The next frontier for Apple – and other technology companies – to conquer: the television market. Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn, has confirmed his company will be building a television for Apple in conjunction with Sharp. Since I bought a brand-new top-of-the-line TV late last year, I’ve been thinking a lot about what could be improved about the state of TV today, and as crazy as it seems, I’m actually not that dissatisfied.
Since I had an unexpected (but quite welcome) financial surplus late last year, I decided to buy a top-of-the-line TV for the first time in my life. Up until that point I had mostly bought bargain TVs, focussing mostly on a decent price, as opposed to quality and design. This time around, however, I knew exactly what I wanted: a very specific type of Sony Bravia.
Sony has a line of what I would call ‘design’ televisions that sport a very unique look (yes, that stand is basically a brushed aluminium brick with speakers), unlike anything else on the market, which Sony calls Monolithic Design. They started working with this design only a few years ago, and every time I paid a visit to an electronics retailer, I would sneak a peek at one of these TVs, mumbling to myself about how I would one day own one.
Late last year, the day had finally come, and after spending an honestly inappropriate amount of money, I brought the Sony Bravia KDL-40NX720 home – 40″ of razor-thin top-quality LED TV goodness. I’ve never felt remorse or any kind of doubts over this purchase; picture quality is breathtaking, and it’s a perfect match for my minimalist (completely clutter-free) living room and Harman-Kardon audio equipment (which has matching design). If only all Sony products looked this good.
In any case, after six months of using this thing, I’ve gotten a pretty firm grasp of what Apple could possibly improve about the whole TV experience, from buying, to installing, to actually using it. Remember that I’m Dutch, and as such, your experience will most likely differ significantly.
As far as buying goes, I was in luck, since Sony’s range of Monolithic Design televisions is quite small, with usually only two variants (in my case, 40″ and 46″) on the shelves. Since I didn’t care about the other gazillion (much cheaper) sets, I had little to no trouble when it came to the buying experience. I’m guessing Apple will offer two to four sizes of otherwise identical hardware, similar to their other product lines and similar to this specific Sony niche.
Setting the TV up was a breeze too, and this is most likely where my experience will differ from much of the rest of the world. The KDL-40NX720 has a PCMCIA-like slot in which you shove a CI+ module from your provider containing a credit card-sized chip card. Turn the TV on, punch in the correct frequency corresponding to your postal code (3-4 numbers), and press okay. That’s it. Everything else is done automatically, and within 30 seconds, you’re watching TV. All channels in your cable package (regular set+additional HD channels, in my case) are right there.
This really couldn’t be much easier, and unless Apple opts to forego traditional TV channels entirely, it simply cannot be any simpler than this. Every country has its own way of distributing TV, and Apple will have to fall in line here pretty much like they had to fall in line with existing GSM and CDMA networks with the iPhone.
If they, on the other hand, forego traditional TV channels, things could indeed by made simpler, but I don’t think this will go down well. iTunes is virtually devoid of video content in The Netherlands and large parts of the rest of the world, so the value proposition of relying on iTunes distribution is zero. Even if they manage to finally get their act together and offer a decent selection of content, there’s still the issue of all the local content that people demand from their TV.
What good is a TV to me if I can’t watch Dutch news, talkshows, series, events, sports, and so on?
As far as using the KDL-40NX720 goes… Well, that’s where Apple can – and will – leapfrog the competition. The KDL-40NX720, technically, has all sorts of advanced features like a browser and YouTube integration, but it’s so horribly slow and has a terrible interface, so I simply just don’t bother. The TV can play content directly from your PC over the network, but as usual, codec support is relatively limited and the file browser is confusing.
The TV is absolutely riddled with functionality. As in, it’s bursting at the seems with stuff I didn’t even know it had until I would unintentionally run into it. For instance, in what is surely one of the creepiest features ever (on a Sony product, no less), it has a small integrated camera with face recognition and tracking, so the TV can turn itself off if you’re not sitting in front of it or display a warning if you sit too close (I shat bricks when I found that out). It has a hard disk recorder in there too (which requires a USB drive), wifi, 3D, and god knows what else. I once told it to make me coffee, but that it did not do.
The end result is that it tries to do way too much, making each of these features half-hearted, lacklustre, and unpleasant to use. If this reminds you of many pre-iPhone smartphones, you’re not alone. It’s in this specific area where Apple can – and will – leapfrog the competition with a smaller but far better implemented set of features in an iMac-like package.
What’s going to be interesting is just how much of a computer this Apple television is going to be, and just how versatile it’s going to be. Is it actually going to be an iMac, or will it run iOS? Can you use it as a monitor? How many inputs is it going to have, if at all? How many outputs? Can I hook it up to my external (and far superior) sound system? Can I only control it with an iOS device? Is Siri going to work properly when I’m with a group of loud and chatty friends?
Other than software, the content question is going to be the toughest nut to crack for Apple, since every country has its own systems and approaches to both analogue and digital TV, and in many cases even each provider has its own way of doing things. This is quite dissimilar from mobile telephony, which is relatively uniform with either GSM or CDMA.
I’m interested in finding out what Apple has up its sleeve here. I have zero interest in buying a TV from them, but I am interested in the effect it’ll have on the rest of the industry. The iPhone had a massive impact on the mobile phone market, and an Apple television will undoubtedly do the same to the television market.
My guess is that they will take a standard Sharp TV, put a nice case around it, shove an Apple TV box inside and call it a day. Oh and they will double the price of the Sharp TV since it now has an Apple Sticker and a built in Apple TV.
If you already have a good quality TV with a bad interface, just buy a Apple TV box, or build a HTPC and put XBMC and Netflix on it.
-EL
Yep, that’s the Apple way.
This doesn’t makes sense. Apple isn’t going through all this TV nonsense to replicate what we already have.
That’s what they always do, replicate what already exists, but easier to use, and much prettier. I’m not putting them down for doing this, I’m just saying this is what they do.
Yup, if it’s like the way things usually go, Apple will come up with some new twist on the TV concept; geeks and tech pundits will blow it off, claiming it sucks because it doesn’t come with the kitchen sink, and can’t do your dishes either. Then Apple will sell about 9 billion of them, and then the copycat TVs will show up a year later, as everybody tries to copy Apple’s design. The copycats will suck ass and lack the polish of the Apple TVs on the first go-round, but by the 2nd or 3rd gen, they’ll have the Apple interface copied perfectly, plus they’ll throw in the kitchen sink to make the geeks happy.
And after it’s all said and done with, the anti-Apple crowd will claim that Apple innovated nothing, because… you know… TVs have existed for many decades already, and they saw Apple’s design on a Star Trek episode once, or on some VHS tape from the 90’s
Edited 2012-05-11 23:01 UTC
Quantity != quality though. If it was we should all consider Lady Gaga an excellent musician.
Yeah, the computers existed before Apple I or Mac.
They just replicated it and put their label!!!!111
Computers did exist before the Apple I. Though they were one of the first Personal Computers. At the same time, Apple is not the same company started in garage 35 years ago.
The original news story is not true
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/05/14/anatomy-of-an-itv-rumor/
Read again. That’s not what it says. They suspect it isn’t true… But have no proof whatsoever.
I agree that it will be, overly-simplistically speaking: AppleTV + good TV panel (what in/outputs is the biggest question).
But I think you overly trivialize it. If you’ve used AppleTV + decent TV + iPhones and/or iPads with an open mind, I would think you could at least see potential and would need to acknowledge that Apple already has many of the pieces you’d want from a “TV of Tomorrow.”
1. Content. Apple has been selling music for a DECADE. They want: simple pricing; as much content the better, but the best content is best; are opposed to ads, subscriptions, and restrictions; they want you to “own” it; however they will compromise with content owners’s desire to protect their content at the best price, in an economically-viable structure, while being fair to the consumer; which has lead to them being the world’s largest digital music store by selling singles from the world’s largest music store; the second or third largest catalog of digital television programs, films, books; uniquely, the largest catalog of free educational material; and the largest catalog of applications in today’s most thriving market for application development because of mobile, touch technologies — even though they’ve been reluctant to bring this catalog of applications to the livingroom, they are certainly “working on it”; not only are they committed to providing a large catalog, they’ve worked hard to bring all forms of contents to as many geographical regions as possible — in some categories, they virtually have reached the “entire” world insofar as is legally/financially viable; they are willing to negotiate hard with the content owners and have the most leverage despite the most reluctance from content owners because of the success Apple has had this past decade.
You may not like it. It’s not perfect. But Apple’s content offering is undeniable; even in areas where Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Microsoft/Xbox, Valve, Amazon, Google may lead with a larger library of one or more content type or offer a more “desirable” service, there is no other company providing comparable depth and breadth of content across all forms of content, across all geographical regions, across a cohesive ecosystem in a way comparable to Apple. Apple appears committed to run content as a business that is breakeven or slightly profitable for them, profitable for the content owners — usually more so than other comparable competitors or competing business models, and at a reasonable price for consumers.
2. Simplicity. Both the hardware and the software will be dead simple. (Again, this may not be for you, but it has broad appeal to many consumers.)
3. iOS. Airplay, Mirroring, Remote and other remote-control apps, multi-device gaming/applications, the policies of the iTunes store (ownership across devices, etc.), and iCloud bring value to owners of iPhones, iPads, iPod touches, and Macs which is order(s) of magnitude greater than the sum of its parts. Siri, particularly used within the context of remote-control iOS devices and iOS TVs at the 10′ distance of interaction could be the next wave of interaction, comparable to touch — and it’s true that Siri may not be better than x, y, or z at voice-interaction as others, but, again, Apple doesn’t have the whole puzzle, just the most pieces.
4. Hardware. Claim it will cost twice as much as the “same” TV all you want, AppleTV is cheap and competitive with similar devices, the iPad is only “expensive” because no one else could deliver a product you’d want to buy at comparable prices. Many people already own an iPhone or an iPad. I won’t be surprised if Apple prices it with a 30% margin, far greater than competitors, but also much closer to reasonable than “double.”
Edited 2012-05-11 23:39 UTC
If I were to guess what apple would do ‘differently’ to other TVs on the market would be to build in gesture andd voice controls.
For example;
User: “AppleTV – when is the next episode of house?”
TV: “Tonight at 9” “Would you like to switch channel when it starts?”
User: “Yes”
With something like a Kinect-like gesture interface it would be easy to navigate though the iTunes store to find on-demand content you want such as films
The ‘remote’ will be little more than a volume and power button
Don’t Samsung already do that?
Probably, and there are probably even more manufacturers with similar features. The problem might be that no one has ever heard of it because the large array of products waters down any marketing.
Oh great, another product that costs twice as much to buy then it costs to make. Something that’s closed tighter then a dolphins butt, support for the bare minimum codecs that are needed for iTunes. Most likely missing any ability to add other devices like a DVD player or game console. Yea I’ll pass, thank you. Even if Apple comes out with a retina display TV with the
Guts of an iPad I’m finished supporting the monopoly that is Apple.
I’ll bet a hundred bucks that the fan boys will say that other company’s stole the idea of the TV from Apple and they’ll probably sue Samsung. Why, just because.
Yes I’m being silly and I don’t believe what I am writing. However I am done with Apple. They are becoming the Microsoft of the 90’s and that just doesn’t sit well with me.
Edited 2012-05-11 22:33 UTC
Feel good about yourself now? Yeah! You just bashed Apple and derided them on the web! Yeah! You rock! Yeah!
You probably are one of the same ‘tards that called an iPad, “just a big iPod touch” not realizing that you were actually paying Apple a compliment. Not realizing that you were witnessing a watershed moment in computing, that still to this day, this very moment, no competitor has yet to trump.
When the iPod arrived, it was poo pooed. Same for the iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air. Funny how now everything looks just like them huh?
How about we stop, and take a wait and see attitude? How about we wait to see what happens and then we comment huh? How about we wait for the product to ship, let alone be announced, before you put your uninformed ignorance on display? Maybe, just maybe then the world will have a few less blathering idiots in it.
Edited 2012-05-11 23:22 UTC
Yadda-yadda-yadda.
Your fanboyism is as annoying his anti-Apple attitude.
Apple is going to get the content, eventually. Apple strategy is to sell a device that people wants, and then the content is going to come. So they are probably going to sell Apple TV first in the US. And if it is successful, they will bring it to other places in the world, and don’t worry, they will get Dutch news on itunes at that point. They will just have to point out how successful their product is in the US and how many Dutch people wants an iTV and how much money they will make by selling news on itunes.
However, I am sceptical they will be successful. The reason of the success of ipod, iphone and ipad is that they come to a market full of crappy products.
And currently, the combination of Netflix+AnyTVBrand gives you already quiet the best user experience you can get. If you live in the US. If you live outside of the US, the problem is that it gets too complicated for companies like Netflix or Apple to get enough content agreements to be interesting on the market, and not sure if Apple can break the deadlock outside of the US if they don’t become dominant in the US first.
So that’s where OUR ad revenue generated money goes to – for fancy TVs…
I’m waiting to be amazed, but honestly, I have my doubts. I don’t want to buy a 50inch TV that I need to replace every year or two because the ‘computer’ inside of it is outdated.
Despite Apple’s insistence that we replace our iDevices every year, they do tend to have lasting value. My girlfriend has a first gen iPad, and while it stutters some with the newest update, it can still run every app she throws at it and it still gets 10 or so hours of uptime per charge.
Looking further back, as late as 2010 my portable was a 2000 era PowerBook G3 Pismo that I had upgraded several times. I wasn’t going to do any video editing or modern gaming on it but it was more than enough for my modest portable computing needs. I only sold it to get a lighter, “faster” netbook that turned out to be a turd performance-wise, even compared to the ancient G3. I lost out on battery life, GUI smoothness and the better workflow that OS X provided. I even lost screen real estate; the netbook was only 1024×600 compared to the 1024×768 G3. And at the time, it was one of the nicer netbooks available; the only ones better were the ION based units that cost more than a good 13 inch laptop.
Would I buy another new Mac today? Hell no! Not only are they overpriced, I’m dead set against giving Apple any more money. But if the opportunity comes along to pick up a nice PowerBook or pre-unibody MBP at a decent price I might consider it. Between OS X Leopard and GNU/Linux, a five year old Apple laptop can still be a very powerful machine.
No, I have a feeling that this is one area where Apple will focus on that lasting value and use it as a selling point. Because they know that the competition will only need a year or so to start matching features, Apple can build a machine that is as upgradeable software-wise as their computers to stay ahead of the game. They can pull this off if they do it right.
I just won’t be buying one myself.
I was originally writing a post about how this was doomed to failure in the US, and apple must be launching in Europe only, but I took a look at wikipedia’s cable card article ( In the us you’d need a pcmia card to use a non cable provider’s box). It says that all of he cable boxes out there are already using cable cards, therefore the technology is mature and supported by the cable companies.
However, I can’t find any cable card ready Called DCR or digital cable ready tvs available online. No one I know of has one, even my crazy money is no object friends.
Apple Tv and google tv would both be much much better if they also had cable card capability, as it could be *the* box.
So either Apple has figured out what it needs to to make this happen and is going directly to the built in DCR TV market, or I’m missing something, or Apple is not building a tv for the US market.
Well, cable cards don’t exist in the UK. Virgin Media (as in, yes, Virgin Mobile, Virgin Atlantic, etc) runs the countries entire consumer cable TV network. UK was late at adopting cable, it rolled out over most of the country in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Originally, it was regional with providers like Videotron, Nynex, NTL, etc. but the companies began to merge (lack of funds after all the investment? Not sure), and we ended up with Cable and Wireless and Blueyonder then NTL owned everything then Virgin took over.
We entirely digital cable now. It uses a variant of the European DVB standard. The basic cable box has a full system built in that allows you to stream content (catch up TV, movies, general TV series and music videos.) there’s a version with a built in DVR and they launched a TIVO version box last year. Virgin only have set top boxes. There are no cable cards.
Sky are the next competitor. Digital satellite. No option for a “cable card” style adapter.
We have mainly digital terrestrial TV (transmitter over the air) with the last few analog regions going over the next year. This is DVB. All new TVs have a digital tuner built in now.
So, basically, Apple either need to pull all of this together – allow for cable, satellite and digital terrestrial to be accepted, or they will basically lose out big time. How they’ll get the TV to work with the Virgin services, I don’t know. Without them, it seriously limits the usefulness. If we end up with an Apple TV integrated flat Apple TV which we then need to plumb in all of the set top boxes – seriously, what is the point? You can buy reasonable TV’s that do most of that already. Buy an Apple TV box, and you’re done. Don’t buy an Apple TV box… Err… Everything sill works.
Cable cards don’t seem to actually be that common. I remember seeing one TV several years ago (in someone’s house) that took one. When my parents got their first HDTV a few years ago, they also got an HD TiVo, which takes 2 cable cards in order to be able to record two shows at once. It took at least three visits from cable company techs before they finally got one that could actually get a cable card working, so I got the idea that they weren’t used very much. (This was in the northeast of the United States.)
Hmmm… I have an official cable decoder box from my provider which has a cable card in it – take the card out and you don’t get any channels.I’m in Ireland, where we have a cable monopoly and a hideous service from NTL, but it seems that everyone here has an NTL card, so maybe we’ll be able to use the Apple TV like that. Then again, being NTL, they’ll probably block that sort of thing and you’ll be still forced to use their under-powered, unstable and generally cruddy decoder box with your new TV…
That’s really hideous with satellite decoder boxes …they’re technically perfectly capable of receiving many free-to-air channels (TV and radio), but you can watch them only as long as “valid” card is inside.
Four years ago I bought a Sony KDL-46XBR8, Triluminos (RGB) LED technology with local dimming. The XBR8 was designed before the market for selling high-end products went kaput in 2008 and is still reviewed as better than any non-Plasma DFP. For those that don’t know, XBR = the best Sony can do. Ok, so there are a few exceptions, such as the XBR9/10 that were some marketing BS that weren’t as visually pleasing as the XBR8, but cost about 1/2 as much. They cut the XBR8 life very short thanks to awful sales due to its high price.
So, while this is a rather wickedly good TV in terms of quality, and most mercifully is a matte display, it has a few annoyances.
1) Getting to the guide after powering on is a 30+ second affair
2) Entering/exiting the guide causes an audio/visual hang with nothing for 1 second
3) I have to use a roku and an attached PC for doing all the things I want to do (Netflix, LAN DLNA music/video/photos, et cetera).
If this was the market Apple was coming into, I can easily see how they would dominate. However, last year I bought a Sony XBR-46HX929, the current Sony XBR. Out of the box this TV does everything imaginable with its software for streaming and local media, web, widgets, is very fast to boot, has no audio/video gap when entering/exiting guide. Other than the stupid glossy display, it is nearly ideal.
Against this type of competition, I don’t see the market being particularly excited with an Apple TV appliance. While the competition was dozing off 4 years ago on the software front, as their focus has long been on the hardware, they have figured out the importance of high-quality software, Samsung even more so than Sony.
Unlike Nokia, which was somewhat dozing off with their smart phone software, TV manufacturers seem to have figured it out before getting demolished by newcomers to the market. I believe they have managed to successfully avoid the innovator’s dilemma type scenarios that paralyze a company into a fossilized state of progress.
With regards to the whole upgradability of the hardware discussion, there is already a rather reasonable standard, Open Pluggable Standard (OPS), that is used for digital signage and large screen displays. I don’t see why high-end TVs couldn’t simply adopt this standard. In fact, many NEC products already use this standard. Why I am limiting this to high-end TVs is that the cost of enabling this capability is non-trivial and the boards are also non-trivial costs.
About the standard
http://www.nec-display.com/ap/en_display/ops/index.html
NEC’s option cards
http://www.necdisplay.com/accessories/large-screen-displays/option-…
I think it’s foolish to expect built-in features of *any* TV to match what you think they should have. I recently got a couple of Panasonic plasmas (one a “Smart TV” and the other not) and whilst the Smart TV stuff is moderately handy if you don’t know how to hook up a PC to the TV, it’s ultimately quite limited in what it can provide you.
Best setup is to get an HTPC (I use an Acer Revo 3700, but any equivalent will do) – making sure it supports 1080p and HDMI out of the box like the Revo does – and then hook it up to the Net and your new TV. Wireless keyboard, mouse and maybe a media remote – throw in XBMC and maybe a TV tuner backend (e.g. tvheadend, MythTV backend) and you’ll have a *far* more flexible setup than *any* Apple or Sony solution in the future.
You know it makes sense 🙂
That’s similar to my current setup. I have a super cheap LCD TV with VGA and HDMI inputs. I had put my current desktop PC with Windows 7 and Windows Media Center on it at first which worked flawlessly, and used my laptop as my main computer, but I ended up selling the laptop and went back to the desktop as my main.
The TV is now connected to a dual core HP mini-desktop form factor (not tower, this sits on its side like a proper media device). I was running the included XP Pro with MediaPortal but that sucked. I tried GNU/Linux with XBMC and MythTV but something in that equation didn’t like my TV tuner card. So, I’m now installing Windows 8 Consumer Preview (it’s free and I’m not going to pirate Win7) and if it works well, I’ll spring for another Windows 7 license when the preview times out.
I don’t have cable TV and never will; between over-the-air broadcasts, Sickbeard and Netflix I’m pretty much covered.
…for minuscule part of the population. All the rest will be happy with something “good enough” and handy.
The big story on the Mac rumor sites is that Apple is in talks to buy the German HDTV 9known for minimalist design, Loewe:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/05/12/apple_reportedly_in_t…
Pattern recognition:
1) AppleInsider.
2) Daniel Eril Didubpdifrorthn.
In other words, most likely bullshit.
What’s curious (even a bit hilarious?) with this one – they themselves bring attention to pre-Apple “Apple design”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1998_Loewe_Spheros2.jpg
Apple TV will have interface that is pretty but extremely annoying to use because of poor usability (e.g., icons in grids and scrollbars as checkboxes).
Apple TV will not have a mute button on the remote. That function will be added to a later model when its design is perfected.
Apple TV will not have legacy connectors like HDMI.
Apple TV will come only with a screen surface that can be used as a mirror.
Errr…. Seeing as the current Mac Mini model ships with HDMI and Thunderbolt, and an HDMI to DVI converter, something tells me you are incorrect. In fact, my Mac Mini is connected to my monitor using HDMI, along with the XBox 360. Couple of cables and a cheap HDMI switcher, fully switchable set-up. Cables and switcher all together cost less than £25. I could have found a cheaper switcher, but this one I have is tiny and happened to be on the shelf at the store when I was looking for the cabling. I also have a thunderbolt to VGA for an older monitor, but HDMI is just a better picture.
It was a tongue-in-cheek reference to Apple tending to do things like removing disk drives when they were still widely used. I have a vague recollection that they have pulled similar stunts more recently with ports like VGA. Then there is the micro display port thing, when they could have just as well used a standard size version.
I should have written (all tongue-in-cheek):
Apple TV will not have HDMI inputs. Only supported input port type is so new, nothing else on the market supports it yet.
🙂
The full size display port connector is a cheap piece of crap. It does not take frequent plugging and unplugging well at all. Apple gave the standard for mini display port a royalty free license that anyone can implement.
Free of charge socket specifications are not something so special though, considering that to do anything with said socket you still need the expensive DisplayPort spec from VESA (which includes MiniDP specs) anyway…
I’m not blaming Apple, though. They are pretty much the only company in the computer industry who make frequent use of that connector, so they did not disturb anyone by letting the bulkier and more fragile earlier iteration die a quicker death. Also, they did the right thing by publicly standardizing the new standard under reasonable terms, though it is unlikely that people who have already went through the trouble of implementing HDMI will want to switch to yet another new screen socket of dubious extra value.
Edited 2012-05-13 16:55 UTC
Actually VESA has the Display port spec available royalty free. HDMI costs 4 cents a port to license. It is still a generation ahead HDMI 1.4 in throughput. I know Toshiba is also using mini display-port on some laptops, so it has caught on a little.
Edited 2012-05-13 22:48 UTC
Only if you like it outdated. They have started charging for the latest spec in 2010.
See this (or, if the link fails, go to vesa.org -> Free Standards -> DisplayPort-related standards) : https://fs16.formsite.com/VESA/form608559305/secure_index.html
Indeed, and IIRC you cannot go beyond a fixed cost of around 10 000$. Gotta love the video standard industry, isn’t it ?
Which doesn’t say much, considering that no one uses video cables to transfer large files (yet, Thunderbolt may change that) and that few monitors, if any, reach its 4096×2160p24 resolution limits.
Everyone has released a few display-port-powered products at the time where it was supposed to be the next big thing, IIRC, but then the novelty has worn off.
If anything could get miniDP some popularity, it expect it would be the Thunderbolt thing, but it remains to be seen if Apple and Intel will manage to push it far enough.
Edited 2012-05-14 06:56 UTC
-beyond +below, of course
If Jobs were still here, I don’t think they would be making any TVs for Apple. Didn’t NVIDIA pre-announce something ahead of Apple resulting in ATI being in all current macs.
I thought about that but the Chief of Foxcon can’t possibly be stupid enough to openly violate an Apple NDA right?
I have to assume he had permission from Apple. Keeping his mouth shut about future Apple products is one of the most important aspects of his job.
The Appleblogsphere took a single misquote from an obscure Chinese source and blew it out of proportion. Meanwhile the journalists from Reuters, AP etc who were at the same event never heard him saying any such thing. FoxConn has already issued a denial.
Welcome to the post-journalist world, where fact-checking is a historical footnote.
Guys, if you buy this TV just to watch cable etc, you’re not buying it for its intended purpose. Yes, the hardware will be Sharp’s, but the software will be Apple, and will be what you really pay for in the end.
You can already bet that the software will do something that no other TV’s can do. And the reverse will probably be true, too.
Agreed. If such a thing exists at all, it might still use the term “TV” as a historical reference to its origins, just as the iPhone used the term “phone” in its name. But it will have to be far more than anything we understand by “TV” today.
To flesh out the analogy, an iPhone is a pocket computer that also happens to make phone calls. If you carry one, talking on it is not necessarily what you spend most of your time doing with it. Calling it a phone in the first place was just a marketing gimmick, since the PDA market was moribund at the time. If, back in 2007, they had called it the iPDA and said “Oh, yes, it also makes calls” that would have been a marketing disaster.
In the same way, for this to have any chance, Apple must be going into the passive entertainment business, not into the TV business. But they need a marketing hook to hang it onto, and so the letters T and V will creep in there somewhere. And on top of everything else it does, as a bonus you may be able to hook up your cable. Not that you will want to for long.
IMHO anyway.
Foxconn denies CEO spoke about Apple television
“Foxconn has issued a public statement to deny that its chief executive made comments about preparing for a rumored Apple television.”
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/05/14/foxconn_denies_ceo_sp…
the iTV trademark is already taken. Not that it will stop them using it and settling out of court later.
I think you’re right. Apple will insist they had more rights to the iTV brand than the UK-based ITV broadcasting company…
Whilst on the subject of branding, I must say that I’m not overly impressed by Apple’s branding – sticking an “i” in front of everything doesn’t make it cool. Will customers be queuing up for the next iSee or rather last year’s iSaw. (iSore?). I suppose if they invented a hitech shiny hoover with built in wifi and gestures, they’d call it the iSuck?
Also the same-same “Apple look” is starting to bore. I admit they make nice products, but can I have it in black or brushed metal? Maybe a nice minimalist apple logo in the corner rather than the fat glowing apple in the middle (also conveniently featured in nearly every movie – product placement alert!). Maybe some serious customisation options of their OS might make it more interesting too.
So yeah – I think Apple could perhaps come up with a new look, concept, whatever…time for something fresh!
Cheers
Christopher
I think i fits them very well – after all, i stands for “imaginary” (also: i^2 = -1 )
Well they know it works… perhaps better than some other companies:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092007/trivia
Though the above is probably apocryphal, in the sense that it’s more likely Apple paid for product placement – since the studio definitely had Amigas on hand:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AMacintosh_Plus#Evidences_th…
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22149&page=3
Too bad I can’t find again one ~indy movie in which BeOS was used by main characters…
I’d be so happy if apple tossed the tuner (who the hell connects anything via composite anyway), the usb port and the sd card port that is on most connected tvs.
give me a few hdmi’s, toslink , appletv and put a nice aluminum box with a glass front around a good tv panel then call it a day.
granted that works for me because i download everything to a home server running itunes via bittorrent and it just shows up on my appletv.
i’m sick of how stupid tv’s are and don’t even get me started on cable. pathetic.
(emphasis mine) Seriously? I see the RDF is strong with you…
(also: the model, idea of moving stuff around on USB sticks is actually one that many people rapidly grasp and happily use)