Although the new AppleTV has only been in people’s hands for a short amount of time, some early users are tearing the device apart and cracking it open. We already know the obvious: The new AppleTV uses an Apple A4 CPU. But take a closer look and you’ll see how AppleTV may become an Apps platform like the iPad and iPhone. Here’s why.
The teardown of the AppleTV shows the A4 CPU, but also 8GB of internal storage, the same exact kind used in the iPad. What’s more, the RAM and wireless chip are also identical to the iPad. Apple has also apparently left some room on the circuit board for upgrading the internal storage.
Meanwhile, some very savvy hackers have managed to port the AppleTV interface (called Lowtide.app) to an iPod Touch — which more or less essentially means everything you’re seeing on the AppleTV is an “app” in one way or another. There’s also code in the AppleTV firmware implying that the iPad may at some point run a version of the AppleTV interface.
Channel Chatter
So why does the VAR care? It’s a good question to ask, amid all the seemingly multimedia news. Well, consider all the practical work related applications that exist on the iPhone and the iPad, and imagine for a second that those apps now run on your AppleTV, with the ability to use your iPad, or iPhone or even a Bluetooth keyboard as an input device. You’d have yourself a happy little “computer-free” computing space, wouldn’t you?
WebEx on the AppleTV would be great for board rooms, and pushing presentations from Keynote on the iPad to the big screen would also be helpful. VARs, if you’re not working with Apple’s channel program, you might be interested in doing it now.
The potential is overwhelming. But what do you think?
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Combined with a 50$ webcam this could be an entry level telepresence solution that could speak, Skype and Facetime. Having said that many of the ‘set top’ media gateways can perform this task so Apple won’t be alone in this market, there will be a raft of Android devices that will be a bit more extensible than iOS as well.
Without question though, it will create a new line of business tools and opportunities for VAR’s – I agree completely.
Andrew: Hmmm… Apple TelePresence. The VAR Guy likes the concept. Be sure to loop back with The VAR Guy if/when it debuts.
-TVG