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Apple conveniently shows previous purchases in the iTunes folder, so I can say with confidence that I own six titles, five of which are movies I love and the other one is something I must have picked up for free one day when I was testing the experience. I apologize to the producers/creators of The Wild, but I have absolutely no recollection of this movie. This makes it an excellent selection to evaluate in terms of file access. Therein lies the source of my dissatisfaction with Apple/iTunes with regards to the cloud.

With the other major services, I have the ability to access them through my television. I can do this through videogame systems, Blu-Ray players, TiVo, Roku and even the televisions themselves. Most HDTV units sold these days include smart apps, my methodology of choice for cloud file access. The problem is that Apple does everything the Apple way, forcing consumers to purchase an Apple TV if they want to watch files from their iTunes library.

I have no interest in the Apple TV since it’s redundant in combination with the Roku. Due to this, the files in my iTunes library are virtually inaccessible to me. Yes, I can watch them through my computer but this is not my methodology of choice. My wife and I have a pair of televisions in our living room (don’t knock it until you try it, movie lovers) and we want to use those rather than a laptop screen/monitor. I gave The Wild a chance in this regard, but I grew frustrated after only a few minutes.

The process requires me to either stream on the laptop or download the file to my hard drive than watch it. This alone represents a misrepresentation of the concept of cloud ownership. What I expect from a service is to click on a file in my library and watch it at my convenience. Since Apple does sell HD titles (to their credit), they encourage their users to download files in order to reduce bandwidth. As I type this, Apple’s stock is in the range of $480 and they have a cash surplus of $100 billion yet they are bandwidth spendthrifts. This annoys me.

Taking the hint, I downloaded the file rather than streamed it. My preferred methodology is to work on my laptop while the televisions entertain/inform me in the background. I was actively agitated by the forced change in my behavioral pattern, which did negatively reinforce my opinion of Apple’s cloud system. Yes, the movie played fine and looked great. And yes, there were obviously no streaming issues since I wasn’t in fact streaming it. Even so, this is not the way I want my cloud service to work.

Sans Apple TV, my iTunes movie cloud is akin to a landlocked ship. Perhaps at some point down the road Apple will relent and allow other apps the same access to these files but by then I will have committed so much to other cloud services that they will have missed their window. If you are a devout Apple lover who owns an Apple TV, it may prove to be the perfect service for you. For me, it’s a pass.

In next week’s column, I will explain how I came to choose Vudu and Amazon as my primary cloud providers. I will also relay some details about my experiences with Ultraviolet as well as my initial attempts at the Disc to Digital service utilized by Vudu.

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