Sorry, but those are terrible analogies.

Most people don't have their computers even in the same room as their home theater, first of all, so your average consumer tends to not make that connection. Second, it's not just that the computer has to be on, but iTunes also has to be open, or it doesn't work.

Trust me, I know this will confuse people. Why? Because my mother is more tech savvy than nearly all the people I support, and I've still had a great deal of difficulty getting her to understand that she can stream content from her computer if it's turned on with iTunes opened. See, she has the first AppleTV, which had a measly 40GB of space. Once you get an average amount of music and photos on there, you're left with little room for video, but she could still stream what isn't synced.

This isn't like "oh, I forgot to turn on my receiver, that's why there's no sound." In my mom's case, it's "damn, I forgot to turn on my computer, wait five minutes for it to boot, then launch iTunes. Now I have to walk up three floors to do that and come back down."


Seriously? You mean, the way every single one of those 250 million iOS devices that Steve was so proud of has been used since the very first iPod? I think people understand syncing.

What I'm hoping is that Apple simply wasn't ready to announce what they're going to do with Lala, and that the idea is that at some point the AppleTV will already know what content you own, and can simply organize it and stream it for you. Perhaps this is also part of their new datacenter plans. If that were the case, I would be far more enthusiastic about the new product.

As it is, it's hard for me to see this as anything but a product that's less then its predecessor. I just don't see anything better about this device.