Photo: cnet.com
We mentioned last week that an Apple TV software update would allow owners to stream content from a friend’s Apple TV box elsewhere, and AllThingsD now has a little more info on how this will work.
The new software will allow people who have purchased content from Apple’s iTunes store to play that stuff on other people’s TVs, via its Airplay system.
The key part is that they will be able to tell an Apple TV box they don’t own to stream the media they do own, directly from the cloud. That’s a change from the current system, which requires users to download stuff to their iPhones and iPads and fling it to the TV from there. It also echoes the way Google’s new Chromecast device works …
It’s yet another move by Apple to embracing the cloud, which is perhaps also why the rumored 128GB iPhone 5S didn’t make an appearance: local storage is rapidly becoming old-hat.
The new functionality is said to be arriving on 18th September, so is presumably built into iOS 7.
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Why wouldn’t you expect everything iOS to not upgrade with the largest upgrade in Apple history around the corner, I’m just sayin
I suspect that this will be one of those quiet updates. I would love to see more of an overhaul at the presumed October Apple event.
I simply do not buy this argument I keep seeing, represented here as “local storage is old hat.” Apps have gotten increasingly complex and large since the introduction of the App Store. For apps alone, I need more than 16 gigs on my iPhone. It kills me that they kept the flagship iPhone as starting at 16 gigs for $199. I was really, really hoping for 32 gigs as the base model. It’s been 16 gigs for years now. That goes double for the iPad, although it’s possible we may see a change in that pricing model later this year.
Furthermore, I want more than 16 gigs just for my music and podcasts. Like I said, the argument that music can move to the cloud simply doesn’t cut it. These cloud services began taking off just as unlimited data began disappearing from many of our cellular plans. I want to keep this stuff on my phone so I don’t have to worry about data caps or losing signal while I’m listening to my music.
I find it hard to believe I’m alone in all this, but who knows.
So much this. Data caps are and will continue to be the achilles heal of the cloud until they are eliminated. I want so badly to embrace the cloud for things like iTunes radio and Netflix, but when the first place where it would be useful–away from wifi–is still crippled by carriers’ greed, it’s pretty much useless.
I agree that local storage is hardly old hat. Apple just introduced a very fast burst mode for the camera…where the heck do people think those pics are going to go when in use?
Because of this I can’t even consider a 32GB iPhone 5S…I would have to go 64GB. It’s not in my budget so I’ll be hanging on to my 4S. There’s not enough features to entice me to move up unless IOS7 on my 32GB 4S slows wayyy down.
To be honest I’m not sure a lot of people realize that they might be buying an iPhone 5S that may be more challenging to work with due to running out of space more easily and then get stuck with it for a 2yr contract.
Reblogged this on Tim Chambers and commented:
Interesting….
That’s what we really missed in our apple TVs… Apple is beginning to piss me off.
It boggles my mind that AirPlay worked the way it did TO BEGIN with. What an ABSOLUTE waste of bandwidth and energy. Simply staggeringly stupid from an engineering perspective, and completely against the fundamentals of the design of the internet.
Imagine an AirPlay session from an iPhone browsing content via Home Sharing from iTunes running on an iMac and playing it on an AppleTV, all devices on Wi-Fi (and leave out, for the moment, that you really wouldn’t need to do that): the stream would travel over Wi-Fi from the iMac to the iPhone, then back over Wi-Fi to the Apple TV. Double use of Wi-Fi bandwidth. Worse would be the case where the AppleTV is plugged into the Airport Extreme, and iPhone is pulling content from the Internet: stream travels in from Internet, though router (eating CPU), across Wi-Fi to iPhone, back across Wi-Fi, through router (eating CPU), and back out through ethernet switch to AppleTV. Just absurd, when in both cases, all that needs to happen is the iPhone pass a token including URI to the AppleTV and the AppleTV make the connection and play the stream directly; iPhone maintains connection merely for remote control.
Instead, the battery on the iDevice is drained, the Wi-Fi bandwidth is halved, and you’re unnecessarily burning CPU on the router. Forget even the idea that the iDevice has to remain awake, connected, and the entire chain is COMPLETELY reliant upon the portable device’s Wi-Fi connection quality. And this was hailed as a “revolutionary feature”.
Furthermore, to what @ATrainRolls said, not only “local storage” on the iDevice, but “local” storage in the sense of what the ‘F’ is that iMac (or Mac mini or Mac Pro) sitting in the corner doing this whole time? Jack. If I AirPlay “Iron Mac 2” from iTunes/iCloud, or even if I play it directly at the AppleTV, I’m STILL sucking down ISP bits. (Hello, data caps?) EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Why doesn’t Apple make an adjunct daemon for iTunes which CACHES requests to the content on the Apple store “LOCALLY”? The AppleTV and iDevices could use Bonjour to find network-attached iCloud caches, and play content from THEM rather than re-downloading. This could be part of HomeSharing. Additionally this daemon could finally allow me to stream content in my iTunes library WITHOUT me being logged in. The thing could even be half intelligent, in that I could tell iTunes to expose content cached for MY Apple ID (‘Iron Man 2’ would be saved on the iMac and show up in iTunes) but to allocate 50GB of storage space for a list of OTHER AppleIDs (spouse, children, friends) where the content would remain encrypted. (This would be nice for cases where, say, I have a MacPro and the wife has a MacBook Air, don’t want to fill up its SSD.)
If the broadband goes out (yeah, I know…Comcrap NEVER lets that happen), can still sit and watch movies and shows.
This whole mess belies Apple’s marketing BS that they’re constantly refining and focused on “perfection”. The sheer fact that Home Sharing doesn’t even work for a user not ACTIVELY logged in on a Mac…wow. What a crock.