The world probably does not need yet another blog post about Apple, or any Apple products, such as Apple TV which I’m about to blog about.

However, I feel compelled to do so, for two main reasons.

The first is that I feel vaguely guilty spending my blogging time for rAVe telling old work stories that alternate between being humorous, scandalous or both while other bloggers on the rAVe roster like Jennifer Willard, Joel Rollins and Gary Kayye post thoughtful, in-depth pieces on the current state of the industry. So I feel it’s time to write something a little more serious.

The other is that I feel a deep conflict towards Apple. On the one hand I’ve grown to dislike them as a company. Their arrogance and Hubris seems to grow by the day.

They’re incredibly aggravating to do business with, and it’s only professional constraint that keeps me from going off on a tirade detailing all their aggravations, both petty and major that I find myself having to contend with on an almost daily basis.

Yet at the same time, some products in their lineup are so well-designed, and so good at what they’re intended to do, that I find myself deeply impressed with what Apple has wrought.

AppleTV is one of those.

After months of procrastination I finally integrated an AppleTV unit into the AV system in our media room.

Awesome.

One of my Logitech Squeezebox units bricked last year, so I hadn’t had easy access to my music collection in that room since then. Suddenly having access to iTunes on my big system made me grin.

And I had gotten so used/resigned to the slow, cludgy Netflix interface on the Nintendo Wii that, like a chronic dull ache you just don’t notice anymore that navigating Netflix via AppleTV was a genuine joy, and that’s before taking the AV quality into consideration, which is superb.

All in all, AppleTV may arguably be their best product, mostly because it plays to their strengths. You’ve got to remember, they’re not a hardware company, they just have hardware assembled for them to their spec. Apple is a media company; their strength is in delivering content to you.

But what does all this have to do with Joan Jett, you ask?

This video ought to help explain my feelings about Apple.