronizing anything between the Apple TV and the Mac! So what is taking so long, and why is it having to scrub away so diligently about it?
The long and the short of it: I’m replacing the Apple TV with a Mac Mini. I’ve ordered a custom Mini with 4 GB of RAM and the minimum-sized hard drive (since I’ll be using the Mini almost exclusively to stream stuff.) The Mini will run Front Row, pick up its material from my shared iTunes library, and will have the advantage of being a full-fledged Mac that can benefit from external storage, use a keyboard and a mouse, and all that. The only difference is that the Mini doesn’t come with an HDMI port, but it has DVI and DisplayPort video outs, which can then feed into an HDMI cable. Probably I’ll need to perform a bit of color-profile tweaking and the like to render the image optimal. Audio is no problem since I route the digital stream through a Benchmark DAC (digital-to-analog converter), which works the same on the Mini as it does on the Apple TV. (Except on the Mini I can use USB, which may render a slightly more reliable digital stream.)
I’ll have the new system in place in a day or so, once the Mini arrives from its long journey from Shenzen, China via Anchorage and Memphis here to San Francisco. Once that’s done—I might have a used Apple TV for sale…