DookieX

Did you not read my post? I’ve clearly explained why Apple didn’t set up the ATV as an interface that just combines all the services together into one giant portal. They are set up to give the look and feel of them being channels rather than services. It’s the smart approach since the majority of people are familiar with the channels type set up. As for you personally not liking to subscribe to services, it’s the same way cable TV is set up thus it is the format people are familiar with. Also, how do you suggest Apple go about this? Force every service to come together and be one huge unified service? It’s not going to happen. Your preference is actually what Apple would hope to happen but unfortunately they are at the mercy of content owners and service owners, that’s just the reality of video content.

Minus home games at least that’s the case for MLB.

Hecks yeah people use Hulu Plus particularly those of us who basically do not watch live television which is a rapidly growing number and no, ATV doesn’t need to find a way to bring all content under one portal. Reason being if you look at ATV, it’s set up as each service basically acting like a channel. When you go into the channels, everything has the same interface. The Netflix interface is the same as the iTunes interface which is the same as the interface for the computer you may have hooked up with iTunes Home Sharing enabled which is the same interface as the YouTube interface, etc. Unlike the other set top box streaming options where each app has it’s own interface, the ATV uses the same interface for everything thus it doesn’t need to bundle everything into one big app.

It’s because a normal user doesn’t really use all those gestures. Apple doesn’t even push those features that hard. It’s really there for the power users whom are juggling a gajillion apps. As for your issue with not being able to figure out how to maximize a window, I’m sorry but the nice prominent green bubble on the upper left corner of the window that has a plus sign in it doesn’t get any clearer. It actually makes much more sense than Microsoft’s square icon. The only reason we know what that square icon does is the fact that we had to learn that function at one point or another.

You assumption that OSX and Apple products in general are just dumbed down streamlined consumer UI products is actually VERY far from the mark. Fact of the matter is that if you take a look at OSX, it’s actually quite power user friendly. The difference between OSX and Windows and Linux however is that with OSX, all the power user functions does NOT take center stage. They are there if a power user chooses to use them but Apple wisely designed the OS so that those functions are not presented prominently. There’s granularity but one must actually know about it to use it. Going by that logic and going by how power users work, if a power user needs a certain function, a power user should theoretically know that the option exists and would know intrinsically as to how to go about looking for it.

The problem from the get go is that a majority of the complaints about “Oh, Apple is just mass market streamlined and dumbed down closed garden consumer stuff” is that those folks voicing those complaints basically never bothered to spend all that much time on OSX. For goodness sakes, the bulk of IT professionals are by and large STILL under the false assumption that OSX has no right click functionality.

Just to illustrate just how power user heavy OSX actually is, look at the way it handles virtual workspaces, how it handles incremental backups at the OS level (Time Machine looks deceptively simple but it’s actually very powerful and does much of the things that incremental backup solutions for the Enterprise market does for Windows, Microsoft forces users to go buy a third party solution for incremental backups but OSX has it built in, incremental backups are on the TOP of the list for power users believe it or not), look at how OSX handles gestures so that you can break out all applications to see everything that is running, look at how the gestures also allows you to break out just the windows for the application running at the forefrunt, look at how OSX actually have developer coding solutions INCLUDED with the OS (Xcode, it’s an entire development environment and it’s FREE and bundled into OSX), look at Automator (an entire macro programming solution bundled into the OS for free), a full fledged Mail client and iCal and contacts which are much more powerful than what’s bundled with Windows. Basically, OSX is incredibly granular and powerful (heck, it’s been sandboxing it’s applications for quite some time now at the OS level, spelling and grammar check is built in at the OS level for quite some time now, it does a low level wipe when you empty out the Trash Bin, etc.). The problem has always been OSX receiving criticism from NON-OSX users who are still under the false assumption that the OS is simplified and locked down. The ironic thing is that one would think that power users on Windows who assume all these false assumptions about OSX would be smart enough to know all these built in power user functionality in OSX but instead, they just never bothered with OSX and brush it off at face value.