Apple Tv

Apple seems to have some very imaginative employees that keep coming with incredible and original ideas for different devices that turn out to be real hits on the market. When we did not expect anything new on the computer market, as there were lots of devices already present for all kinds of operations and they were all pretty upgraded and improved and when we wondered what could be the next new thing to bring some unusual features to such a device, Apple's executive Steve jobs came out and announced a new product made by Apple in September 2006.

It was the Apple TV that started selling in 2007. I don't know if there is any other similar device, but I do consider it remarkable. This Apple TV is not actually a TV per se, but it looks rather like a small box and it is a digital media receiver. It plays digital files it gets from web sites such as You Tube, iTunes Store, Flickr or other iTunes. The images are displayed on a computer monitor that is usually connected to this device and you can also use a home-theatre audio system in order to get a more complete picture and provide good quality entertainment.

Apple TV was first released on march 21, 2007and it came with 40GB storage space for all the files it could play. As technology has advanced really fast ever since 2007 this amount of space was immediately considered just too small, so the guys from Apple released a second improved version, this time having a hard disk capacity of 160 GB later that same year. Sales have been huge and the device a real buster, but since the smaller version was not demanded very much, it was taken out of the market in 2009. Last year , too, there was another big improvement for Apple TV features, this time in the software department. They upgraded the software to 3.0 in order to adjust better to the widescreens that appeared in the meantime and also to allow the device to integrate better with the iTunes also to receive internet radio broadcasting.

There are a lot of activities that you can do by using an Apple TV, for example you can watch the photo albums that your friends have created on the internet (Flickr), play music coming from internet radio channels or videos that are posted on different specialized web sites, the most famous one being You Tube. You can sync or stream the digital content coming from an internet media service or a local network. The iTunes Store is one of the main sources for these digital files, where you can rent or buy music albums or movies or whatever they might want to see on your screen at home. Of course you will not be able this "box" directly, as it is not a keyboard or iPod or something similar, so you will need a remote control for that. The funny thing about this device that puzzled me is the fact that you can use it to stream its content to up to five computers and screens and also you can connect many Apple TVs with many computers, everything working perfectly when tested.