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dannyyankou

macrumors G5
Mar 2, 2012
13,009
27,996
Westchester, NY
Steve has been known to change his mind many many times in the past. Also, no offense to him, but he's not in charge anymore. It's Tim Cook's call now.
 

samcraig

macrumors P6
Jun 22, 2009
16,779
41,982
USA
Steve has been known to change his mind many many times in the past. Also, no offense to him, but he's not in charge anymore. It's Tim Cook's call now.

Well clearly Steve has been cryogenically frozen and is under the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland - right next to Walt. Either that or his mind was uploaded to the Intersect and Agent Bartowski is dictating how Apple should be run by proxy.
 

D.T.

macrumors G4
Sep 15, 2011
11,050
12,460
Vilano Beach, FL
Hope you had a nice day at the beach, I think we are having our summer now haha! But we shouldn't complain as it's much better then constant rain and gale force winds, or tons of snow and minus 30!

Anyway, yes I agree that Netflix runs it's best on faster devices like my Playstation 4, but I use my TV app because I only have to change the DNS on the TV for UnblockUS to work. But the TV app is more than usable.

Thanks! It was awesome as usual, though it was _windy_. Almost lost a taco :D (we have this killer little taco joint right down a block from the beach access).

OK, yeah, that sounds like a easier way to deal with the Charlie Foxtrot of international content access.
 

iPadPublisher

macrumors 6502
Apr 14, 2010
477
71
I've said many times if my AppleTV and TiVO got married, I'd be the happiest guy out there. I use both a lot, and some kind of hybrid that has the best of both worlds would win me over.

----------

I would like to see Apple TV and boxes like it (Roku, Chromecast) replace cable television as the world's primary television source. The nut to crack is going to be Internet. Right now cable companies have a strong lock on it which needs to be broken.

Ala carte cable access would be awesome, but you're right... The cable cos. are gonna jack Internet rates if they start losing video clients.

----------

Would things be better if Apple had a strong lock on everything like TV source, internet source, music source, etc?

They don't need to have a lock on the content in order to improve the experience. And they're stepping into highly competitive territory here... They have no lock.
 

MacLC

macrumors 6502
Oct 18, 2013
414
272
Back in 2003, Jobs had told reporters that he didn't feel that Apple could add much value to mobile phones. The iPhone was announced four years later.

Yes and no. The technology to put a solid OS in a phone with the apps to give that phone value, as well as low power wifi did not exist in 2003. My vintage 2004 PowerBook would get 4 hours of battery life standard, or about 2 with wifi. I could not imagine an iPhone without wifi. Also even 2G was only beginning to break ground (in the US) in 2003. Typical speeds for most locations, even with good reception, was far slower than dial up.

By 2007, wifi power efficiency, battery technology, glass technology, and US-market 2G had improved leaps and bounds.

Current televisions are commodities. Even 4K TVs are so. They do have a long replacement cycle as well. There are no technological limitations that cell phones had. For Apple to change their stance they need to pair TVs with other electronic devices that have shorter replacement cycles.

The problem with that is that you can already pair a TV with MCPC, NUC, or other such device and they generally have long replacement cycles. I have a friend who to this day uses an original Xbox as a Media Center PC from which he watches movies, plays games, plays music for parties (with different songs playing in each room), has photo albums, and everything else I can imagine you would want to do with a TV. The machine is 12 years old now.

I am not saying Apple CAN'T make anything great with a TV, just that there would be very low margin even at the high end, and so for profitability's sake, Apple would be better off deploying their genius to other markets.
 

mabhatter

macrumors 65816
Jan 3, 2009
1,022
388
If the can figure out the right formula the will.

The Comcast + NBC merger pretty much has killed that idea as dead as Steve.

If Apple could have pried somebody like HBO away from Cable-only business model, it would have worked. But Comcast's lock on the "last mile" Internet and now 1/5 of the programming with NBC has locked that dead. They are already trying desperately to kill Hulu with Disney/ABC and FOX/broadcast already paired up. They are just waiting until somebody "looks the other way" and they can "knife the baby" which is business talk for killing your own possible competing products.

Apple TV is very functional as an extension of the iOS ecosystem to the living room. At $99 Apple probably pulls 30% margin... Televisions are 10% wholesale margin or even less when you are talking the ones at Walmart that are really last year's overrun product sold at a loss. Literally stores like Walmart can make more PROFIT off a $99 Apple TV than a $999 TV now.

If Apple would extend the business uses of Apple TV.. like a built in Keynote player for automated displays, and software to screen share from iTunes in Windows computers, they would make a killing at offices like mine that just want a tool that works for putting stuff on television/monitors when guests and others have meetings.
 

cincygolfgrrl

macrumors 6502
Apr 2, 2012
346
227
Somewhere In Time
Our household is heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem, but there is no way in hell we're going to buy three new televisions when we have three appropriately sized Samsungs with Apple TVs attached. I'll gladly upgrade the set top boxes when v.2 will no longer support content upgrades.
 

goobot

macrumors 603
Jun 26, 2009
6,484
4,375
long island NY
Our household is heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem, but there is no way in hell we're going to buy three new televisions when we have three appropriately sized Samsungs with Apple TVs attached. I'll gladly upgrade the set top boxes when v.2 will no longer support content upgrades.

You would have to update those tvs one day though, no?
 

kingtj

macrumors 68030
Oct 23, 2003
2,606
749
Brunswick, MD
Yep....

If anything, history shows that Apple liked to make official statements of non-interest in a particular idea shortly before entering that market with a new product.

Personally, my guess about the television thing is that Jobs viewed it as rather parallel to the iPod music players. They were a good product that made sense to sell, but ONLY as part of an eco-system where Apple could market the CONTENT you loaded onto the player too.

When Apple tried to duplicate the iTunes music and MP3 player situation with video content and a TV (or set top box to start with), it encountered a lot of push-back from the content providers. There was a lot of sentiment of, "You talked us into working with you the first time around, Apple. But now we see where we can do a lot of this digital distribution stuff without you, and it's just handing you unnecessary profit margins and control over OUR content to do it again with TV and movies. So go pound sand."

I think things may still be evolving though, as the general public keeps warming to the concept of doing all of its media consumption via streaming, and loses the fixation on owning the content in a physical form. (Look how many people used to be proud of huge movie libraries of VHS tapes they purchased and collected up. And now, all of those movies are worth little more than $1 each at a flea market or garage sale. A lot of those people invested a second time around, repurchasing collections as DVD, only to watch it devalue again, as more content got re-released in HD on blu-ray disc.) At some point, all of this made people re-think ownership of movies and TV series. They're now starting to say, "I'd rather just pay to have the ability to view it on demand without having to keep physical media around the house to do it."

At some point, the content owners may as well offer it to all takers; Netlix, Hulu, Amazon, Apple... whoever. They'll wind up not seeing much advantage to holding onto it themselves and having to spend money on servers, bandwidth, etc. to distribute it out themselves.


And he also intimated that a 7" iPad would be a no go. How did that end up?

The only constant is change.
 

MattInOz

macrumors 68030
Jan 19, 2006
2,760
0
Sydney
Steve has been known to change his mind many many times in the past. Also, no offense to him, but he's not in charge anymore. It's Tim Cook's call now.

I wouldn't be surprised if he said things just to challenge people around him to prove him wrong. Already knowing the how they would do that.
 

nzalog

macrumors 6502
Jul 25, 2012
274
2
Steve... uhh ok, more importantly, the analysts have said that the iTV project was put on hold.
 

Casiotone

macrumors 6502a
Oct 12, 2008
825
111
I see a lot of people that like to repeat that "Steve Jobs said Apple would never do X and then did it!".

When you go read the actual quotes and see the context you usually find much more subtlety in what he was saying (I don't think he actually said "never" in any of those cases), and often the reasons he mentioned for not doing X were not applicable to what Apple has done.
 

Born Again

Suspended
May 12, 2011
4,073
5,325
Norcal
Instead, Apple released a 7.9" tablet which has a much bigger screen than 7" 16:9 tablets.

Hardly a difference

Jesus Christ

Apple apologists just can't accept that Steve jobs was wrong.

What did Steve jobs say? "I figured it out!"

"Jumpin Jimminy willerkers!"

How wrong he was
 

thekev

macrumors 604
Aug 5, 2010
7,005
3,343
This might have some relevance if the turtlenecked one was to return as a zombie, eat Cook's brain, and resume his previous position of CEO. In terms of the present, it is meaningless. The prior rumors of a television weren't that likely, and in each case the only source of information is a written biography. All I would add is that talking about such a thing for his biography meant that they weren't working on a television at the time. CEOs don't discuss products under development.
 

Salvor Hardin

macrumors 6502
Jun 24, 2013
250
242
I would like a tv with retina display. Wait they wouldnt have retina with the first generation. :D

Unless you have a giant TV or sit up very close to one that isn't you already have a retina display.
A TV that out of the box has perfectly calibrated color though is rare to find, ones without a bunch of confusing picture/color ruining setting with most set on by default on the other hand is pretty much everything on the market.
 

Liverpoolchap

macrumors newbie
Dec 11, 2013
11
0
In 2003, Steve Jobs said that Apple would "never" make a Tablet, PDA, or Phone.


4 Years later, He was introducing a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a portable internet device.

7 Years later, he invited us all to see his latest creation.

Lets see where his legacy takes us, before we listen to what he directly said. :)

Source - http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Steve_Jobs_No_Tablet_No_PDA_No_Cell_Phone_Lots_Of_iPods

Fantastic!
 

cdmoore74

macrumors 68020
Jun 24, 2010
2,413
711
Getting pretty tired of hearing stories from the grave. Let's move on and stop reminiscing. Can't follow a dead person's business model forever. Apple is going to die unless they innovative and I don't mean iPad 10 and iPhone 12s. Otherwise those Apple stores are closing up shop.
 
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