Apple big-screen TV rumor zombie RISES FROM THE DEAD It's time to fire up the Apple big-screen TV rumor mill again: a report out of Taiwan says that Apple has held talks in the US with representatives of Corning, Foxconn, and G-Tech Optoelectronics for the purpose of getting Corning to share some of its Gorilla Glass expertise with G-Tech. That expertise would assist the …
Indeed!
Which sells more. iOS or OSX?
Which is more locked in to iTunes store?
Which is more likely to be used on the settee? iPhone/iPad or Mac?
Which is used on TVs:
Windows CE
Windows 7/8 destop
Windows Phone
Windows RT
Android
Linux (and derivatives)
Answer: even dumb TVs often run Linux. A tiny few have Android. None I know of run Windows. BT's set box used to run CE, but to MS chagrin BT even upgraded the almost all the ones in use to Linux remotely without customer intervention.
Which OS does Apple's existing misnamed Apple Tv use (no screen or Tuner. how is it a TV?)?
You deserve a Beer.
You are. If you looked at iPad when it was first released, no one could match the price without losing profit. It took a while until parts got cheaper so other manufacturer could compete with Apple on iPad price. You'll never know they could release a 55"-60" smart TV with full iOS for < $2000 and will sell extremely well. 60" or even 55" iOS TV under $2000, I would buy it without question. Look at high end 55" Samsung or LG TVs, they're well over $2000.
Let's hope it's something other than a large, flat, black rectangular panel controlled with a remote device which shows moving sound and pictures. If it was, let's hope they haven't pissed off the biggest player in this field with exactly that product out for the last 20 years, otherwise they'd just be copying them wouldn't they, and it'd all get very legal very quickly.
That device will probably only play stuff purchased from some Apple-owned store. You might be able to purchase the rights to connect another device, if you are lucky.
Essentially it'll be yet another walled garden, perverting the idea of television as a borderless medium.
> Let's hope it's something other than a large, flat, black rectangular panel
My first thought was "it will be white, not black"
Then it occurred to me that Apple might make it black - if it looked like the monolith from 2001.
With content projected on its four visible surfaces.
From inside.
Suitable obeisance would have to paid by the unwashed masses if this was ever delivered to the living room.
You could probably download "Also Sprach Zarathustra" from iTunes for free as a gimmick.
Essentially it'll be yet another walled garden, perverting the idea of television as a borderless medium.
Assuming it has at least one HDMI socket on this, how would an Apple TV be walling you off from any services? If you want to suck content from Apple, I'd imagine an Apple TV would be quite useful, and if you don't want to - well don't buy one?
And those people were right - the earlier iphones did sell crap, with other manufacturers continuing to sell far more. It's only after many years that Apple have managed to build their sales up, by which point they're no longer a "company that has never sold one before" (and even now, they've never gone beyond 3rd place).
The idea that Apple had massive overnight success in the phone market in 2007 is a myth.
Ignoring that all this talk of an Apple TV seems simply to give people the impression Apple actually has any ideas outside of its existing product range, why do you think there would be much difference between an Apple TV and say a Samsung one? It'll be Samsung (or whoever) supplying the internal components after all.
More to the point it strikes me that TVs have been stagnating for years, I've yet to see a truly good user interface on a TV despite these companies having been in this field for 20+ years and lately it seems that they've actually been getting worse. The last few years the only major changes I've seen have been the addition of 3D (a feature people don't want in its current form), power saving features which usually have resulted in a worse picture quality (uneven back-lighting, the brightness adjust that makes a dark scene too dark to see what's going on etc) and voice control gimmicks.
Doesn't matter who supplies the internal components, the difference would be in how they work - i.e. the software. I'm sure you could have said the exact same thing about the iPhone, and Apple didn't use any components that hadn't already been used in smartphones before. But even rabid Apple haters have to admit that the first iPhone was superior to any smartphone that came before it, even if they believe that it lags behind the state of the art today.
The fact TVs have been stagnating for years and have crappy user interfaces is exactly why Jobs thought this was a market Apple could enter. The "finally cracked it" quote by him indicates that he at least thought he solved the problem of the crappy user interface. We'll see, assuming it ever becomes a product.
The big difference between smartphones and TVs is that TVs are much more passive. No software or user interface improvements will make one iota of difference in the watching experience. You spend almost all your time doing that, and comparatively little doing stuff like changing channels, so no matter how revolutionary it is it'll be a tough sell unless they somehow expand what people do with their TVs - similar to how they expanded what people did with their phone beyond just talking and texting by bringing smartphone features out of the domain of the geek into the world of the average non-techie person.
"But even rabid Apple haters have to admit that the first iPhone was superior to any smartphone that came before it"
No, it wasn't. Nothing to do with hate or not, just a fact - to claim otherwise is opinion. The first iphone wasn't a smartphone anyway - it wasn't even a feature phone, due to inability to run apps. Whatever things the iphone did better, there are plenty more features that other phones did better. The idea that a phone that can't even do apps, has no 3G, and a shitty resolution, was good, let alone better than anything else, is laughable. Judging by the sales, I'm not the only one who thought that about the 2007 iphone - individual Nokia phones and smartphones massively outsold it.
TV interfaces are mainly limited either by slower CPUs (which is something that will improve gradually with time), or the limitations of using a remote control. It's already possible to use smartphones/tablets to improve the experience with existing TVs. Chromecast makes this even easier.
What's left for Apple to do? I love how Apple fans now play the game of asserting that Apple have something better up their sleeve, even when we have no idea what it is. Perhaps we should wait for the new AmigaTV?
This post has been deleted by its author
What do modern phones more closely resemble, the original iPhone or the other phones you referenced? All phones today have a big touchscreen without a hard keypad. All the popular smartphones pre-2007 had a much smaller display and a keyboard.
I honestly don't know where some of your comments come from. Shitty resolution? What phones made before the iPhone had a higher resolution? I don't think there were any that had a screen as large as the iPhone's 3.5" either, so while there may have been a few phones with a higher dpi, it doesn't really matter if it was crowded into a 2" screen.
You also seem to have awfully strange requirements for what constitutes a smartphone in your book. I've certainly never heard of 3G as a requirement. The iPhone did have wifi, which hardly any phones had back then, and I'd argue wifi is more important than 3G. If I had to choose between having wifi on my phone and only 2G data speeds or I could have LTE but no wifi, I'd take the former, as would just about anyone unless they had unlimited data or just didn't use their phone all that much.
If it's just a TV with an "Apple TV" built in (so you can't upgrade it like you can the current one) how much extra is it worth?
A few "Apple is coming out with a TV" stories ago there was talk that Apple was in talks with cable TV companies. Gimped, capped internet would limit what iTunes could do, and the cable companies have nothing to gain from their customers using iTunes.
But what I expect Apple was really doing was trying to tell the cable companies that they would have to pay Apple for the privilege of having Apple TVs connect to their service.
That's what people called ignorant. Apple never made a smartphone before, and then it came in 2007 to set a foundation for all smart phones nowadays. Apple designed monitors were better than most monitors out there, remember Apple Cinema Display? If Apple has made best monitors and a great streaming device like Apple TV, what is so hard for them to combine these two with some added features that set Apple apart from others?
What about Apple creates a full iOS TV set which use iPhone/iPod/iPad as controllers for games and other apps, browsers and such loaded within TV itself? That ecosystem will have no competition. Imagine what Sony PlayStation and MS Xbox will feel at that time. That's how Apple revolutionize their products and people are willing to pay a higher price to get their hands on that ecosystem.
I know enough people including my self that lose large parts of their life just looking for the remote for the TV.
Making it as small as a ring and probably charging the usual small fortune for an Apple replacement should it not be in the depths of the sofa, ought to be enough to blow that idea out of the water.
A wireless HDMI link with Ipads and phones might be interesting for a lot of people and maybe if it supported Samsung phones and pads even more people would want one.
Thinking a little more, having recently seen a mate controlling a Helicopter thingy with a camera on it (I think it was called an Idrone or something like it) with his Iphone perhaps Apple should package the thing with an Iphone as fanbois usually have their Iphone grafted to one hand, then controller loss would be less likely.
Apple is way overdue to refresh their 27" Thunderbolt Display, which shipped in early 2011, and they've got the new Mac Pro coming in a few months. The Thunderbolt display is a 2560 × 1440 panel -- same resolution as the 15" Retina Macbook Pro. It'd be a bit embarrassing if the flagship pro desktop machine shipped with a display no better than a 15" laptop, wouldn't it?
As the new Mac Pro is pitched as a high end video production workstation my gut feeling is that they're going to ship a 4K display, probably pitched as a Retina-grade replacement for the current CD. And if you're going to ship a $5000 display, you probably want a gorilla glass front for it -- sapphire still being slightly too expensive for anything bigger than a smartphone.
Remember, Apple go for high margin products when entering a new market sector: their prices only come down when they've lightened the pockets of the early adopters. TVs are not high margin products. 4K displays, on the other hand ...
Pah. I repeated exactly what Mr Bacon asks his iPhone 5 about the film Speed on that naffy EE advert and was presented with a Google search page.
Having said that, being able to operate Netflix via the voice control on the 360 + Kinect is actually kinda nifty and useful when you've had to take the batteries out of the remote (stupid toddlers).
"Wake me when it actually happens". That nap is going to seem like a coma, coz it ain't gonna happen
TVs are just unprofitable hard-to-ship lumps. In Apple-world, TVs only exist to enlarge what you're watching on your iOS or OSX device, enabled by a cheapo-but-still-profitable box that plugs into the TV. Apple don't need to invent anything new in this space - they already have all the hardware they need.
All they need now is to build out the service side
Full iOS TV will sell like a hot cake if it's priced right. Let's see:
1. You can play iOS games on it using iPod/iPhone/iPad as controllers or Apple designed controller made by Logitech: Who still wants PlayStation or Xbox?
2. Full browser, better than those crappy ones currently in LG and Samsung TVs using iPod/iPhone/iPad as touch pad/mouse and compatible with Apple existing touch pad or magic mouse: who want PC at home anymore?
3. Build-in camera for Facetime
4. Airplay, Airdrop, Siri integrated of course
5. Last but not least, proximity control just like Kinect (Kinect proximity control sucks by the way).
Is that enough to call revolutionizing TV? I guess so.
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