ZDNet's Jason O'Grady is usually an astute observer of the tech scene, but the CouchGuy thinks he must have left his glasses in his other jacket when he took another look at Apple TV in this article and pronounced it a "lead zeppelin". His arguments here would not have survived in the face of my high school debate squad. He's already shut down the comments queue on this one at his blog (right after a poster named doctorSpoc pretty much torpedoed O'Grady's primary arguments), so I'll have to be satisfied to respond here, point by point.

O'Grady: "The iPod blossomed for two reasons: content portability and piracy/theft."

Come again? I'll buy portability as one of the strengths of the iPod, but "piracy"? Last I heard, it was utterly legal to rip one's purchased CDs to digital files for use on a portable device. Apple has done more with the iTunes Store to discourage piracy than any other individual or group by making buying your tracks simple, convenient and inexpensive. O'Grady also forgets the iPod wasn't the first MP3 player by a long shot. I had a Creative Nomad a full year before the iPod came out. Early players like that didn't set the world on fire because they held only a handful of songs, ran through expensive alkaline batteries at a rate of two or three sets a day, and were horribly inconvenient to use. Apple created the MP3 explosion by doing what they do best — making something that was already possible but not a lot of fun into something that the mainstream could embrace and enjoy.

O'Grady: "Apple can't include DVD ripping tools in its official software so you're going to be limited to viewing content purchased from the iTunes store. This has the potential to make Apple TV be exponentially less successful than iPod."

The conclusion doesn't follow from the (flawed) premise. Though it is unlikely you will see "Rip. Stream. View." as the theme of an Apple TV ad anytime soon, there are plenty of other ways to get content into iTunes. Anything you can freely download that doesn't have restrictive DRM can pretty much be converted into a format iTunes will embrace and play. I have a one-click solution for moving YouTube content to iTunes attached to my Safari browser right now. All of my Media Center PC recordings are automatically brought into iTunes for me by an inexpensive piece of WMC plugin software called MyTV ToGo. And yes, I rip DVDs I own with Handbrake, which is on the way to being something easy enough to use that you could hand it to a non-geek and get good results. (DMCA? Please. I bought and paid for the DVDs. The doctrine of Fair Use will trump bad law in the long run.)

O'Grady ignores a vast source of great content that is built right into the Apple TV/iTunes combination and is absolutely free — video podcasts! Already a major area of growth as a medium of communictaion, video podcasting is likely to take a major leap forward with millions of Apple TV units bringing podcasts into the living room. Podcasts aren't limited to techie talking head shows — any sort of video entertainment that can be broadcast can be podcast. Prepare for an explosion of new content, heralded by such pioneers as TWIT TV and Revision3. In fact, I would go so far as to say that video podcasting alone, fed by iTunes, is a good enough reason to buy an Apple TV even if one never downloads a single movie from the iTunes Store. O'Grady doesn't see the potential? Forget lead zeppelins, he's wearing lead sunglasses.

O'Grady: The other problem is that there isn't a compelling consumer problem the Apple TV solves - whereas the iPod is orders of magnitude better than a CD player.

The iPod is better than a CD player because it is more convenient, less bulky, and allows you to take your content to wherever you are most comfortable enjoying it. The Apple TV is better than watching digital video on your computer for exactly the same reasons. I don;t want to get off the couch to change DVDs. I don't want to go to the store to buy a movie. I don't want to watch my favorite TV series only when the network decides they want to air it. I want it all my way, and Apple TV gives that to me. Apple TV bridges the gap between an endless source of content via the computer and the web, and the comfortable chair and big TV set in my family room. That's a consumer  problem solved if I ever saw one.

O'Grady: "The reason consumers shifted to digital downloads in the music world is because they could get stuff for free. If they can't, and piracy is really stopped, cable will continue to thrive and the alternatives will not be very good."

Bull. O'Grady has been listening to too much RIAA propaganda. Consumers embraced digital downloads for convenience. If cost was the only concern and everyone was as big a pirate as O'Grady seems to think, the iTunes Store would have failed miserably. People are willing to pay for content, as long as getting and using that content isn't too difficult a task and isn't priced unreasonably high. If we learned anything from the iTunes lesson, we learned that.

Cable is dying because of cost (specifically, being forced to pay too damn much for a bunch of content I don't want to get thge few things that I do want) and convenience (wanting to have my content available when I want it instead of when they feel like feeding it to me). Cable had plenty of chances to develop selective delivery methods with reasonable costs — and they dragged their feet. now that the web makes content delivery how and when I want it at a reasonable price is here, it is those same greedy cable companies who want to stomp it into the ground with caps on their "unlimited" internet service and selective content throttling — mostly to save their badly outmoded business model from going the way of the buggy whip. cable providers have shown time and time again that we get nothing in the way of innovation and response to customer demands from them until a bright competitor comes along and offers a good alternative. If cable companies make their services better and become more responsive to the consumer, it will only happen because ventures like Apple TV scare the living bejasus out of them.

O'Grady (relaying a quote from a friend's mother): "Why would anyone watch TV on the Web when there are all of these new wonderful high quality channels on Comcast?"

Why do you think Comcast has finally brought you those wonderful high quality channels, Mom? It's because they are terrified you are going to abandon them when someone else brings you improved content more conveniently and you realize what an inflated price you are paying for Comcast's chunk of channels. If not for the growing alternatives to cable, you'd still be watching what you had in the early days of cable. Goodness knows that's mostly what we've been watching up to now. Satellite brought the first alternative to cable, without which there would be no digital cable. Apple TV and the rest of the new wave of IPTV is a second wake-up call to the old providers that they cannot continue to sit on innovation and technological improvement forever, simply because they are lazy and greedy and think they can take their audience for granted. Besides, who says you can't watch both? Oh, the cable folks would like you to think it is their way or the highway — but those days are over.

And the whole point of Apple TV is not to "watch TV on the web" — it is to watch TV on your TV, with the added convenience and variety that internet delivered TV content can bring you. When is Lost on again? At my house, it is on any damn time I want it to be on, thankyouverymuch.

So if Apple TV is a lead zeppelin, tell me where to buy my ticket. This lead zeppelin is going to fly very, very high indeed. Too bad Mr. O'Grady is going to miss the ride.