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Why Apple Ditched Its Plan To Build a Television

Posted by Soulskill on from the team-shifted-to-smellovision-development dept.

Apple has been rumored to be developing their own line of HDTVs for years, but a new report from the Wall Street Journal (paywalled) says while those plans did exist, they've been abandoned. Apple began pondering the idea of jumping into the television market roughly a decade ago, as iTunes started hosting video content. The AppleTV made a foray into living rooms in 2007, and other devices reached the prototype stage. The company continued to do research and work on their ideas, but eventually gave up more than a year ago. Apple had searched for breakthrough features to justify building an Apple-branded television set, those people said. In addition to an ultra-high-definition display, Apple considered adding sensor-equipped cameras so viewers could make video calls through the set, they said. Ultimately, though, Apple executives didn't consider any of those features compelling enough to enter the highly competitive television market, led by Samsung Electronics Co. Apple typically likes to enter a new product area with innovative technology and easier-to-use software.

12 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Compelling? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yea, personally I think a TV is a lot more compelling than a half-assed watch.

    1. Re:Compelling? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Informative

      There's also the problem that TVs tend either to be cheap crap for the cost sensitive(a market where Apple has little hope, much less an advantage), or one component of a larger, often partially customized for the room, 'home theater' setup. The latter is the place where customers might actually be willing to spend more money to get cooler stuff; but Apple has a very, very, tiny product lineup compared to the demands of a home theater integration type; and has a fairly tepid history of playing well with others and not shoving their pro users under the bus because they want to iterate their product line at consumer speeds.

      Not only is the TV market as a whole a bit of a bloodbath, the TV market for which Apple would be most capable(systems nicer than those purchased more or less purely on price; but cheap and consumer grade enough that they need cooperate in only the most basic ways with other hardware) is especially harrowing. Since TVs are a keep-it-simple-stupid sort of device, there's virtually no UI/UX difference between the cheap crap and the midrange, it's just a question of how nice the panel is.

      At least with computers, it is very often the case that cheap computers are a recipe for regret and sorrow, so Apple's strategy of 'we are going to charge you more; but give you the product you actually want, even if you don't know it yet' often makes people happy. With TVs, people who think that they want a big, cheap, screen are usually correct.

    2. Re:Compelling? by Registered+Coward+v2 · · Score: 3, Informative

      But they couldn't have differentiated themselves. The television market is highly competitive, with intense pressure driving manufacturers to minimum margins. For Apple to justify a price premium, they would have needed some sort of compelling features to differentiate it from every other television, and it seems that they weren't confident that they could do that.

      Many of the things that differentiate them with other products (excellent build quality/fit and finish and the benefits of their vertical integration) don't really apply to a TV. You don't tend to notice build quality on something like a TV that you never really handle directly, and there isn't a huge amount to be gained in terms of vertical integration with a television versus connecting an external device by HDMI.

      Exactly. TV's tend to be a low margins price sensitive business an that just isn't Apple's game. More importantly, virtually all of the advanced features they could build into a TV they could put into AppleTV and carve out the higher margin part of the TV business and leave the display manufacturers to fight it out. In auditor, building features into AppleTV means they can adapt to whatever display technology is popular without having to pick a winner as they would have to if they built a TV and the Apple TV can simply connect to a new display whenever an old one is replaced an thus Apple's connection with the end user is not lost when the TV is upgraded.

      Why go into a low margin business where the technology isn't settled and you have no real advantage to be able to charge a premium that you can't already charge with an existing device?

      --
      I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
    3. Re:Compelling? by fortfive · · Score: 4, Informative

      They're doing this. Granted, there's no iOS car version yet, but Carplay is a solid step in that direction.

    4. Re:Compelling? by cpotoso · · Score: 4, Informative

      No one in tech does that. But the insinuation that Apple is a worst offender here is demonstrably false. Backward compatibility for both iOS and Mac OS X go back as far as the hardware itself will allow, and Apple is, for all its other faults (and they are many), a role model in this particular instance.

      Please explain why my Mac Pro 2,1 which has 8 cores of Xeon 3 GHz and 21 GB of RAM is not able to run anything above Lion? Even though it is 7 years old, It is still faster than almost anything apple has to offer (esp. after I upgraded to SSD). Yet, I am stuck on Lion unless I am willing to make a hackintosh out of it and then it can actually run any OSX... so... no real reason why it can't run newer OSX, just that apple did not want to do it.

    5. Re:Compelling? by jvj24601 · · Score: 4, Informative
      (sorry off-topic)

      It can't run because your Mac Pro only has a 32-bit EFI. This is not an excuse for Apple for not making it work; I'm just noting the actual technical reasoning.

      http://www.everymac.com/system...

      However, the simple workaround (if you have a Yosemite-compatible video card) that doesn't involve a Hackintosh-level install is to use a modified boot.efi file that thunks EFI64 calls from the 64-bit OS X kernel to the EFI32 firmware of your Pro. Look at the first post of this thread

      http://forums.macrumors.com/sh...

      and navigate to the section quoted below.

      Another simplified installation approach is to use a second Yosemite-supported Mac and install Yosemite to the 2006/2007 Mac Pro's drive. This may be done either by attaching the 2006/2007 Mac Pro's drive as an external drive by placing the 2006/2007 Mac Pro in target disk mode or otherwise mounting the 2006/2007 Mac Pro's drive to a Yosemite-supported Mac. Then, after installation, copy Pike's EFI32 boot.efi to that drive's /usr/standalone/i386 and /System/Library/CoreServices/ directories overwriting the stock Apple EFI64 boot.efi and repair permissions. That drive should now be bootable on a 2006/2007 Mac Pro

      I'm typing this from my Mac Pro 1,1 (with an ATI Radeon HD 4870). I used a different Mac (recent Mac Mini) to install Yosemite to a drive, copied the updated boot.efi file, installed the drive into my Pro, and I've been good to go ever since.

  2. Make it more expensive ? by itzly · · Score: 3, Informative

    They could have added $1000 to the price. That's always a popular Apple feature.

  3. Quit it with smart TVs by Enry · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have a Smart TV but I don't use any of the functionality of it. I have separate devices that I can use to do the exact same functions and I can replace them easily for a small amount of money if I want new/different features.

    For an example of why I do this, there's how google changed their YouTube API so a bunch of older devices no longer work with it. Watch YouTube on a TV? Replace the entire TV. Watch it off a Chromecast and want to replace it? $35

  4. This is why... by countSudoku() · · Score: 3, Informative

    Macintosh TV: Introduced Oct1993, died Feb 1994. We hardly knew ye... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

    HA HA! Seriously, we have make your own sandwich day at work, so FU!

    --
    This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
  5. Re:and it would only work with other apple product by SuperKendall · · Score: 2, Informative

    And iTunes is available on Windows also - just sayin'

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  6. Re:and it would only work with other apple product by vux984 · · Score: 3, Informative

    But messages and facetime are both not, which would be the relevant products here.

  7. Linux works also (with a little work) by SuperKendall · · Score: 1, Informative

    AAC files downloaded from iTunes work fine on all Sony gear (including the PlayStation). And quite a lot of other audio gear.

    And of course, you can run iTunes on a Linux box if you really want to - it's not like a few extra steps are a problem for a Linux user.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley