Apple TV Better Cram for the Final

While most college students are starting to day dream about spring break, Apple developers might be putting in some overtime. 

Why the extra work?

They got a snap shot of their grades just before the mid term.

The Good Grades

They are currently scoring A’s in some of their courses, with Mobile Phone outsourcing 101, the Advanced Consumer Operating Systems 280, Marketing 401, and Corporate Crisis Management 350*.

The Bad Grades

They are border line on Financial Securities Laws 210, Accounting for Options 343 (I actually took that class and received a A-.)  But they appear to be failing their TV Recording Devices 101 course.

The SciFi Channel Blog properly points this out after getting a sneak peak at the grade book.  They list four of the areas of failure for the Apple TV.

1. The device is not compatible with most Living Rooms - Only works with Wide screen TV’s.
2. The hard drive only holds 40GB or  half of what you could get form a TiVo at retail with a cash rebate that ends up costing you nothing for the device two years ago.
3. The device doesn’t transmit in HiDef even though it requires a wide screen.  That’s a blessing given the hard drive size.
4. It doesn’t ship with all the cables you need out of the box.

Apple must have put their B team on this product or the course load is getting to them.  This sounds more like something you would see coming from Microsoft or HP or Motorola.

There are a number of other flaws and problems but those are enough to seal the doom of this product unless they retool it.  Maybe they gave up on the iTV before they finished as they started to see all the DRM issues with iPods. 

What’s the point of controlling all the DVR’s in the market if you can’t lock up the market of video and movie downloads?

 * Just How many Crisis Management scenarios did Apple field this year?

• Accusations of slave labor in China
• Accounting Scandals
• Leading into Securities Scandals
• Corporate Leader resignations
• Battery recalls
• Steve Jobs Snub of Wozniak