Robert Cringely, of I, Cringely, is onto something in the article at the
Jump. He makes a good case of Apple's new AppleTV product, which has a built-in 40GB hard drive, as being Apple's entry into cable/satellite territory. Cringely posits that the hard drive, for which Apple has given out very little operational information, will be used to seed bittorrent-like distribution.
I have thought for a while that Apple should just buy TiVo. It would be a really good acquisition. It would bring the whole iTunes experience, DRM and all, to the television. It would bring music and video to the television. However, this new AppleTV product casts a shadow over this possible acquisition. Or does it? Will it run TiVo's interface, for a fee, of course? Perhaps.
In any event, the fact that there's a hard drive in the product gives the possibility of a myriad of things. Things could get really interesting in the "television" space.
