Written by Stu Helm – Contributing Editor from British Users of Mac Podcast

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First of all, I wanted to say it was great to hear Victor got into the Keynote – I’m really ‘chuffed’ for you buddy! I know we’re going to get some great content from this, so Victor go for it!I thought you’d like to read my thoughts on how the announcements made by Steve Jobs at MacWorld 2008 have an impact on the Mac community here in the UK, because as you may well be aware we have a few differences in the services we have available, particularly with the iTunes Store. So I’m going to kick off with just that…

iTunes & Apple TV

Here in the UK we have only recently been granted the rights by Apple to buy TV Shows, and I’ve used these new rights a few times, the price is OK (but it’s not a truly fair price when compared with the dollar to pound conversion) and the quality is fantastic, but I won’t be buying entire seasons just yet. So to that effect the Apple TV hasn’t really had the uptake Apple would have liked, we just haven’t had the content, the device itself is very cool and if I had a HDTV and could take the time to ‘rip’ my DVD collection to the right format I’d consider one.

With the movie rentals announcement from Apple the Apple TV should take it’s place as an essential living room / den piece of AV kit, especially with the pricing being so well thought out and more than that the content that will be available.

Great! I hear you cry, Stu is going to buy one for sure when he gets a HDTV (soon my pretty, soon!) but wait, the movie rentals are US only for now, Apple did say that it would be available later this year (so no nailed down date or even a quarter there) for the international market, but we don’t even have movies to actually buy right now, and about a tenth of the TV show content that our American friends do, and that needs to be fixed along with giving us these rentals. Price wise, as long as we get a fair conversion (£1.75 / £2.25 / £3.50 when lined up with the US prices would be fine for me) and the availability, and that right there is the key – if we get say 20 movies to chose from, I won’t be interested because I’ll have gone through the library in say 3 months (and I’m being optimistic there)

So there you have it, my honest take on Apple TV Take 2!