VIDEO: Apple TV System Rates A- Disruption Score

Update II: March 22, 2007: Apple TV now in stores at $300. Gizmodo has a video review by Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal. Walt doesn't do a great job as a video presenter, but his published reviews in the WSJ have great influence: "Part of the secret of Apple TV is that, like most of Apple's products, it doesn't try to do everything and thus become a mess of complexity."

Update I: Jan 9, 2007: Apple announced details on its Apple TV system, previously known as iTV, today at MacWorld: To sell for $299 starting in Feb., featuring a 40Gb hard drive. This is disruptive to mainstream broadcast and cable-TV companies. The iPhone is interesting as a swiss-army knife style device, but the Apple TV seems more disruptive  in our analysis because it does the simple job of showing movies on your TV in a convenient way.

We ran Apple TV through our Disruption ScoreCard, generating an A- rating, which is exceptional.

You can use the Disruption ScoreCard to rate your own projects. (More tools for managing disruption at The Disruption Group's tools page.)

These sorts of evaluations are subjective. Feel free to challenge my input assumptions to come up with your own Disruption ScoreCard.

The following were among the high-scoring inputs:

• Low-end product at $300

• Product superior to early-adopter needs (This score was a leap of faith, based on current iPod users and the fact that they have downloaded 45 million TV shows on iTunes in the past 11 months)
• Customer behavior: Fits with how people watch TV and use their iPods
• Off-shelf standard technology
• New business model relative to TV: Apple earns on hardware and downloads

The following were lower-score inputs:

• Public company: Most public companies are severely challenged to disrupt
• New channel: Unclear whether Apple will create a new channel or piggyback on existing Apple and home electronics channels
  
• Not an independent corporate structure for iTV

Download the full Apple iTV Disruption ScoreCard plus some charts showing iPod and TV trends.

** Other Views **
NY Times' David Pogue says Apple TV is a winner and that because of its simple design, it stands out vs Netgear's device and Microsoft's Xbox 360. "It’s a computer-to-TV bridge for the rest of us."

O'Reilly Mac Dev Center's Chuck Toporek says he won't buy the iTV device because it won't record shows.

Disruption ScoreCards and related columns on Apple (A), Vonage (C), JumpTV (B-) as published in the Financial Post.

Archive of On Disruption columns from The Financial Post.

**Other Views**

Inventor and author Shelly Palmer looks at how the broadcast industry is being disrupted in his book "Televison Disrupted" Palmer also writes a blog and a hosts a series of online videos on new media.

Comments

[Evorgleb]

Over at Highbrid Nation we have been talking the Apple TV and how unimpressed we are with it. I just don't believe that most people will be able to get much out of it. Too many issues to deal with. I'll likely be a while before I make such an investment.

[Rick Prather]

Sorry, but you have your facts a little twisted.

The AppleTV was unveiled at MacWorld San Francisco, not CES.

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(Editor: You are right. Thanks for setting me straight on that, Rick. Text has been corrected.)