24-hour Apple video site launched, but is it any good?
The Digital Lifestyle, a “24-hour video coverage site of Apple News, Rumors, and lifestyle”, as it is described on the site, is a purported online channel that is exclusively Apple-related.
So far, I’m not impressed with the video quality. When I first “tuned” into it, as they would say on the website, I was treated to a mock iPod commercial of Steve Ballmer dancing around with his Zune. Note, this was during a segment of “funny examples of Mac commercials being made fun of”, but still, I was expecting something more useful, such as the Quick Look tutorial later shown during the hour. Apparently, according to the website, they only have two actual shows, those being “Gary’s Garage”, a show about vintage technology, and “root access”, a show featuring an former Apple Genius. The site also has links to popular podcasts such as Webb Alert, featuring Morgan Webb, and CommandN, featuring a variety of hosts.
TDL has the potential to be something great, but for now, I’m not entirely impressed. If anything, it could have the potential to at least be a repository of Jobs’ keynotes.
November 28th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Hi Kristian,
First, thanks for taking a look at our site. I’d like to address some of the issues you raised in your article.
This “launch” wasn’t really supposed to happen, but the story hit digg, and the next thing you know, everyone was checking out the channel, which was more or less on a test loop. Of course, this led to a great deal of scrambling on our part, to pull the launch together weeks before we were ready.
We have ramped up additional programming, including a new mac podcast called MacMost, and a new show from us called “Two Minutes,” which will aim to teach you the basics of any Mac software in under two minutes.
While we will have more original programming, and how-to programming, as well as live coverage of Apple news events, (Keynotes, for example) a great portion of our broadcast day will continue to include short clips, such as the ad parodies you mentioned. We believe living the Apple lifestyle, and examining/highlighting Apple’s place in pop culture is also important.
I would encourage you to check back on us in the future.
~Ryan
November 29th, 2007 at 1:44 am
@Ryan:
Ah, didn’t know that. Well when you get things figured out, feel free to email me at kristian.freeman@451press.net and I’ll check it out again. Thanks for the comment.
-Kristian