A kwality product

The Macalope responds to “iTV” doom and gloom.

Not that the Macalope isn’t sympathetic to the argument that the “iTV”‘s ability to stream a quality picture to HDTV sets is in question, but there are a couple of counter-arguments to be made to Davis Freeberg’s turd in the Apple special event punch bowl.

First, the Macalope notes that you can almost exactly replace “iPod” for “iTV” and “CD-quality” for “HDTV quality” in Davis’ argument. Davis notes this and says:

If you let someone hear a CD track and an iTunes track and ask them to rate each on a scale of 1 to 10 you will get very little difference between the two. If you show someone a show in HDTV though and then in non HDTV you will get a much wider differential.

The Macalope is sure that’s true, but while the HDTV-owning portion of the market is growing, not everyone owns one yet and even if consumers do notice the difference it may not matter that much to them if it provides another feature: ease of use. That doesn’t make them “idiots”.

Hell hath no fury like a tech purist surveying a compromised solution.

[ADDENDUM:  the Macalope, for example, owns an HDTV set.  He’s downloaded TV shows from iTunes and – while he’s noticed the quality is not as good as DVD – it’s been acceptable.  The movie downloads are supposedly four times as good and if they’re good enough on Steve Jobs’ TV, they’re probably going to be good enough on the Macalope’s.]

Most importantly, however, all that’s known so far is that Google and Apple are in talks. If you follow the links all the way back to the Engadget piece that started it all, you’d see this is the key graph:

All we’ve got to go on so far is a quote from Google’s consumer product chief, Marissa Mayer, who has confirmed the two companies are “engaged in talks.”

Engadget’s coverage focuses on video, but if that’s all there is to go on, this could just be related to the advertising connection speculated in the post below (although the Macalope suspects they must have meant “video talks” or the whole piece is jumping to conclusions). Also, it doesn’t mean it’s related to streaming existing Google video to the “iTV”. It could be something entirely new.

If Davis wants to jump off the “the ‘iTV’ is gonna flop” balcony, that’s his business. But the Macalope would preach a little patience.

UPDATE:  Customers download 125,000 poor quality, over-priced movies from the iTunes Store in its first week (antler tip to Daring Fireball).

Ha-ha!  Idiots!

UPDATED AGAIN: Via Daring Fireball, here’s another source talking about the Apple/Google “talks.”

But again the key graph is nebulous:

Google’s consumer product chief, Marissa Mayer, tells me that indeed, the two companies are engaged in talks.

Mmm. “Talks.”

“Talks, talks, talkie, talks.”

“Oooh, we talked about our hair and boys and all the great stores down at the mall. And then we had a pillow fight!”

Hmm.

[Edited for spelling.]

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