{"id":273,"date":"2008-10-11T23:04:37","date_gmt":"2008-10-12T07:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.laaker.com\/micah\/?p=273"},"modified":"2008-10-11T23:04:37","modified_gmt":"2008-10-12T07:04:37","slug":"social-setup-for-the-apple-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laaker.com\/micah\/blog\/2008\/social-setup-for-the-apple-tv","title":{"rendered":"Social Setup for the Apple TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

My former colleague, Mike Speiser (who’s now over at Sutter Hill Ventures<\/a>), recently suggested his vision of where Apple TV<\/a> should be heading<\/a>. <\/p>\n

With the rumored Apple TV-minus-the-box-plus-the-TV unit<\/a> days from being announced, I wanted to add one more set of thoughts to his before any such unveiling.<\/p>\n

Mike was one of the folks behind Yahoo! Mash<\/a>, a testbed for some of Yahoo!’s social efforts soon to be released. In my mind, Mash’s key feature was the ability for anyone to create a profile for someone who hadn’t yet joined the service. The thinking was that some folks just don’t want to spend the time setting things up… but if someone already did all the work, why not? (And, as someone who has had to setup innumerable electronics and computer purchases for others, I can attest to the success of such efforts; knock out most of the setup hassles, and you’ve got a happy user you’d otherwise have never had.)<\/p>\n

In a similar vein, why not offer the ability for users to setup and customize software profiles for others on the Apple TV? There’s a reason people still joke about how hard it is for their parents to setup a VCR: configuring home electronics is never as easy as you’d like. Mac users are generally well known for their evangelization of the Apple platform; why not give them an opportunity to prove it?<\/p>\n

My thinking is this: Apple should provide a Mac and<\/i>Windows application (or Web app) that allows a user to specify the following settings:<\/p>\n