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Steve Jobs's Big Miss: TV

Posted by samzenpus on from the blow-up-your-tv-throw-away-your-paper dept.

jfruh writes Steve Jobs was a well-known audiophile and music lover, which helps explain why Apple transformed the music industry in the '00s with the iPod and iTunes. But according to a new biography soon to be released, Apple may have failed to do the same for TV because of Steve Jobs's disdain for the medium. One of his first acts upon returning to the company was to kill the flashy, expensive 20th Anniversary Macintosh, in part because it had a built-in TV tuner. "Apple will never make a TV again," Jobs declared.

5 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Steve Jobs's disdain for the medium. by koan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I agree with him, he was %100 correct in this regard.

    Only the bean counters would want to dabble in that banality.

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    1. Re:Steve Jobs's disdain for the medium. by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Of course there are some great documentaries, and original series. But there is a HUGE a difference between the majority of TV shows, which is mostly the crap of unReality shows, and movies that companies like NetFlix focus on.

      Steve's Job opinion on TV wasn't wrong; his mistake was tossing the baby out with the bath water.

  2. Breaking News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This just in... Steve Jobs has bad judgment. Details at 8.

  3. Jobs' views on TV not a secret by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    People are thinking less than they used to. It's primarily because of television. People are reading less and they're certainly thinking less.
    [...]
    When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth.
    [...]

    http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html

  4. Re:Which explains the ATV. by swb · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm curious what more it's supposed to do.

    I can only think "run apps" but you can mostly do that with mirroring which eliminates a whole lot of ugly compatibility issues (for Apple, and app developers) even if the experience is lacking in some ways. Even with apps, the whole interactive controller issue gets kind of weird if a phone, tablet or the remote doesn't make sense.

    By and large, Apple TV does what its supposed to do -- play media on your TV from your phone, tablet, PC or streaming.

    The lack of an Amazon Instant app is annoying, but Netflix is there. The rest of the content is kind of ho-hum, but then again, mirroring and airplay solves some of those issues, like Amazon Instant or many other media playback apps.

    I think a lot of people would like the Apple TV to be "more" of something, but so many of those things are a weird fit or hinge on other lateral expansions like more input devices or something else or end up overlapping with what it does now but without a significant expansion of functionality.