Hayley Tsukayama, writing for The Washington Post:

The new Apple TV, which launched this week, offers a tantalizing breakthrough: It has the potential to be the only set-top box you will need.

The hockey puck-sized box offers some cool new features that can be used now — you can search for shows through the voice assistant Siri and a new remote lets you navigate by touch and play games. But more importantly, it reveals the company’s vision for the future of television — Apple hopes TV watching won’t be shaped by static channel guides of hundreds of shows that can be viewed only in certain time slots, but apps, largely developed by third-party companies, that offer your favorite shows on command, anytime you want. Anyone can submit an app, from big companies such as CBS or Netflix to smaller players such as Snapchat or Airbnb.

Apple TV’s watch-by-apps approach has another benefit — it can be the device that finally pulls together all of those subscriptions, watchlists and movies you’ve randomly downloaded all across the Web.

Apple is fantastic at constructing ecosystems. They’ve done a remarkable job with the new Apple TV. The potential is dazzling. The key is to establish a standard so strong, so compelling, that anyone who wants to play has to build an app for it.

The biggest domino in the bunch is Amazon’s Instant Video. Apple TV can certainly win without Amazon. After all, there’s plenty of content with Netflix, Hulu, and the like, with the networks in negotiation and already represented with time delayed shows on Netflix and Hulu.

But if Apple can get Amazon onto Apple TV, that’ll be the ballgame. The Apple TV will have established a standard with enough pull to bring everyone to the table.

Side note: If you are interested in cord cutting, watch the video at the top of the linked article. The first half is pretty basic, but the second half does a nice job of laying out the content offered by services like Netflix and Hulu, so you can start planning your own cord cutting.