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Why Apple Ditched Its Plan To Build a Television
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.
The TV market is bad, but the watch market is not great.
What they should be trying to crack is the in-car nav/infotainment systems - the iCarStereo. Current nav systems are somewhere between total-suckage and so-distracting-they-cause-accidents. Bluetooth pairing is painful when it even works, calling systems don't integrate with smartphone phonebooks, there is no way to share contact addresses, and the voice controls are no better than someone reading a "Car navigation is attempting to quit, cancel or allow?" dialog box. And the interfaces are so poor as to command the driver's full attention for seconds, looking for touch-screen items or clicking the right button, taking focus off the task of driving.
People would trade their old cars in for one equipped with an Apple iCarStereo if it solved those problems. A watch? It will take a lot of luck for it to be more than a fashion item that falls off the radar in a few years.
John
use Cadillac as an example
http://www.autoblog.com/2015/0...
The greatest thing about idevice is the annual upgrade cycle. A lot of dumb ass upgrade their idevice every year -- and it is safe to say > 90% of idevice users upgrade theirs every 2-3 years. I don't see and do not anticipate people replacing their car every 2-3 years, let alone every year. Car navigation system may sound cool in theory, it may not bring in much more revenue. Having said that though, it may reduce the upgrade cycle of idevice.
If Apple can come up with a solution to this, it will own the nation's living rooms no matter how much its approach may cost. As it stands now every TV set has its own complex remote, which controls the receiver itself and selects your chosen device inputs into it. Each DVD player, PVR, game console and streaming box you attach to the set has its own remote, with its own different control interface that you have to mentally readapt to whenever you use the TV remote to select that device as the input. In addition to these and worst of all is the remote that controls your cable box, with its F-35 cockpit array of function buttons that cover every feature that any cable provider using the box might want to support. Each cable company allows some subset of these functions, leaving your cable remote with a number of "forbidden" buttons that if pressed accidentally will send your entertainment system into a region of hyperspace that only the cable company CSR can retrieve you from.
Then there is the content mess. No cable company online guide system works well enough for you to easily figure out what time CSI: Ramadi is on for your location, especially if you are not in a Major Urban Market. The Internet TV guides will get you the right night of the week eventually, but does it know you're on Arizona time, or is it an hour off this time of year? And since you're edging into cord cutting you're aware that you can stream last Wednesday's missed episode from the network site, if you're lucky enough that its Verify Your Provider logon actually includes your cable company in the list of five that it accepts. So you thought you had a right to view the program because it's over-the-air or on your cable tier?
Apple, do whatever it takes to bring some sanity to this interface, hopefully before the next time my mother accidentally lays a book down on her cable remote and loses contact with all her favorites for a week.