No big deal unless Apple can negotiate directly with TV channels to offer a la carte programming without a cable subscription. If that happens, I'll buy 2-3 of them and bid farewell to my TV bill forever.
Apple offers a la carte across all major networks already. If it is on TV tonight you can generally purchase the show tomorrow.
I don't understand the desire for a la carte channels. For that matter, I haven't cared about a channel for over five years and certainly haven't missed them. Why would I want to get, say, everything on AMC rather than just the show or two that I actually watch?
The desire to be able to watch a show at the same time as it airs rather than the next day ... maybe that's important for some people, but I find that "the day it airs" has just been shifted for me by 24 hours (or whatever the actual delay between broadcast and availability happens to be for the particular show). No one that I know who has a cable subscription still watches anything as it airs; they all Tivo and watch the next day anyway. So, I don't miss out on "water cooler conversation" in any case.
What I
would like to see from Apple, in fact, is the exact opposite of a "support a la carte channels". Allow individual apps to be installed (either Apple does this as now, or an app store opens up), and allow them to "subscribe" to content. But, and this is the biggie that's missing:
provide a single search and favoriting interface across all the apps in addition to the app-centric browse interface. If I want to watch American Horror Story, I should be able to go to one place and see the options available to me - Buy from iTunes, Season Pass from iTunes, stream from Amazon (oh yeah, that needs to be added too), stream with ads from Hulu Plus, etc.
The counter argument to this is "that would cut into Apple's content sales profits; never happen!" That's BS. Apple routinely cuts into its content sales profits. Apple is a hardware and software company. Unlike some of their competitors, Apple makes a profit (and a healthy one) from selling its hardware, AppleTV included. Having people using its hardware on its platform is a huge advantage for Apple, and almost as valuable as the entirety of the content sales business.
Besides which, Apple's content sales have many distinct advantages over the competition; they aren't just the "you didn't know better" store to go to. They are generally about the same price as Amazon (sometimes a little more, rarely a little less for season passes), but they allow local downloads and are higher quality. They are obviously more expensive than a subscription to Hulu Plus (assuming you watch more than a couple shows each month), but are much higher quality and without ads.
As often as I would go in and say, "Huh. I guess this is available on Hulu; I'll just watch it there," I would likewise go in intending to watch something on Hulu or Amazon and say "Ugh. I don't feel like the ads. Let's just buy this episode this time."
I don't care how Apple gets there. I suspect that keeping it a walled garden they would be able to get there much faster than if they open it up to all comers. And the fact that they haven't done it any time in the past several years leaves the unsavory impression that they just don't want to consolidate viewing and/or think they can "win" all content sales by shutting out "the competition". I'm hoping that's wrong, though. Apple has a lot to win by making the AppleTV the go-to interface and hub for all video content.
