Not another Apple TV black box but a real 50” flat-screen TV, “Designed by Apple in California” — and Made in China, like most Apple products. Or Made In Korea, if the company concludes a new pact with its best frenemy, Samsung, the new king of TV sets, the new Sony.
Rumors of an Apple TV set have been circulating for at least two years. In a May 2010 blog post, Peter Yared wrote:
“Stylish, high-end TVs is the last consumer electronics frontier for Apple to dominate, and it will make apps as much of a differentiator on TVs as they were on smartphones.”
and:
“The TV is the last frontier in Silicon Valley’s relentless drive to computerize every screen. With the price of fully Internet-enabling a screen at below $300, everything that people see and touch is being turned into a computer: mobile phones, billboards, price displays, and with the iPad even magazines, books, and newspapers.”
More recently, Gene Munster, an oft-quoted analyst at the PiperJaffray investment bank, repeated his prediction of an Apple TV set launch in 2012, with Stewart Alsop adding:
“Apple will do to television manufacturers what it did to phone makers with the iPhone…”
The idea is exciting and so obvious it’s got to happen. Imagine a true plug-and-play experience. One set with only two wires: power and the cable TV coax. Turn it on, assert your Apple ID credentials and you’re in business. The program guide looks good and is easy to navigate; pay channels are just a click and a password away. The TV runs apps, from games to FaceTime and Skype, it “just works’’ with your other iDevices and also acts as a Wi-Fi base station using the cable provider’s Internet service.
But when we turn to the Small Matter Of Implementation, we see a few obstacles.
First, the TV incorporates a set-top box, with storage for the DVR function. It’s feasible: the CableCARD was invented for that very use. The electronics of a set-top box:
Now squeezed onto a card that’s inserted in the back of the TV set:
It’s an attractive idea, but the implementation failed to meet expectations. Although critics accuse cable carriers of being technically incompetent and lazy, I think there’s a more acceptable explanation: Carriers looked at the CableCARD and saw complicated field service calls in their future. A separate, outboard set-top box is easy to diagnose and fix; a card inside the TV set, not so much. It generates a host of hard-to-understand bugs: Is the card working? Is it kind of working but causing the TV to malfunction? Is the TV working but killing the card?… and so on. More calls, more finger pointing, more expensive field techs…
Apple’s product culture, its talent for giving birth to nicely integrated devices could overcome some of these problems, but not the field tech issue. Would this new product force Apple to deploy its own Geek Squad, or do we see ourselves carrying a 50” Apple TV set back to the store when something goes wrong?
Then there’s the complexity of supporting multiple cable systems. Large carriers, such as Comcast, are known as Multiple System Operators, MSOs, with an emphasis on the “M”. They’re a patchwork of acquired systems that have never needed to be compatible. This would either restrict the TV set to a small number of carriers, or make the product more complicated and prone to more bugs — and more field tech visits.
And there’s Moore’s Law. In addition to the CableCard, the wonder set contains a little computer running iOS, and enough storage for apps and content that’s not hosted by iCloud. Great…but how long will it last? Not in terms of reliability, that’s not a problem — especially with an SSD replacing the DVR’s conventional hard disk — but in terms of being competitive with newer hardware.
Conventional TVs aren’t really affected by Moore’s Law. As long as the electronics work and the display doesn’t fail — and today’s sets are exceptionally reliable — there’s little pressure to upgrade. Once a family shells out for a nice 1080p set, it’s difficult to sell them the new improved model next year.
We’re willing to upgrade our laptops, smartphones, and tablets every year or two because Moore’s Law keeps improving the CPU and other electronics at the rapid rate that made the computer industry’s fortunes. An integrated Apple TV set wouldn’t benefit from better electronics as naturally as an iPhone does…unless, of course, the tiny iOS computer is implemented as an easily accessible plug-in module. This could also solve — or at least mitigate — the field service problem: Bring the module to the store, we’ll diagnose and replace it if needed…or sell you this year’s model.
In one device we might have something like: a CableCard inside an Apple TV 3.0, itself inside a TV set.
With regard to carriers, there’s no need to disintermediate them, no need for Apple to seduce them into giving up content sales the way Jobs did with AT&T. Carriers ought to welcome an Apple TV set as a way to increase their ARPU, but for this to happen much work remains. Try getting a human on the phone when you want to add a channel to your current Comcast bundle. At home, you’re connected through a secure device with a known MAC address, so why can’t you simply point to a channel and click-to-add? This and other bone-headed commercial practices — such as refusing to suspend your billing when you’re between houses — reveals a depth of customer-hostile culture that an Apple or a Google would find intolerable, but might have trouble changing.
I mention Google because they’re in the TV/Internet/Apps integration game as well. The first Google TV wasn’t a success, to say the least. My friends at Logitech lost tens of millions of dollars — and a CEO — with the first iteration. And Sony’s Google TV implementation didn’t fly either.
But the concept remains valid. And now that Google owns Motorola, a company with known expertise in set-top boxes and CableCards, we can expect a next-generation Google TV and, quite likely, a Samsung TV set with an integrated Google TV running Android apps and competing with the putative Apple TV.
I used to think product size, carriers and the rapid obsolescence of the integrated computer made an Apple TV set an impossible dream. I’m not so sure anymore.
PS: To help think about this some more, a great counter example: the Bose Videowave TV set. I use and like other Bose products but, with this one, what are thinking? $5,000, no cable box integration, a separate console box for the “integrated” set. See the Setup and Owner’s guides for more details.
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87 Comments
@ All: Free typos! In the PS at the end, I meant “what are _they_ thinking”. What was I thinking?
Here’s what I don’t get – you can get a good tv and a mac mini and get the same functionality for 1500 – if not less, depending on screen size – add a camera and you’ve got facetime. Doesn’t that put a ceiling on the price Apple could charge and therefore the margin Apple could earn?
@ Pudentilla: Yes, I tried this myself. Neat Plug-and Play experience. What it doesn’t do is a) intergrate the cable box, b) nor the program guide, c) remove the need to switch inputs. To say nothing of apps dedicated to a lean back TV experience such as iOS games…
I hope I’m addressing your point, if not, you know what to do
I remember Apple’s early attempts with Apple TV. Bill Goins was the product manager and there was some pretty smart design work. Unfortunately, there wasn’t as much thinking into the economics of video programming as there is today. Enabling an iOS/cablecard device is a good first step, but as you seem to suggest, where this really shines is in network/app integration. Unlike the iPad or iPhone, which are transient devices, the Apple TV is designed to be paired with a physical location, and all of the easement possibilities thereto. Such a network terminal device could integrate existing and new features from utility, cable, home automation, security and internet providers, and use slingbox-type capabilities to enable remote access via mobile devices.
Quite a leap from the early days of Apple, when the only way you could get a mobile Mac was to have Dynamac make one for you.
The biggest weakness of an Apple made tv is the limitation of numbers. Make a box (or a box embedded in a cable) and you can sell to every tv owner on the planet, make a tv and you’re stuck with a subset of tv owners in the market for a new tv. Too small a group. Make an HDMI cable with a built in AppleTV and you can sell it in every country in the world, make tellies and you’ve got to deal with PAL, SECAM, NTSC and I don’t know what in China.
Apple is only interested in vast markets. TV’s are too small a market and nobody is currently making big money by manufacturing tellies. I just don’t see it.
What I do see is a continuation of the development of AirPlay, the ability of iOS devices to shift streaming media from the iOS device to the tellie. What if AppleTV2 were built into the HDMI cable? Keep it simple. The cable that connects your cable/satellite box or game console contains the AppleTV. Keep the magic on the iOS device. Increase the synergy of all iOS devices, give people another reason to own an iPhone/iPad/iPodTouch. Apple loves interlinking technologies that increase the value of individual products.
As the big media outlets continue to mellow and see iOS apps as extensions of their cable/satellite franchise (Turner, HULU, iPlayer etc), this allows the iOS device to replace or join the cable box AND meld with the iTunes universe just by virtue of both running on the iOS device. You can’t get rid of the cable box because of sports, but you can seamlessly integrate the cable box and coopt it into the Apple iOS universe. My 2 cents.
@Eric I agree with the need for a large universe of clients. My gut tells me Apple needs to be in the center of the user’s universe in anything it does. I just don’t see anything sexy about the HDMI cable experience. But…if you’ve been to mall recently you’ve probably seen an explosion in the number of television sets per retailer in just the past two years, and the number is only going to go up. Apple TVs would be a great place to leverage patents recently filed by Apple that cover various processes associated with delivering customer service, along the lines of the pager restaurants use to tell you when your table is ready. In an increasingly global world every sign that has only one language is ripe to be obsolesced by a digital display, one that can respond to environmental conditions and whoever happens to be in front of it. (Funny thing is, Sun prexy Scott McNealy used digital signage to hawk something called Java to potential corporate partners way back in 1994 when the Internet was shiny and new. Maybe that’s why this all feels so predestined?)
Jobs’s famous “orifices” discussion lays out the challenge pretty transparently: the cable co’s “give away” the STBs to lock in customers to their premium products, and to lock out the people who want to easily view YouTube, Netflix et al on their sets. Right now, only people willing to pay for additional gear can bypass the cable companies, which is exactly what they want. (Am I not correct in believing that any given household has approximately 1.0 choice in cable provider? If you want ESPN or HBO, you need that cable service.)
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Some day there will be an opportunity for users to consolidate gear and/or pick viewing choices for personal tastes, and Google, Apple or whoever will swoop in. But I think that day is several years into the future. And if you attack the king, you must kill him; I don’t see Apple coming out with a bypass to cable until they can capture a huge share of viewers with a very competitive, complete offering. Google may continue to try and burn its bleeding edge customers, however.
You just touched on the tip of the iceberg. Everyone understands the issues of offering as much content as possible. But there’s a lot more…
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Which display technology are you going to use – the less expensive, MUCH higher quality but more power hungry plasma technology, or LED/LCD. How will you manage the arguments that will trigger?
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What about surround sound? There are multiple standards such as Dolby, DTS, and their new HD variants. When one currently adds a surround sound amp to their system, the amp must become the video switch so it can peel off and decode the surround sound, not the TV.
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What about the AllVid standard currently being considered by the FCC?
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What about legacy technologies that EVERYONE will want to attach, such as DVD/Blu-ray players/changers, Xbox, PlayStation, satellite, TiVo. You’re going to piss people off if you are too restrictive, or lose your simple user experience if you allow attachments.
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What about DVR time-shifting functionality? Or will you never offer access to live/one-time programming?
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What about a big TV for the living room and a smaller one for the bedroom?
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What about the Apple Television remote control? If it’s going to be one remote to rule them all, like the Logitech Harmony One, do you need to plug it into your Mac/PC to configure it like the Harmony One if the TV allows external devices?
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If you offer CableCARD installation, who will manage the constant channel changes and schedule changes for all the different cable operators like TiVo currently does?
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There are a TON of issues, and virtually every single article on the subject forgets about half of them, if not all.
@ Mark Hernadez: Excellent questions, thanks. Let’s see if I can address a few, one at a time.
Display technology: I don’t see a problem. Apple has good suppliers and today’s LED/LCD TVs are pretty good. They’ll always be arguments among the cognoscenti, but Apple’s choices aren’t likely to upset most mainstream customers.
@ Mark Hernandez: Surround sound. Same as above. I believe Apple won’t try to offer a high-end sound system. More demandin customers can always by a Bose system, see http://bit.ly/nsu0Ym, or one of manay good competitors.
@ Mark Hernandez: Legacy technologies. Well, see what Jobs thinks of those. Again, this will turn off a number of customers, as usual when Apple removes floppies, or DVD, or doesn’t support BlueRay, or decides rotating storage is passé.
@ Mark Hernandez: DVR time shifting: see the note, I mention it, I assume it would be offered. Not complicated.
@ Mark Hernandez: Multiple TVs would be like multiple Apple TVs today. I don’t think APple would mention
Seriously, today’s philosophy is you pay for apps once and install on many devices with the same Apple ID. It”ll be the same with iCloud.
@ mark Hernandez: Remote is much easier with an integrated device. I have a Logitech Harmony, very hard to program for my system: Mitsubishi TV, Bose sound system with only one HDMI input and no pass-through, Apple TV… I hear more recent Bose systems have more/better I/O.
What is wrong with the Bose system except its price and not looking like a Bang & Olufsen?
@ Mark Hernandez: No CableCard installation. One reason I’m still a doubter when it comes to an Apple TV set is, as mentioned in the piece, cable operators. Apple would need to coax (pardon the pun) cable operators to allow Apple to manage sign-up, channel choices/purchases and the like. Given the so-so quality of cable infrastructure/technology/compatibility, and the culture, I see this as a major obstacle.
@ Mark Hernandez: Yes a TON of issues. Always the case with large scale projects such as working with cellular carriers worldwide, or running a large network of retail outlets in many countries.
@ Eric: I agree, an upated, more powerful Apple TV (box not TV set) is more likely if it can “swallow” the set-top box + DVR. Many more potential customers that way, no need to stock, deliver and maintain large objects.
With this view in mind, where would Apple start? With the Comcast?
@ Fafnir: Right, you’re two for two. Plus no cable integration and a separate control box/console….
@ Walt French: Another way to present the “orifices” problem is Input 1 vs. Input 2. That is who owns the default port into the TV. Today, its the cable (or satellite) guy. Additional devices such as an Apple TV (box) have to use Input 2, forcing users to get into complicated remote programming, or a basket of remotes.
In theory, Xfinity/Comcast offers _some_ control over my set-top box + DVR from an iPad application. In reality, as I just checked again, it doesn’t work. Their Web site “sees” my DVR but the app won’t control my STB…
With iOS5 and OTA display from devices through the AppleTV, why should I buy an integrated Apple tv set ? I’ll have all the apple goodness with a cheap and simple product.
@ LG: You’re right the wireless (OTA) connectivity between iDevices is really nice and will get evn nicer. That said, how about watching and recording “normal” TV, or running apps tailored for a TV screen?
Sir,
You know that LG and Panasonic are the only manufacturers
of IPS TV. Samsung doesn’t make them.
If LG could have built enough screens then Samsung wouldn’t have
gotten a single ipad screen.
CableCard is a joke.
DVR market is dead because the cable companies have undercut TIVO.
Apple could put DVR function and or ATSC chip to receive
over the air HDTV in the current AppleTV but won’t even do that.
Even if Apple could put FaceTime in the TV, no one is going to pay $2500
for it. let alone surf the web or play apps.
Only thing Apple can do is bring BBC and ther foreign channels as subscription service to AppleTV. or may be Live Sports service.
Anything else is waste of time.
I have a 27″ iMac. I recently signed up for NFL pre-season and regular season. I can watch any game any time (except for blacked-out TV broadcasted in my area games). It’s really good, better than the TV set (42″ Pana plasma) (I also have FIOS). I can go forward or back, pause, see different views, etc.
If all programming could be offered the same way, Apple would already have a great TV. Might need a bigger one for the living room.
I just don’t see Apple doing cable. Not when they have been delivering a better quality picture via iTunes for years now. Also, cable is stuck at HD, it can’t go to 4K, and I see Apple doing the first 4KTV rather than the last HDTV. They can buy all the 4K glass capacity like they did with iPhone displays.
If you imagine an empty house and you put an iPad in there, then what TV goes with that? Not a cable TV. You don’t want content on the TV that you can’t get on iPad. And if you are serving it over IP for iPad, then serve it over IP for the TV also. And you would want your TV to be 4:3 like iPad and the 2K/4K video standards, not wide like HD, so that widescreen content is shown in a wide letterbox with room above and below for captions and menus and controls.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Apple glass only had a Thunderbolt port on it, either. It would likely need AC also, though. But if there were any way to power it only from Thunderbolt, they would likely do that. It would depend on the backlight. And then, of course, a Thunderbolt port on an Apple TV box that you can upgrade next year if you like and upgrade the TV every 5 years.
Poorly researched article…Google own Motorola mobile. The last time I checked, you couldn’t carry a set top box around in your pocket
@joe
Wrong. Motorola Mobility, the unit Google bought includes the stb business.
Instead of coax out the back, why not just ethernet.
Apple doesn’t need to try and reach every current cable subscriber, they excel in upper end niche markets (at least at the outset).
If apple can provide streaming subscriptions to content, why not change the whole game and leave the Comcasts and Coxs out in the cold?
Saying that Apple has to follow the old model isn’t very Apple thinking ahead.
JLG: Great article that addresses some of the questions I’ve been thinking about with regard to Apple jumping into the TV space. One point to note though is that there are already some pretty good program guide/universal remote iOS apps on the market such as Santa Clara startup Peel (http://www.peel.com). Acquiring one of these would help to bring Apple ease of use to such a device.
Everyone is focused on Apple churning out a TV. I would love to see Apple pursue the enterprise. I believe Apple’s held off in part because of the thousands of sloppy programs company’s use. It would be a disaster for them as it has for Microsoft because users associate the sloppy programs with MS even if they were developed internally or elsewhere. If Apple would roll out a program and educate and force companies to use its interface design standards and implement and enforce the processes used in apps – it would fulfill a dream bigger than it’s hardware – employees hate their work software because it’s so badly designed. Apple could fix that and make far more money than it is now. TV sales would be nothing compared to it.
I still haven’t heard a convincing argument for Apple doing a TV, including this one. When Apple finally did a phone, it *reinvented* the phone. What is there that can be similarly reinvented about TV? A better cable guide? Srsly? Built-in DVR? Rlly? I’m not saying Apple won’t do a TV, I’m just saying no one has yet been able to convince me how Apple will bring the WOW! to it. And for people like me, who can’t stand the banality and stupidity of 99% of TV, an Apple logo is not going to make any damn difference.
Mike Cane is correct. Most – yes, the vast majority – can barely handle a hundred choices of channels, let alone thousands of apps and YouTube style web sites. Throw in the perennial battle for control of the remote and this is a non-starter for most people. This is a Silicon Valley Solution looking for a problem.
Forget about it its never going to happen.
+1 for Alan and Eric’s comments (i.e. really reinventing, rather than replicating – and going after the whole market rather than a subset). Another way to look at it: TV is currently the legacy way of watching content. And despite DVRs, it is pretty linear. What if you could really choose what you wanted to watch, when you wanted to, had access to it where you wanted, and only pay for that? Isn’t that what iTunes + iCloud + iOS offer us? Isn’t Apple TV (the current “hobby”) then the way to go?
TV manufacturers are getting more and more marginalized. Because the TV has become (was it ever anything else?) a dumb device. They basically only dress up panels with some niceties (and most of those are useless) as they don’t even own the panel manufacturing process anymore (save for Samsung, Sharp and Sony)
The cable providers “add” the value today (at least in the US) as they control the pipes through which the (interesting) content goes through. But what if content producers could forgo this step and reach a worldwide audience immediately, rather than stagger content releases which opens you up to piracy (how many europeans wait for “House” or “Entourage” to arrive over a year later, when they can have it for free the next day??)
So in one fell swoop, you could bypass cable providers, TV manufacturers and address the whole market with a truly disruptive way of giving (ok, selling) access to content! Isn’t that what Apple, Amazon (music + video store + hardware with the new tablet and various stb which come with Amazon access built in) and Netflix (+Roku) are poised to do?
I think you’re overstating what CableCARDs provide. They are not the full electronics of a set-top box, they merely house the conditional-access decryption by which the cable provider can regulate which channels you receive based on how much money you send them each month.
While the expense of truck rolls and service calls always looms high with the cable providers, from my experience, their resistance to CableCARD had more to do with their desire to control the TV U-I for the purpose of selling additional services—chiefly, video on demand.
They want their U-I to be what you see when you turn on your TV.
Some analysts and commentators have hoped that Google, now that it’s in charge of Moto STBs, will be able to advance the art of the TV U-I. These people have never tried to do business with a cable company. Nobody puts anything onto a cable box that the cable company doesn’t want there. Steve’s deal with AT&T routing around the orifice to get them to accept iPhone was as much a breakthrough as was the tech and U-I. Could Sergey work the same magic with Comcast? Only if he can demonstrate how much more money they will make with a U-I that, essentially, cuts out one of their current income streams.
If there is an AppleTV in our future, it will be a slow seller, not a breakout hit like iPod, iPhone or iPad. TV replacement cycles are now 6-8 years (compaired to handset replacement at 18-24 months) according to CEA. Early adopters already have multiple HDTVs. (65% of households have at least one.)
Nice article, JLG. My thesis on this one remains that it makes more sense for Apple to pursue an adapter strategy where Apple TV is embedded in a Sony or Samsung TV than actually building an Apple branded TV.
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Four factors mitigate, I think. One is the long lifecycle of TVs, which is anti-Apple’s planned 2-4 year obsolescence cycle. Two is the large footprint size of big screen TVs. Does Apple want to maintain inventory for 50-60″ TVs in a typical Apple Retail store?
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Three is the relative scarcity of total new TVs bought annually (as compared to mobile devices, tablets, etc.). Four is that such a direct living room disruption play would likely put Apple in a similar bucket in the eyes of the Cable and Satellite providers as Netflix – i.e., a REPLACEMENT, not a complement.
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As such, a better path is for Apple to look at this as an “accessory business” ala Smart Covers on iPad (a $1B+ side auxiliary product), which more closely mirrors what Apple TV has proven to be; namely, a good proxy for the Apple faithful to extend the content on their iPhones, iPads and Macs into the living room.
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Similarly, it’s as much a defensive play to outflank Google TV, and as you note, through this path, they always have the option of pursuing a partnership with Cable/Satellite service providers down the road; a long, hard sale, though.
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For those who say, Apple doesn’t do OEM, this type of model is certainly consistent with their approach in auto entertainment systems, where they do a lot of licensing deals, subject to Apple defined specifications; although to be fair, there is much more orchestration involved in a hardware/software/service adapter play, such as this one.
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FWIW, I blogged on this topic some time back in:
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The Magic Adapter
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http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/03/appletv-living-room.html
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Check it out, if interested.
Geeks more and more watch TV directly on the computers. Google know how to sell to geeks, yet has no experience into products distribution networks. Whatever products they could have sold, it would have been difficult. Apple is more experienced and his public is not only real geeks, but a lot of techno trend addicted people who will be a a more suitable market segment to sell this product.
This article is a little US-centric. Apple wants to sell global products. Cable TV has lots of different regulations and STBs in each region.
But then I don’t see Apple selling “dumb” boxes. Inventory space issues, low margins etc.
An Apple TV 3.0 STP box with a single HDTV cable makes more sense – so Apple can create a Netflix killer, game console (think OnLive made by Apple) and TV all in one.
All IPTV in their current state is bound to fail. It’s just not smooth enough and not easy enough to get the content. Give it a few years and maybe somebody will come up with a genius idea to solve this, but at the moment I’m sticking to Sky TV!
I want Apple to go around the cable companies. I think they want to.
I think Comcast would be lucky to get an hdmi port. Apple may rather have them demoted to just another app on an iOS tv.
As far as tv upgrade cycles- are we really ever going to make it past 1080p? The 120/240hz refresh rates are already pushed to 11 (it always surprises me that Apple leaves the smooth motion tech on in their stores). 3D seems to be caught in that “bag of hurt” bin. What other technology can Apple bring to the table to disrupt the industry besides liberating the consumer from their cable company the way it is doing with mobile carriers?
So that seems to pose a problem for the improvements in iOS hardware with yearly updates. But if most of the processing power needed for things like gaming happens on your iPhone or iPad with AirPlay transmission, then they just need to get rid of that tiny bit of delay in AirPlay and get other companies to support it like they did with the iPod docks. It becomes just another badge of compatibility on other companies boxes.
I think the reality is that there will always be more iPhones and iPads sold to consumers every year. But a big, beautiful, best in class LCD display with little to no border and running apple tv’s iOS would sell well to Apple fans. To set it up all you’d have to do is plug in the power chord. One thunderbolt port could go to an optional breakout box for hdmi ports and optical audio. They love dropping legacy ports, so you gotta figure VGA and analog won’t likely make the cut. The preferred setup would have all connections be handled via wifi and AirPlay. An A5 processor could be enough horsepower to run the Apple TV OS for years to come if they follow the direction of the stp Apple TV 2 with no multitasking in most use cases. Of course it would be app store enabled. You gotta figure the time is finally right for all the living in the future home automation stuff, and Apple is sure poised well to be the OS of choice. I’d say 50/50 that it’s got a FaceTime camera.
Bottom line though, freedom from cables and your cable company. They’ll get you again in five years for the 3d that doesn’t suck.
Modern TVs have managed to evolve for years in an isolation that is becoming more precarious every day The PC industry found the advantages of selling displays (monitors) as separate products years ago. How many all-in-one PCs are sold these days? As others have pointed out, the lifespan and logistics of big displays are very different from the Moore’s-law-abiding computers. This whole conversation would be much simpler if we were debating whether Apple could make a revolutionary living room entertainment system for viewing streaming IP content.
Let’s think here- who’s better at creating great a UI: Comcast, Motorola or Apple?
nice inputs as usual!
but why not two devices one with the apple tv inside for web usage only and for IPTV countries, and one with the apple TV3 outside like you said.
With all the apple environment soft and hardware ( iTunes, Airplay, iPhone, iPad, iCloud, Mac) such a television will mix object and place of the conversation which is the gold usage.
The problem with an Apple TV set or a more powerful Apple STB is that I won’t work with AT&T’s U-verse which used M$ technology and despite that still isn’t available on PCs and X-Box because the cable operators fear for piracy.
I wish I could purchase some kind of cable a-la-carte as I watch less than 5% of my 200+ channels I have available, yet there are 3-5 channels I just can’t get OTA. If I wanted to get CNN International I would have to upgrade from a 200+ channel package to a 300+ channel package.
Many people have been thinking about cutting the cable (and satellite) ties but what is available online (VOD, Hulu, Netflix, etc.) still does not replace cable service.
I attended a demo of the Bose VideoWave in London recently and I was very impressed indeed by two aspects.
The solidity and sensory integrity of the truly omni-directional spatial soundstage was very impressive. You could easily follow the movement of a sound in any direction including crossover overhead arcs-front to back, vice versa or even side to side above your head.
Secondly, the on-screen UI and the very rudimentary remote control were models of simplicity and effectiveness. Instead of myopic stares at a remote infested with too many tiny buttons, you get very few large buttons which take you swiftly to any feature or setting adjustment on the large screen. Excellent.
For me, the drawback was not the price, even though that is high by vanilla TV standards. However, compared to far-less capable offerings from the over-admired and over-priced B&O brand, the Bose offering is very cheap indeed and yet far better. The only regret I felt, which led me to walk away from a purchase, is this. Bose should offer the VideoWave as a stand-alone product minus the TV it is built into. I would buy one without hesitation if they did this because, when unbundled as I suggest, it does not limit me in the choice of screen I can have and, it would work just as well with a projector.
In terms of adding value to a TV, I was very impressed with VideoWave.
Which brings me back to Apple in the TV space.
There is a market for an upmarket Apple TV set. Brands like Loewe and B&O make a satisfactory market for themselves despite offering pretty but rather uninspired, lacklustre TV sets. They charge silly high prices in terms of the quality and features they offer and yet they find ready markets willing to pay well over the top for so little added value. And, to me, this is where Apple could do extremely well. They could offer a whole list of added values (ecosystem+) to justify a price that, most people currently in their target market (myself included), would be happy enough to pay. When you add-in the implicit interoperability with other Apple products, most counter-arguments and hesitations fall away.
Whether they need to sell a whole TV set or just the magic box is another matter altogether. If they could licence the VideoWave technology or offer their own take on spatial sound, I would pre-order in an instant!!
Apple can succeed here. Where they will face problems is in finding one solution to fit the demands of all the content-delivery operators across the world.
I just cannot shake off this uncanny feeling that Apple are working on something related to content delivery that it will be difficult for any such operators to refuse to be a part of. A sort of participate or commence your decline offer. An offer that can’t be refused to coin a phrase.
@chano
exactly the problem, B&O may make money this years after years of not making money and if they do, its on in car entertainment centres, not on tellies. Take a look at Loewe’s share price. Tellies don’t make money for anybody no matter how pricy.
the keys to Apple’s strategies are already clear, any tellie hooked up to AppleTV with an iPhone or iPad or iPod Touch and apps from content providers. Apple wants to sell hardware, content is just a motivator. iAD may have a serious role to play here if Apple can get it right as it allows a content provider to stream content through a bespoke app and serve advertising. Apple doesn’t have to make money on the content, they can revenue split on the advertising and sell tons of iPhones, iPads and iPod touches (PLEASE Tim Cook change that name, it’s almost as awkward as Windows Phone 7 Phone).
@ All: Thanks for the thoughtful and lively comments. By now, I’m leaning towards a separate box, as opposed to an integrated set. An Apple TV swallows a set-top box. Coax in, TV and Internet, HDMI out to the set. WiFi, AirPlay…
I also note the number of commenters (and people around me here in the Valley) who “watch TV” on their iPad.
Jean-Louis Gassée,
First of all, I look forward to your blog each week.
Secondly, as someone with intimate knowledge of the cable industry (and networking in general) I agree that the cable box and cable card route are problematic.
One way I could see Apple doing i creating a more robust AppleTV that has HDMI inputs to allow you cable box/sat box, DVD/Blu-ray, et al. to be plugged in. This would make the AppleTV the digital hub. You would use the fast and slick AppleTV UI for switching between inputs. The TV would never change from it’s input. It would be a dumb terminal. This would have the negative affect of not allowing a mic and camera to be on the TV.
Another way — which is completely outside of Apple’s norm — is to license their AppleTV to other vendors. This would mean an iCloud or AppleTV logo in an upper corner of the display with the UI being completely controlled by the AppleTV. This still puts the TV as dumb monitor, but with all the HW and SW inside. I can’t see Apple doing this but the state of quality with current SmartTVs makes me hope it will happen.
Finally, an intermediate option would be for Apple to us the first AppleTV digital hub I mentioned, but to create and license a special connector that will attach to the back of TVs. It would get its power from the TV and would control all functions, save for color, contrast and other rudimentary display actions. There license agreement could require a mic and FaceTime camera to be on each TV that gets this connector.
Outside of those options I think all the points you address make Apple creating and selling HDTVs of their own in their little stores out of the question.
@solipsism. Interesting thought there with the Apple TV gaining an hdmi in. But I would think that Apple doesn’t want to enable the cable companies that much. If Apple did go into physical screens, they would most likely still be producing stand alone boxes like we have now. But it definitely makes sense that the current UI would support an hdmi-in menu item for cable and game consoles in a full TV otherwise that could be a deal breaker for people.
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Netflix reported awhile back that the Apple TV 2 had surpassed the iPad in streams. I’m not sure if that has changed since the iPad 2 but Netflix has replaced “channel surfing” for many of my friends in their 20′s and 30′s.
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The only puzzle piece that still seems to be missing is things like American Idol, programs that really only work as a live streaming spectacle. MLB.tv seems to prove that it is not a technical hurdle however, and true interactive programming stands to be supercharged if they just took that leap of faith. I watched the Sons of Anarchy premiere like everybody else last night, it was surprisingly on my Apple TV, so they are getting faster with the release of major studio content. Sure, I’m a fanboy, early adopter… but there just aren’t that many things missing from the experience any more. Apple just needs that magic thing that takes the experience of their “TV” to a whole new level.
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A physical TV with FaceTime sure does seem like the type of thing Apple would consider to be a game changer… Plus it would make for great commercials. Access to that camera for app developers would open up all sorts of interesting possibilities whether it’s using the camera as an input a la kinect, or using it for more social applications incorporating video chat like playing games with friends and family in other cities. Charades comes to mind.
@ Dave Mansueto,
That’s the nut Jobs said was hard to crack and Apple producing HDTVs still would mean Apple would still need to have inputs for your cable/sat, DVD/Blu-ray hook ups.
I thought GoogleTV, as clunky as it was, had a chance because they were trying to stimulate more TV watching, but the content owners and networks didn’t see it that way.
I don’t see how Apple could possibly enter this market without making a lot of un-Apple concessions, like not being the one-and-only product between your eyeballs and the content.
PS: I contend Apple already owns the living room with all their iDevices, it’s the home entertainment center aspect of the living room that they can’t seem to dominate.
@solipsism
Re your PS: absolutely agree. And while you watch tv, you’re most likely sitting there with your iPad, iPhone, smartphone in hand. It used to be your tv guide, then laptop and now it’s this personal screen. Apple has been inching towards the tv in a similar way that that iTunes took baby steps first with the ipod, then the store. That’s where I think Google TV really misses. People want that second screen, and they want the two screens to talk to each other. So far I think Apple is doing the best job flirting with closing the loop.
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The reality of external inputs can be as you suggested made part of the Apple TV menu, living near netflix, vimeo and YouTube. I just would bet that the concession is only on the TV via hdmi-in on a thunderbolt breakout box, and left off the stb Apple TV… although I wouldn’t bet a lot. I do see your point about not having to switch inputs as a reason to build an in to the apple tv stb, but I think they would have done that already with Apple TV 2. Maybe they could accomplish that via dongles, or the same breakout box shared with the TV if they add thunderbolt to the stb Apple TV. I would think that’s the only way coax could get anywhere close to these devices.
Boy, am I amazed at the interest level in upgrading this early-20th-century technology by 5 years.
.
I personally cut the cord over a year ago and even the Netflix DVD has sat utterly untouched in the drive of the TV for over 6 months. Why do we even bother?
.
Anybody who can help me understand why people — especially those of us in the Bay Area — want to watch the boob toob instead of going to the SF Symphony’s Gala opening tonite (OK, I’m not big on Copeland but can get it on my ole FM radio in Minneapolis where I am tonite), or have drinks at friends’ place… what is it? Hell, the SF Opera is opening with a tired Puccini but then has a world premiere, and those are just the tired Old Culture things.
.
So why should anybody, least of all Apple, which makes its living dragging us kicking and screaming into new experiences, want to dumb us down by getting us fat, dumb and zoned out watching Glee?
@ Walt French: Great question. Why so much interest in upgrading an old technology?
My first guess is “lean-back” (in)activity is here to stay. But, TV as we think we know it, isn’t growing. This lack of growth could discourage Apple from investing in it. Sample of one: I watch much less TV than I did 10 years ago, there’s too much good stuff to amuse/interest and sometimes enlighten me eleswhere. I also watch my three children (30, 27, 24) who also consume less.
Still, this is my second guess, something’s got to give. Cable companies provide a horrible user experience: contracting, installing, navigation, buying content and so on. But the big-screen occasionally shared experience (as opposed to the solipsistic one with a PC) isn’t going away. What would Apple do if it were your cable company? I know, I doubt the meticulously clean Cupertino ladies and gents woul soil their hands digging ditches and drilling through wall, no Apple Cable Guy. But would they ride the Comcast infrastructure the way they ride AT&T’s and, come to think of it, ride every ISP’s, but not the “proper” Cable TV channels?
Congruent (to say the least) analysis: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/here-comes-apples-real-tv-09132011.html
JLG, remember back in the day (early/mid- 1990s) a company in Silicon Valley named Frox? Frox used SPARC hardware including (physically) big SCSI hard drives and they thought they would sell Frox systems to doctors and lawyers (when there was a recession)!
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Blogger Who Leaps Over the Line An Apple TV Set In Our Future? Why keeping up with RSS is poisonous to productivity, sanity Understanding
@Hamranhansenhansen is totally right. 4K technology is here but the distribution system is not. Apple can run away with an entirely new format and be the only (useable) game in town.
More here:
http://incurious.net/2012/2/The%20apple%20tv%20is%20all%20about%204k.html
This is not the first mention of an Apple TV set. Early last month Australian technology site Smarthouse reported that Apple was planning to offer three screen sizes ranging from 32 inches up to 55 inches. That’s the same outlet in July that claimed Apple was setting its sights on a 55-inch OLED TV for its first sets.
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Id be interested to see more of Apples ideas for being more dominant in the home entertainment set up. With microsoft’s plans for the next gen xbox and the new windows. It should make things very competitive.
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[...] in the 1980s and is now a Silicon Valley venture capitalist) has a fresh blog post arguing that Apple will develop its own TV: The idea is exciting and so obvious it’s got to happen. Imagine a true plug-and-play experience. [...]
[...] Jean-Louis Gassée (who worked at Apple back in the 1980s and is now a Silicon Valley venture capitalist) has a fresh blog post arguing that Apple will develop its own TV: [...]
[...] in the 1980s and is now a Silicon Valley venture capitalist) has a fresh blog post arguing that Apple will develop its own TV:The idea is exciting and so obvious it’s got to happen. Imagine a true plug-and-play experience. [...]
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