No, this isn’t more Mac bashing (but that can be fun!). This week, Apple announced at Macworld their plans for Apple TV. So many companies have tried to make downloading movies work but it never does. Now, I will say if anyone outside ‘the system’ can, Apple can – but movies are very different from music. And that’s my point…

Face it, music is for young people. I can count on one hand the number of people that continue to go through music like I do – except for kids. What Apple did right with the iPod is the delivery system. In a minute more then downloading the song, anyone can be listening to their new favorite song. Without iTunes, iPods are just another MP3 player. The magic is in the delivery. This is why Microsoft latest Windows Media Player 11 (WMP11) is so good, they knew they had to improve it in order to compete with their new Zune player (despite my grumblings on both Microsoft and Mac’s, I’ve dumped iTunes and gone to WMP11. If you haven’t seen it, check it out!).

Now movies are different. They are much more an event. You don’t just see something about a movie and sit down and watch it. It’s a 90 minute investment of time. Most people don’t like starting a movie and picking it up later. I know my family, we decide that afternoon or even the day before if we can have a movie night. Even if its just Desi and I, we ask ourselves if we want to stay up that late. And this is for movies we own!

So will people buy hardware to watch movies. Sure, they did, its called a dvd player. But what about the convenience? You would have really watch a lot of movies and be horrible at your own time management to justify buying hardware so you can watch movies whenever you want. If you do watch a lot of movies and can improve your time management, I would recommend NetFlix. I can’t say that from personal experience, I don’t watch enough movies. But the people that do use it love it.

Hats off to Apple on their iPod, they changed how people get music. I think Apple’s best bet would be to sell their technology to the cable and dish companies and go for the Apple branding. That will keep them in the game for television shows. I can find a half hour a lot easier then an hour and a half – THAT I might download.