TV is clearly the next battlefield where Apple and Google are gonna fight for advertising space, and dominance.
I watched the Google IO talk where they launched Google TV. Overall looks pretty good, kinda reminds me of Xbox live. Google TV will be a great product, but from a consumer perspective, its still gonna resemble android, which is complex, hard to understand, and for geeks. Apples solution on the other hand will be far easier to use, its gonna be cheaper, and from a consumer's perspective much more attractive.
At the moment Apple has got the consumer market wrapped around its finger, it knows exactly what they need, and they know exactly how to market it to them.
Apple doesnt care about what you think you need, they will gladly dictate that for you, and in many ways this is the best approach for consumers, who on average have no idea how to use a computer, and dont really want to learn. For example its rumored the new Apple TV will have no ethernet, many geeks well say 'how dare they ! I need ethernet because it is more reliable and faster' but this is exactly the reason apple is so successful, they make these desicions for the user. Take for example the iPhone, it has one home button, compare to androids 4.
Even if the Apple TV is not as good feature wise as Google TV, at this point in the game it wont matter why ?
1. Apple has a pristine reputation in the hardware arena, Google for the most part has none, and the only experience they have, G1 - Nexus One, were both failures.
2. Apple has been making operating systems for decades and knows how users want to interact with things, googles best effort so far - Android - is a great operating system but compared to the iPhone is very complex.
3. Apple generates magnitudes more press coverage on product launches than google. They have also mastered TV ad spots, something we havent really seen from google. Also, when Apple launches a product, it launches very soon after, none of this "Look at how awesome this is ... but you have to wait 6 months .. and by then the specs will change ... and by then all the momentum we had launching the product will be gone"
4. So many people are already plugged into the Apple ecosystem, for them Apple TV will just be another part of the lifestyle.
5. Apple TV will be easier to use than Google TV, and just that alone will cause the older generation of people to get onboard. I totally see my parents getting an Apple TV for browsing the web and checking email, it will have the appeal of WebTV.
Lets not also forget that Apple will make alot more money than google on the hardware, since they are producing it, and since it will plug into the App Store, Apple will keep racking up users on their ultra-profitable iphone os app store. Right now its at about 90 million devices.
I'd also bet that Apple TV will come out before Google TV, i mean how hard is it gonna be for apple to take the guts of an iPad and add Video out ?
I guess we will have to wait and see at the wwdc.
