XBOX Live was down last night which meant that a lot of services which don’t specifically need the service were also down. It’s a bit daft that you can’t watch Netflix when the games matching service is down. An XBOX manager was recently canned for saying that it was ok for the next XBOX to require an always-on Internet connection because everyone important had an always-on Internet connection.
Other devices (like Macs, Windows PCs, Androids, iDevices, the Wii) don’t require the vendor service to be online as long as you have an Internet connection (I haven’t checked my PS3).
- This is broken. I wish I had a non broken thing.
- Aha, but when it works it is better.
But William’s response was interesting because it wasn’t about the outage but rather a partisan response on, all things being equal, which was the better device. Yes, the XBOX has a richer interface but comparing the XBOX to an Apple TV is a little like comparing an electric carving knife to a vegetable peeler. The electric knife is sharper, cuts through stuff incredibly well and can make a long job much shorter. But you’d lose a lot of blood using it to peel a potato.
We also recently gave an Apple TV to my mother in law so she could watch Netflix. At £76 it was marginally the cheapest way to get her access on her existing television and with a simple, no nonsense interface that wasn’t about how rich it needed to be, but how to easily get her into Netflix.
My son, on the other hand, loves his XBOX. He doesn’t need a ‘richer’ interface, he needs the additional functions of the XBOX. The sorts of things that a device that has a 100W PSU (compared to a 6W on the Apple TV) is designed to do. The sorts of things that need discs, that require 117 buttons on a remote, or three high end processors.
But for Netflix, the mobile-phone-in-a-hockey-puck Apple TV, is excellent.