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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.

5 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 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.

    2. 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.

    3. 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. 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