Technology is really interesting. You can read about new technology, lust after expensive products, and eventually break down and buy that one new device you just can’t live without. Well, this writer recently purchased the latest Apple TV and set up the newly purchased Apple TV to synch with all the tunes and other stuff in my iTunes account and through my iPhone. The synching process really was quite painless, but I recently discovered something about synching your songs with your new Apple TV – and this is something that you’ll want to know before you set up that cloud service – the synched tunes you have on your iPhone won’t work when you head underground.

This lesson was recently learned when ducking into the metro for a quick ride. One minute I was happily listening to Arcade Fire and the next minute I was listening to complete silence. Then it dawned on me, those tunes that I synched were no longer available because the Cloud was no longer available. Invincible? Fool proof? The new way to listen to music? Apple’s Cloud is all of those things, but it won’t get you where you’re going if you plan to take a metro, subway, tube, or whatever you might call it in your neck of the woods.

The New Apple TV Reviewed

So, aside from the synching issue that prompted me to write this article, what about the new Apple TV is so great? The main reason (other than the fact that it was a new device from Apple, a company that I greatly admire for a whole slew of reasons) was that the new Apple TV is just $99 –tack on taxes and other stuff to that price though. Cost aside, Apple’s latest TV offering is quite a lot of fun to use. All of the songs that I have stored on my iPhone and MacBook Pro were easily loaded into my Apple TV via the Cloud (a paid service, but worth it). I also loaded photos from my iPhone quickly and painlessly, and with Apple’s “Remote” app I can easily control the songs coming from my TV (granted, I now need a better surround sound system, but that’s a comment best reserved for another article).

Apple’s TV interface is nice too. The setup process was ridiculously simple, finding what I was looking for while using Apple TV took only a matter of moments, and the fact that you can search for a movie or show using a keyword is really extraordinary. All of these things combined make for a handy device that’s a lot of fun to use. If there’s one complaint that I have (really, just a criticism), it’s that it takes quite a long time to synch songs between an iPhone and an Apple TV. Otherwise, the Apple TV is worth that $99 all the way. In fact, I can see why a lot of people would cancel a cable subscription and just stick with the Apple TV option – not a bad idea at all.

If you’re curious about Apple’s new TV, I think that there are much worse ways to spend $99. No, wait, I know that there are much worse ways to spend $99. Apple TV isn’t perfect, but it is a very cool device that will prove to be useful when you want to listen to tunes on your iPhone, control your TV from your phone, or just choose a movie from the myriad of movie options that this TV offers. Of course, the whole experience would be amplified if I had a Netflix account, but, alas, I live in Canada where Netflix is really just an expensive video rental store (maybe someday).