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DigiTimes Lends Credence To Apple-Branded TVs For 2012
It's a rumor that goes back years (here's one example from this summer) that Apple is planning to produce dedicated TV sets branded with its own name; the main question seems to be when. DigiTimes (hat tip to CNet) is reporting that component-maker sources say that Apple has begun the process by ordering parts that hint at an offering next year of Apple TV sets (as opposed to Apple TV) in 32" and 37".
As the summary itself notes, these rumors go back years, so yet another iteration of the rumor, "this time for real", without any real info except some screen sizes, is not so exciting.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If they only sell 32" and 37" sets who is going to buy them? 32" is too small for even a bedroom, let alone watching the 'HD' media one would expect to be able to stream to one of these televisions. Also, if the rumours are true this television must have some significant features other than what can be achieved with an AppleTV + LCD. My guess is they will include an EPG and storage to record television shows to in addition to the AppleTV functionality. Then Apple will call it revolutionary and pretend like they came up with the idea to record to HDD. Not saying I don't like the idea of an Apple tv, just saying.
At his last All Things Digital (fast forward to 1:31:30 or so), Steve Jobs said that the TV market was hard because the hardware was subsidized, which prevented doing anything interesting. The set-top box from your cable company is "good enough", it's free (at least, you think it is), and enough people won't spend money for a wow-cool interface to allow someone like Apple to make money. He referred to Apple TV as a hobbyist product.
So it sounds like the strategy now is to make the whole TV and not just a set-top box. I'm curious what that is going to bring. Sure, it'll be a nice set and maybe the interface will be better than the typical clunky "navigate a menu without a mouse" things. But so much of what's controlled on the TV is controlled outside of it - i.e., through my Dish/Cable/etc. carrier's box.
Will iTV replace those boxes? Is this a sort of androidy model where Apple provides everything those carriers do and then says to the carriers, why keep building your own set-top boxes when iTV can do that for you?
If it's just a nice TV with a better interface for adjusting the brightness, I can't imagine anyone getting excited, so there must be something more...speculations, please.
Looking for a job in Portland, Oregon?
Maybe thats why they should do it.
Early adopter and tech guys all "know" that multi foot long TVs are supposed to be thousands of dollars. I simply left the market up until recently, there's no way I'm spending a "used car" on a tv. Ignored the market, was shocked recently at how cheap TVs have gotten. Almost cheaper than a physical window. We're very close to the point that from a materials and energy cost standpoint for it to be cheaper to install a 40-something inch TV in portrait mode and a webcam sideways outdoors and call it a "iWindow" or something like that.
Of course my recently purchased 42 inch TV was only a couple hundred bucks, not several thousand, and I'm probably the last guy in the US to have upgraded from CRT to LCD, so it might already be too late to "convince" people that big TVs are still $3000, including the new iTV?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
And they'll probably drag up a design patent from 1921 that'll force Sony, LG and the rest to produce heptagonal TVs with screens that face the wall and razor blades on the corners.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The 'untapped' TV market is simplicity. It's hard to integrate all of the potential choices for TV input (cable, iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, Blockbuster, DirectTV, Over the Air, DVD, BlueTooth, PirateBay etc) without setting up some complicated 'Home media server' and a remote with three thousand buttons.
It really surprises me how bad the TV manufacturers do at this. I have a 2 year old Samsung 42" - not a bad screen but the interface just absolutely sucks. Yet another 500 button remote with Tiny Little Letters and a few new icons (still haven't figured out the purple button with 2 dots and something vaguely resembling a triangle). The stupid thing can't even remember what it was last hooked to.
Come up with a generic way of doing this and you're rich. Of course, it it was easy, it would have been done already. For the reasons amply detailed in this and thousands of other posts it is quite a technologic and social challenge. Personally, I don't see Apple solving it - I don't thing anyone really can because of the inherent Balkanisation of the 'TV experience" but perhaps Steve has a better perspective on things from the Other Side.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I hate Apple's approach to patent wars, but you gotta admit, between how Microsoft is handling building their own patent troll and the way Apple did it...
Apple built the thinnest, lightest, most elegant patent troll. Microsoft, OTOH, hamhandedly threw a LOT of money at Darl McBride. Even in their shady shitty business practices Apple shows a sense of style!
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
This would be relevant, but the only cable you REALLY need from Apple if you want to exist in an Apple hardware only ecosystem that's proprietary(aside from power connectors), is the iPod sync cable, and it's so standard everyone's making them.
Everyone else NOT making thunderbolt cables doesn't count. It's a darn near free standard to implement for cable makers. Sure it's expensive, given how much active electronics are in it... But proprietary? Nah.
Nor are they really even making "big bucks" selling those adapters. They're just not losing money on every unit sold.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
No, it means they won't be able to sell any because you can't carry it down to the coffee shop and be seen with it.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Oh, excuse me. $30 for the $.03 cable. My bad. They used to be $50. I used to sell the fucking things, I know. The myriad of video adapters were the worst. We couldn't keep the Mini Displayport to DVI adapters in stock if our lives depended on it...
Please let us know when you are able to manufacture, package, market and ship for 3 cents per adapter.