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Top 5 Things You NEED To Know To Leverage AppleTV and iPhone in New Media

January 9th, 2007

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Apple, Inc. released the Apple TV (formerly iTV) on January 9, 2007 and the iPhone on June 29, 2007. One device can bring Apple to your 60″ HDTV. The other can bring it to a 3″ phone and iPod combo. What do these both have in common?

iTunes.

iTunes is the driver behind both iPhone and AppleTV. If you are participating in audio or video content production in New Media, and you are not leveraging the iTunes economy (iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, and the iLife suite), you will be invisible to Apple’s new user base.

Facebook? Nope.

MySpace? Nope.

Flickr? Nope.

If Apple’s devices sell well, meaning that they are adopted on a large scale by populations not currently using New Media, content producers will be invisible to these populations. While some may scoff at Apple, ask yourself this: can you afford to take the risk that Apple’s new devices won’t take off?

So, how do you leverage the iTunes economy?

You already may be.

Top 5 Things You Need to Know:

1. iTunes is not as closed system as many believe it to be. You do not NEED to have audio or video content in the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) in order for it to play in iTunes. Things like the itpc:// and pcast:// URL handlers work fine outside of iTMS.

2. Shareable content will be more important than ever. iTunes is still driven by a host computer, even if the iPhone and Apple TV both have Wi-Fi. Make your content shareable by having a brand, domain, and Internet presence that can be spread by word of mouth with ease. Remember, things like Apple TV might be set up for someone who’s not technically adept. You get one chance to get them to your content. See New Comm Road 22 and Managing the Gray 20 for more on these topics.

3. Rigorously obey Apple’s specs for content. Make sure that your content will play in iTunes. It’s a free download, so there’s no excuse not to test. You can still distribute on MySpace video, YouTube, and Flickr, but if you don’t have content compatible with the iLife suite, you’ll miss out on audience. You may need to use converters like Visual Hub to create multiple versions of content, but if your goal is to reach the widest audience possible, you can’t afford to marry yourself to just one platform.

4. Make your content obvious above the fold at small sizes. Remember, devices like the iPhone will be browsing with nearly thumbnail-sized versions of your web site. Try this trick. Take a screenshot of your Web site. The iPhone’s widescreen resolution is 480 x 320. Open your screenshot in Photoshop or the graphic editor of your choice and resize your screen shot to 480 pixels wide. This is what your web site will look like on the iPhone. Is the call to action that you desire still legible? The iPhone is touch-screen. Can you easily touch the call to action?

Here’s the Financial Aid Podcast at 480 x 320.

Financial Aid Podcast on an iPhone screen

Here’s a Podshow+ page at 480 x 320. (thoughts.podshow.com)

Podshow Plus page for CC Chapman on an iPhone screen

From where you’re sitting right now, reach out to your screen and touch each page. Which one can you touch and one-click subscribe to?

5. If you have Web-based services like student loan consolidation applications, make bloody sure your applications work flawlessly with the Safari browser now. Safari is the native browser of the iPhone. If your application fails using Safari, you can kiss those customers good-bye. Now that these customers will be mobile and able to make impulse decisions with a full web browser quickly and easily, once you lose the impulse opportunity, you may never get it back.

Update: Thanks for stopping by, Diggers. Please share the love and give the podcast a listen.

  • There is a clear trend and services like blip.tv are evolving quickly to offer media makers a convenient way to make their video available in a range of format for different services.
  • Good tips. Above all, the lesson should be ease of use and clarity. Complain as we may about having to adhere to iTunes specs, if it means people have an easy-to-access entry point to the world of web media, it benefits everyone.

    I can't imagine any company that disrupts the very markets they create in quite the same way Apple does. Someone in that company is a genius. It think it's that Jobs character...
  • what's "itpc:// and pcast://?" I imagine a lot of readers might not be familiar...

    Good web design should use standards and Safari is a standards compliant browser.. so one should imagine that if you're doing your thing right.. it should work out of the box.

    Arguably.. you might want to play with iPhone versions of your site.. perhaps a special layout just for iPhone.. One of the advantages to this sorta thing is that in many ways Safari is a superior browser.. with a more powerful CSS implimentation then what is commonly used today.. because when one designs for all browsers.. these features don't get used.. and of course.. if you want to make web apps special for the iPhone, you'll have to go down that route anyway.. indeed you might want to consider this.. and I dare say that if you believe the mobile web is a hot emerging area you want to jump into.. it seems like the iPhone is a very compelling platform to explore.. Did I not see that every iPhone user will be forced to subscribe to an unlimited data plan? The upside of this is you'll have a huge user based that will be well disposed for mobile web apps in a way we probably haven't seen yet.

    But then, I suppose, I'm a fan boy.

    Also.. Final Cut Studio's compressor handles the file format stuff pretty well.. which I imagine is true of most serious media creation tools these days.. and if not Quicktime Pro for.. around $30-ish, or even just good old iTunes.. will do it for ya..
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