Apple TV: Hello high-def. Oh, and goodbye HDD

The Apple TV set top box has shrunk to nearly a quarter of its previous size.

It will soon be curtains for the HDD. Right now, you can buy a new iMac with an SSD drive (solid state drive) using so-called flash memory instead of a hard drive, or as a combo, with both types installed in the same Mac - use the big, cheap drive for storage but load your OS onto the SSD for very snappy response. Apparently this gives your system an 11-16 per cent speed increase, with many of those hard drive seek routines largely done away with.

Because an SSD is a set of chips, no moving parts, unlike a fragile spinning hard drive with its delicate read-write head. Unlike RAM, though, when the electricity is gone, an SSD retains its data.

It's a matter of time until hard drives are gone completely, although secure data life on an SSD (or on a hard drive, for that matter) is largely a matter of conjecture.

Of course, hard drives are getting cheaper almost by the day, and able to hold more data in little form factors. But flash memory is getting cheaper, too.

An anomaly is iDevices - sure, they have been chugging along getting Flash memory for quite some time - the iPhone and iPod touch, but also the little nano and shuffle all benefit from sleekness due to not having to have hard drives inside them.

This leaves the iPod classic out on a limb - especially now that the Apple TV has even dispensed with a hard drive.

But it doesn't even replace it with an SSD. The Apple TV announced today is, therefore, absolutely silent and much smaller than before. Even though the Apple TV has been a dream to use and has quietly gathered a loyal following of fans, it has long been due an overhaul.

The new set-top is roughly a quarter the size of the original, and it's now black. It has HDMI, USB, Ethernet and optical audio connections, plus 802.11n Wi-Fi. It plays HD video. It continues to use a button-based remote, and the firmware resembles earlier versions. But the new device is now entirely based around streaming, mostly in the form of HD rentals. Movies can be rented from Apple for US$5 in the US, typically $6.99 here, while movie sales range between NZ$12 and $25.

In the US, anyway, TV shows can be rented for the first time at a price of US99 cents an episode, but only ABC and Fox have shows available so far - TV series have long been missed from the NZ iTunes Store, with no word whether a change is due on that.

The biggest disadvantage to an Apple TV in NZ is the limited number of movies available in the NZ iTunes Store; if this changes, I'd buy one tomorrow - for now, though, Fatso (for example) has a much greater range.

But with the new device and iTunes 10 (which was also announced today and which should be available for download), you can stream video from Netflix (US only) and YouTube (it supported YouTube before), or photos from Flickr and MobileMe.

You can also stream music, photos and videos from a nearby computer to Apple TV. Via Apple's new AirPlay technology, people should also be able to push media from iOS devices such as iPads.

The new Apple TV will ship in four weeks.

But is steaming a powerful enough delivery model for multi-gigabyte content? Before, movies buffered into the onboard hard drive, giving you uninterrupted play - I guess we'll just have to see if the new device can stream fast enough to make viewing a worthwhile experience. Actually, I imagine there must be some kind of flash-based buffer in there, but I don't know.

Streaming is the buzz, though - even iTunes is going to get it. iTunes 10 was just announced too, and its biggest new feature is Ping, a social network that lets you follow people (friends, musicians) and be alerted to not only what music they love most, but local concerts in your area - whether this feature will work in NZ, I don't yet know, either.

And almost all-new iPods were released today, with the exception of the classic, which was untouched. The new touch has video shooting and uses the superfine Retina display of the new iPhone 4. That means it packs 326 pixels into a square inch - so dense that the human eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels when iPod touch is held at a normal distance. In theory.

The touch has always been flash-based, of course - as has the little nano, which just got a touchscreen, and a new shuffle that brings buttons back (thank goodness). I won't go through the details as I believe they're already on this site. But where does that leave the iPod classic?

The classic holds way more files than can a flash-based iPod, but it's looking more and more old fashioned. The big advantage of flash memory is that it makes for a much more robust device. Hard drives are fragile, and require power and cooling.

But hard drives hold a lot more. The iPod classic holds 160GB for NZ$429; the iPod touch only holds 8GB in the base model, although it also has the Retina display, it's a fast mini-computer with Apple's A4 chip, it has FaceTime and HD video recording like the iPhone 4 and the new Game Center feature, for NZ$379.

But on a straight storage to storage comparison, that's $2.68 per GB for the classic, $47.38 per GB for the touch.

But that equation will continue to change in favour of the touch. And with the 64GB touch, you're paying a quarter - NZ$10.14 per GB.

That's much more reasonable, and it's the future.

- Mark Webster mac-nz.com