Forbes recently declared the Apple TV the “iFlop,” asking the question, “How did the storied Steve Jobs and Apple botch it so badly?” However, despite the low sales figures, constant flow of criticism and even Steve’s relegation of the box to the status of “hobby,” I still think Apple TV is an amazing product—if you accept it for what it is: an affordable, user-friendly tool to bridge the gap between your PC and your TV. Here’s why I like the Apple TV, and now use it far more than my DVD player (and even the non-HD programming on my cable box):

1. It’s cheap. No, not cheap like a $50 DVD player. But at $249 for a refurb of the 40GB version, it’s cheaper than some of the other boxes Forbes raves about, like the $399 Vudu. It’s even cheaper than some popular audio-only options, like the Squeezebox or Roku Radio.
2. It works. I’ve tried other devices designed to stream music, photos and video from my PC to my TV, and none have worked as well as the Apple TV. Getting photos on is a breeze, syncing with iTunes is effortless, and adding videos is a no-brainer. Apple’s trademark ease-of-use translates well to the living room, where you’d rather kick back and relax than dig in and hack.
3. It’s hackable. Of course, when you do want to dig in and hack, it’s great to know that you can. There are hacks to do everything from turn the Apple TV into a full-fledged (though underpowered) Mac, to open it up to just about every video format. The first Apple TV hacks are what convinced me to take it seriously as a platform, and I wouldn’t have bought one otherwise.
4. It can play DVD video. While Forbes and others carp about the limited amount of programming available via iTunes, I don’t really care about that, since I have plenty of other sources for video in my own DVD collection. Years ago, I ripped all of my CDs to digital files and banished the discs themselves to the basement. I’ve always wanted to do the same with my DVDs, but was held back by not having an easy way to get the files to play in the living room. Apple TV solves that problem. Even without hacking the actual box, ripping DVDs to Apple TV-supported formats is fairly simple, thanks to good ol’ DVD Jon, and the dozens of free and low-priced programs that can copy DVDs. And ripped DVDs can be saved at higher resolutions than those supported in the vids for sale in the iTunes store.
5. It does YouTube. Forbes dings Apple for not including the Tube out of the gate, and I have to agree. I didn’t buy mine until Apple added it (and the refurbs hit the market). Now that it’s there, though, it’s one of my favorite features. Sure low-res YouTube videos look even worse on my 42-inch plasma than they do on my 19-inch desktop LCD, but that’s not the point, is it? The sheer volume and variety is what keeps me coming back to YouTube, and so far Apple and Google have done a pretty good job of porting videos from Flash to H.264.

No, Apple TV isn’t perfect. The 40GB model is way too small (though you can upgrade that if you’re willing to do a little hacking). It doesn’t stream Internet radio (at least without hacks). And Unbox-style rentals would be nice. But it does everything it claims to do, and does it simply, cheaply and elegantly. And for my living room, that’s enough.

I can only assume that someone at New York Press thinks that the only way to truly be punk is by bringing down punk idols. How else to explain the paper’s Hilly Kristal obituary, headlined “Club Killer Dies.” The gist of the short item is that Kristal—who ran CB’s for over 30 years— ”screwed up and let the club go under,” and that his death was therefore fitting in an O. Henry sort of way. This, you may recall, is the same paper that ran a “How should Tommy Ramone die?” contest a few years back. Such puerile attempts at humor might be funny to a handful of sixth graders, but for those of us who can remember both Hilly and the Ramones when they were in their gabba gabba heyday, it’s hard to find anything to laugh about.

 Props to HuffPo for catching Forbes.com getting just a little confused about the inspiration for CBS’ latest exploitation series. Great headline on HuffPo’s post, too—though if I remember correctly, it’s pronounced ass-mar.

Major props to Radar’s Jeff Bercovici for his writeup on so-called greenies like Laurie David and Leo DiCaprio, who tool around in private planes while exhorting the rest of us to bike to work and use solar power to heat our homes. As Bercovici states:

It’s always galling to be exhorted to curb your consumption by people who are living the poshest lifestyle imaginable. But the problem here goes beyond aesthetics. Eco-hypocrites undercut the very message they’re trying to peddle. How desperate could the planet’s plight be if the people who present themselves as most concerned about it consider flying first-class commercial an unacceptable sacrifice? Why should anyone bother to carpool when Streisand requires her own convoy? Or forgo A/C for a fan when [John] Edwards is chilling in the largest house in his county? The implication of the hypocrites’ behavior is that we must take all measures to fight global warming short of those that would reduce our quality of life. But a reduction in quality of life—or at least a redefinition of it—is exactly what Americans are going to have to accept to make a meaningful dent in greenhouse gas levels.

Bercovici’s full article is well worth reading, as is his dead-tree-only profile of Laurie David. (Yes, I have a personal bias in favor of Radar, but I’d buy this issue even if I didn’t.) I’ve mistrusted her ever since I first heard her waffle when asked why she flies around in private jets. And, no, I’m not going to let the hypocrites stop me from making my own efforts to go green. But I hope this serves as a wake-up call for celebs who want to have it both ways. As Kermit said, it’s not easy being green. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.

At CR, we’ve been covering the ongoing issue of tainted products from China for some time. And many other media outlets have been doing so as well, from CNN’s Lou Dobbs, who warns of the dangers posed by products from “Communist China,” to the crew at Consumerist, who have dubbed the whole mess the “Chinese Poison Train.” But the Adam Smith award for economics reporting has to go to CNBC’s Erin Burnett, who last week said the following, with no hint of irony or satire:

I think people should be careful what they wish for on China—you know, if China were to revalue its currency, or China is to start making, say, toys that don’t have lead in them, or food that isn’t poisonous, their costs of production are going to go up. And that means prices at Walmart, here in the United States, are going to go up too. So, I would say China is our greatest friend right now.

Can’t wait to see what Erin has to say about global warming.

[Via Kos]

While some may gloat about the apparent demise of the fee-based TimesSelect service, I see no reason to celebrate the service’s inability to bring in enough subscribers to justify its continued use of a subscription business model.

The simple fact is that there really is (almost) no such thing as free content. Someone is always paying, whether it’s the subscriber handing over a credit card number, the advertiser looking to catch eyeballs, or a combination of the two. And there’s really nothing wrong with that. It costs money to create content, and even the smallest of publishers need to find ways to cover their costs. Sure, there are cases (like yours truly) where the information is essentially free (yeah, I’ve got some PPC ads on here, but I haven’t even earned a buck on them), but personal blogs (and Wikipedia) aside, most info on the web is paid content. Of the top 100 blogs on Technorati, for example, only a handful are ad-free (the leader is PostSecret, which, fittingly, bills itself as “the largest advertisement-free Blog on the web”).

While TimesSelect may not have worked out as a pay service, it doesn’t mean information “wants to be free” or that the Times is going to stop trying to make money online. It just means the numbers for a free, ad-supported site were more favorable than those for a subscriber-based version. For others (like my employer), a subscriber-based model works very well. Either way, somebody is paying, and if that ever stops, information won’t be free; it just won’t be.