Steve Jobs on an Apple Television Set: 'I Finally Cracked It'

[Dmunjal]

Awesome story bro. i don't care. i as a consumer want Blu-Ray.

Were you still buying CDs when everyone else was downloading MP3s? Bluray is the last physical media and the faster it dies the better. Apple wants to kill the DVD /Bluray model just like they killed CDs.

Apple TV should be to TV and Movies what the iPod was to Music.

 

[Piggie]

Were you still buying CDs when everyone else was downloading MP3s? Bluray is the last physical media and the faster it dies the better. Apple wants to kill the DVD /Bluray model just like they killed CDs.

Apple TV should be to TV and Movies what the iPod was to Music.

This is spooky as I've been out down town today and I'm sure when I was in the Record and Video stores I say loads of people browsing vast racks of music CD's

OMG. I must have been hallucinating!

 

[Dmunjal]

I see a lot of people posting the same things over and over, many of which I addressed in previous posts, but I'll do it again.

Argument: Whether or not Apple will create a physical TV set. Why would I spend money on that when I already own an expensive TV, front projector, etc.

Response: Stop ignoring the current Apple TV (little black box). *That's* the Apple TV. It already exists! *If* Apple decides to make physical televisions, I predict that it will be running the same OS/UI as the current Apple TV box and they'll continue to sell Apple TV's alongside the physical TV's and keep the firmwares in sync. Already have a great TV? Just buy the Apple TV box. Need a new TV? Maybe you'll buy their physical TV set. Personally, I don't see them bothering making physical TVs at all.

****

Argument: Siri will be a game-changer.

Response: Again, they can already add Siri support to the existing Apple TV in the same way they give you full QWERTY keyboard support on the existing Apple TV: By way of the Remote app on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. And I agree that this will be a great way to control the Apple TV.

****

Argument: Apple will never get the NFL. DirecTV has a stranglehold on it.

Response: Sony already cut a deal. You can get NFL Sunday Ticket on the PS3 and not be a DirecTV subscriber. I predict Microsoft will offer it on the XBox and Apple could, if they're willing to pay enough for it, offer it on the Apple TV.

****

Argument: The networks rely on ad revenue and deals with the cable companies and will never go for a la carte pricing.

Response: There already *IS* a la carte pricing. Go to iTunes and see for yourself. You can buy TV shows individually or, slightly discounted, by the entire season of a show. Amazon also offers this. It's already here. Today. The only issues are that they don't have *every* show from every network, and the pricing isn't as good as Amazon's (last I checked). They've got enough money in the bank and a large enough iOS userbase that I'm confident that they will leverage those things to improve selection and price.

****

Argument: It won't replace my Blu-ray with 1080p/24 and 3D. Their 720p movies are over-compressed crap. I demand quality!

Response: No, it's not as good as Blu-ray, but it's not crap. It's darn good, as a matter of fact. Apple doesn't need to match Blu-ray quality, they just need to provide "good enough" HD quality, at a reasonable price, so that the masses will buy into it. Ever hear of MP3? Not as good as SACD, but the mass market has decided the convenience of MP3 combined with its "good enough" quality is worth more to them.

Best post yet! Can't believe how Apple fans could be such naysayers.

 

[Piggie]

Blu-ray is a bag of hurt.

A statement from a bitter and twisted old man who is no more.
May he rest in peace.

 

[Dmunjal]

This is spooky as I've been out down town today and I'm sure when I was in the Record and Video stores I say loads of people browsing vast racks of music CD's

OMG. I must have been hallucinating!

Record store? What's that? Thought they all went out of business. Tower, Wherehouse, etc. Borders, Hollywood, Blockbuster followed.

Who will be next?

 

[zombierunner]

Judging by the price of their 27 inch thunderbolt display .. a 40 inch tv will cost what .... a gazillion ?

 

[Slurpy2k8]

Judging by the price of their 27 inch thunderbolt display .. a 40 inch tv will cost what .... a gazillion ?

Ridiculous comparison. Go find similar specced display at a significantly lower price.. you can't. a 40' Tv will have lower resolution than a thunderbolt display, and the display doesnt need to be as high quality.

 

[Brian Buttplug]

I believe Apple will release a TV in late 2012 or early 2013. It will be LED not plasma and most likely come in 40" and 46".

And I believe in The Flying Spaghetti Monster

 

[bushido]

Were you still buying CDs when everyone else was downloading MP3s? Bluray is the last physical media and the faster it dies the better. Apple wants to kill the DVD /Bluray model just like they killed CDs.

Apple TV should be to TV and Movies what the iPod was to Music.

If u love to throw out twice as much money on a copyright protected file. Go ahead. Ill stick, like most people to BD until i can get my money worth.

digital music "won" bc its indeed cheaper in many cases. Like u dont need to buy the whole cd if u like only 3 or 4 songs.

I love my apple gadgets but i dont need a company to tell me how i can use my media. "its easier to use" my ass, i cant even play the one movie i do have from iTunes back on my tv. Thx to some lovely protection

 

[SockRolid]

iCloud + Siri

Siri - Apple's television content search and device control mechanism.

iCloud - Apple's television archive and delivery infrastructure.

As in "Siri, queue all episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation that feature Ashley Judd and/or Paul Winfield." Or "Siri - replay the third inning steal attempt in slow motion."

Those two examples show how Siri could intelligently control your TV content and playback. Because in addition to understanding what you say, Siri could also know what what IMdB.com or TV show notes (the descriptive text encoded in the MPEG data) say about movies and TV shows and what announcers say about live events. And Apple's face recognition technology could detect actors and personalities in the content. But these examples also show the two modes of iCloud use: finding content that already exists, and streaming live events like sports or concerts or news.

And no, there won't be a "record" mode. Apple won't buy TiVo. Apple wants to kill off TiVo and the whole PVR industry. If and when bandwidth is fast enough and reliable enough for the majority of consumers, there won't be any need for us to keep a local copy of any TV content. It will be transparent. As we all know by now, Apple wants us to use their service and consume the content that they provide.

This is of course why Apple has quietly yet steadily deprecated iDVD and has almost totally ignored Blu-Ray while steadily developing iMovie on Mac and iOS devices. User-created movies will always be an important part of Apple's TV solution.

"But I want to time-shift David Letterman!" you might say. Well, the moment a live-streamed show is over, it would be archived on Apple's servers. Just say "Siri - play the most recent Letterman," or "Siri - queue all episodes of Letterman with Jessica Biel." It should just be that easy.

 

[AppleScruff1]

Agreed. ITV here in the UK is huge there is no way Apple can use this name.

Why not? They can sue ITV and claim that they thought of it first. Or pay them a few billion for the rights to use the name.

 

[Dmunjal]

If u love to throw out twice as much money on a copyright protected file. Go ahead. Ill stick, like most people to BD until i can get my money worth.

digital music "won" bc its indeed cheaper in many cases. Like u dont need to buy the whole cd if u like only 3 or 4 songs.

I love my apple gadgets but i dont need a company to tell me how i can use my media. "its easier to use" my ass, i cant even play the one movie i do have from iTunes back on my tv. Thx to some lovely protection

You make a good point but you are the minority. Most people have switched to buying music online and movies online are growing faster than dvd sales.

Yes, there's copy protection and the quality is not as good but most people like the convenience.

Apple will kill the cable companies and dvd rental stores if they can pull this off.

 

[Aeolius]

Siri - Apple's television content search and device control mechanism.

That would prevent me from buying it, right there. Siri cannot, at this time, distinguish between different voices. I have seven kids. Imagine the war for the remote, if all they have to do is shout commands.

 

[JAT]

Well, the moment a live-streamed show is over, it would be archived on Apple's servers. Just say "Siri - play the most recent Letterman," or "Siri - queue all episodes of Letterman with Jessica Biel." It should just be that easy.

And I wish I had sex every other day. Lot's of things don't happen.

 

[AppleScruff1]

And I wish I had sex every other day. Lot's of things don't happen.

Married?

 

[CFreymarc]

I'm sure there is a kick butt television UI concept in Steve's archives that are being preserved like Walt Disney's office as we speak. In the mid-90's there was a great start-up called Da Vinci Time and Space that had one of the most elegant and intuitive set-top cable box designs out there.

It scanned the upper rasters of TV frames of the then standard, analog cable input to process programming information, an Ethernet connection for a local ISP connections and a remote with minimal buttons. You could even change program listings and setup screen layout from your PC!

Got great reviews by technophiles and not A SINGLE cable television company went with it and the company died. As pathetic as it sounds, the consensus is that the DVT&S cable box "Pulls away viewers attention to programming where the cable television provider loses control of content and program listings." This is what Apple is up against of they are head-to-head with the cable TV business. While the resolution of televisions have increased since then, the programming and content model has not changed as much.

The fact that so may cable TV providers sued TiVo when it started up shows just how much of a content control freak they are. IMO, the entire concept of a television network is soon obsolete. A good modern TV UI makes internet streaming and "network" programming indistinguishable to where production companies directly stream shows to viewers with advertising brokered via search engines and not networks. We are seeing this now with Hulu and a few others. The next generation will look at the three letter networks like LPs.

One meeting I had years ago, the statement was made, "You don't let your ISP determine what apps you run on your computer so why should your cable television provider determine how you access programming?"

 

[aristotle]

A statement from a bitter and twisted old man who is no more.
May he rest in peace.

I'll tell you what, how about you stop hoarding obsolete technology like an Amiga 500, Dreamcast etc.... and then maybe people can start taking your opinions on modern technology seriously.

Don't get me wrong, I thought that the Amiga 500 was really cool for its time back in the late 1980 to early 1990's but we are now in the 2010's It is time to move on already.

Unless if you have a museum that people pay to go see then I'm thinking that you have trouble letting go of things.

You will feel much better if you learn to let go of the past. I speak from experience. I was also an Amiga fanatic back in the day but I have moved on.

 

[Exhale]

Ridiculous comparison. Go find similar specced display at a significantly lower price.. you can't.

4 seconds later:
http://www.prisjakt.nu/kategori.php?k=393#rparams=l=s77543038

 

[D.T.]

Don't get me wrong, I thought that the Amiga 500 was really cool for its time back in the late 1980 to early 1990's but we are now in the 2010's It is time to move on already.

I think his/her sig is just for fun. FWIW, I had an Amiga 1000, 500 and a 2000 with a bunch of video gear

4 seconds later:
http://www.prisjakt.nu/kategori.php?k=393#rparams=l=s77543038

FYI, that Dell U2711 is $1099 USD, and sometimes gets discounted ~$100, which is basically the same as the Apple product (which BTW, you can usually score for $949-979 without too much trouble).

It looks like that price KR converts to about $879 USD and the price shown for the Apple display converts to $1268, so you must be incurring an additional markup on Apple products.

Not saying that at pure face value the Dell isn't lower, but "normalized", it's very close (and often the same...)

 

[bathysphere]

You make a good point but you are the minority. Most people have switched to buying music online and movies online are growing faster than dvd sales.

Yes, there's copy protection and the quality is not as good but most people like the convenience.

Apple will kill the cable companies and dvd rental stores if they can pull this off.

correction: most people have switched to illegally downloading music online, because it's convenient, not exorbitantly priced, and often just as good or close enough to cd quality. and bonus, it doesn't come with the burden of drm (file under convenience, i guess). it's also worth noting that as the cd is dying, vinyl sales have increased something like 600% in the last year alone, which is still a drop in the bucket but hints a bit more accurately toward what's really going on with the music industry.

with a little work, apple could kill the cable companies tv offerings and dvd rentals (but they're not interested in renting tv shows anymore, so maybe not). they'll have a bit more trouble killing blu-rays and dvd's as consumer objects.

 

[bijanorama]

I think there's room for the apple TV set to change the way we look at communicate. I'd assume there would be an HD iSight camera in the set allowing people to connect their living rooms with their loved ones via the facetime platform.

Huge potential, absolutely huge.

 

[Piggie]

I'll tell you what, how about you stop hoarding obsolete technology like an Amiga 500, Dreamcast etc.... and then maybe people can start taking your opinions on modern technology seriously.

Don't get me wrong, I thought that the Amiga 500 was really cool for its time back in the late 1980 to early 1990's but we are now in the 2010's It is time to move on already.

Unless if you have a museum that people pay to go see then I'm thinking that you have trouble letting go of things.

You will feel much better if you learn to let go of the past. I speak from experience. I was also an Amiga fanatic back in the day but I have moved on.

Don't you realise, I have deliberately listed all my old but loved bits of tech for a laugh and a joke as I find it very sad that there are adults who have to show of like children at infant school by listing what they think are their top products to be proud of for others to see.
In fact for anyone to actually write in their posts such things as:

"iMac 27", iPad2, iPhone 4s, Apple TV, Macbook air" etc etc just makes me think to myself.

Don't you have any imagination as a consumer that you cannot even decide for yourself which product it the right one, and you have to blindly purchase one brands products only. that to me is so sad.

I would have much more respect, if you do have to write down a lit of thing you own for it to be a mix of products you individually chose and not just picked due to who made them.

As I said, I have put my list in for a laugh, and yes I do own them all, but I also own other products including a new PC that's faster than the fastest iMac Apple even make and yet cost me about 1/3rd the price.
But I don't want to put that, as I'd rather have a light hearted list, and I don't feel the need to justify my choices to others.

It's tacky and like the Queen of England going out in a Ferarri waving bundles of cash around. She does not do that as it's tasteless and crass

 

[GulGnu]

In fact for anyone to actually write in their posts such things as:

"iMac 27", iPad2, iPhone 4s, Apple TV, Macbook air" etc etc just makes me think to myself.

Don't you have any imagination as a consumer that you cannot even decide for yourself which product it the right one, and you have to blindly purchase one brands products only. that to me is so sad.

Or they just like the integration. Apple TV really needs an iPad to feel really nice to use. And a new untethered jailbreak for 4.4.1...

 

[gnasher729]

A statement from a bitter and twisted old man who is no more.
May he rest in peace.

A statement from a clueless **** who doesn't have any idea what a pain it is to build hardware and software that meets the ridiculous legal demands for Blu-Ray. HDCP was a pain and still causes trouble sometimes; that's nothing compared to the pain caused by Blu-Ray.

 

[divinox]

Were you still buying CDs when everyone else was downloading MP3s? Bluray is the last physical media and the faster it dies the better. Apple wants to kill the DVD /Bluray model just like they killed CDs.

Apple TV should be to TV and Movies what the iPod was to Music.

Nice anachronism there tiger. What really happened was that it was the demise of CD's that allowed for Apple to disrupt the market in first place. Ergo: Apple did not kill CD's, Apples capitalized on its death.

Thus, for Apple TV to be to TV and Movies what the iPod was to Music, TV and Movies first have to die. Problem is, despite rampant piracy, it isn't. On the contrary, its thriving*.

* not that i have checked numbers lately, but i haven't seen anything that speaks of the opposite.