AirPlay: Here to there
Note: My friend Spiegelman is no slouch when it comes to prognosticating on the future of TV. He’s been in the game for a while, on the legit TV side, on the web side, now he’s on the in-between side and he’s real keen on figuring it all out. Which is why, when he engaged me in an email battle on what the hell is AirPlay and why does one care, it was important to me to put some thought into it.
And I kind of like what I wrote, and it’s been a while since I’ve posted any Apple writing here, so with Eric’s permission, I reprint my answer below.
First, Spiegelman’s Prompt:
Nope, not done with you yet. I need to understand AirPlay from a user perspective. I don’t buy/rent movies on iTunes. Ever. I use Netflix and Amazon VOD exclusively, both which come through my Roku and Google TV. I think what I’m saying is I don’t see AirPlay for video as a threat to the whole “point your remote at the TV and watch what’s there” sort of behavior and I want you to tell me what I’m missing.
And then my Reply:
Okay, fine. Harumph.
It’s about weightlessness, as the name suggests.
The holy grail of content is to move it freely, from here to there. Think of it like a record store. I go to the record store. I scrounge through the bins (it’s 1986, by the way). I do this with my fingers. I don’t do it by looking at a large series of posters on a wall or lists on the Wherehouse marquee. I touch that shit to inspect it. And then, once it’s been inspected, I bring it home, put it on my turntable and push it away from me, over there. I just want to listen.
iTunes brought the record store to the computer. Now, I touch that shit and inspect it in my computer, and I even get to listen to it like it’s 1995 and I’m at the CD Listening kiosk at the Borders. Now on my computer, that all happens weightlessly. Once I’ve inspected that shit, I take that weightless content and I don’t have to touch it anymore; I know what it is, I know when I want it, and I put it wherever it needs to be, whether that’s on my iPod, my home stereo, whatever. It’s still weightless.
Enter the problem of video. Video has, up ‘til now, been far too heavy to move. So we’ve had to rely until very recently on antiquted physical storage media. Even with the advent of Netflix (pre-Watch Instantly), that’s as weightless as it’d gotten, which is not very, considering it requires a US Postal worker to transport.
But what made Netflix an instant success was that element of touch in the browsing experience. People need to keep their fingertips on those VHS boxes in the countless white wireframe shelves at the Video Depot. The tactile experience of picking out a cassette by its cover, transporting it back home, sticking it in the VCR box and hearing the clunk when you hit Play, and then finally stepping back, separating yourself from the object that has earned your trust, and transforming yourself into a spectator, that’s actually a great representation of the appeal of AirPlay.
Because what AirPlay promises is that I can touch media here, and then weightlessly move it there.
And AirPlay doesn’t just mean physically moving media locally stored on your mobile device to your big screen or speaker. It really represents that act of touching a representation of content here on your mobile device (wherever that media happens to physically reside) and being able to weightlessly move it there.
AirPlay is important in the evolution of media because the tech infrastructure Apple has been building for more than a decade is finally maturing enough to reach that holy grail of weightlessness.
So, to answer your question, it all comes down to the iOS. Roku and Google TV would be every bit as important as AirPlay if they had a thing that I could touch with my fingertips. But they don’t because they didn’t think of it until just now.
