They should fire the PM who came up with this work flow.
I own an Apple TV and hosted a party at home.
My Apple TV is not protected by password, so all my friends with iPhones (the last one to own an Android got tired of it and replaced it with iPhone) could see the special 'Air Play' icon (http://cms.whathifi.com/Images/189140462bli.jpg) on their iPhone as soon as they join my WiFi network. Now anyone can play media on my TV, be it music from their library/photos from their camera roll/any other App which supports AirPlay. No set up required.
When I bought Apple TV, I bought it only for Netflix but I have been using it a lot through AirPlay. It's a killer feature.
I think it was more problem of iterative design and having to pull out features before release. I think the Q does a lot more but Google wanted to ship by Google IO and would improve it with later software updates.
I agree with you -- I imagine that's why it is the way it is. But do iterative designs work when the initial product is such a dud? The original iPhone was an hugely unfinished product, but still impressive in its own right. This is both unfinished and unimpressive for what it's _supposed_ to do. I used one yesterday and it was almost entirely useless. We could not get it to work reliably.
I hope that Google has tricks up its sleeve in time for Christmas. That's the only way I can imagine this product will do well. They can't wait a year and re-launch it, like what I think they tried with Google TV.
Apple routinely announces something at a conference and says it will ship in X months allowing them the time to polish. I see no reason why Google couldn't do the same.
Probably because the hardware was already finalized (they wanted developers to have them as freebies to begin hacking on, after all) and they didn't want to miss out on potential media device buyers for the next X months.
Which brings up a funny party trick - go to the bathroom and start playing porn on the big screen in the other room. See how long it takes for your friends to figure out who is sending it to the AppleTV...
I own an Apple TV and hosted a party at home.
My Apple TV is not protected by password, so all my friends with iPhones (the last one to own an Android got tired of it and replaced it with iPhone) could see the special 'Air Play' icon (http://cms.whathifi.com/Images/189140462bli.jpg) on their iPhone as soon as they join my WiFi network. Now anyone can play media on my TV, be it music from their library/photos from their camera roll/any other App which supports AirPlay. No set up required.
When I bought Apple TV, I bought it only for Netflix but I have been using it a lot through AirPlay. It's a killer feature.