This is a community design for a Samsung TV. So, I think Apple has to come-up with a design which is not rectangular. or am I reading the law wrong?
Yeah. It sure as hell can't be:
a) rectangular
b) thin
c) thin-bezeled
if so OMGOMGOMGOM COPY!
(and damn them if they have a clear glass coating either...)
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The POINT is that "should be" is just a wish. The content and distribution are tied up with the cable companies. News Corp owns Fox and DirecTV, and lots of other media. Comcast owns NBC and many "cable" networks. And then there are the distribution contracts. Breaking through that would be huge.
I have no idea what you are talking about with cell providers. Apple just made a phone. Unless you mean iMessage, but I hope not.
a phone that would increase the use of data, adding a "new" stream of revenue for the carriers... (ok, they got it coming now with Skype etc. but i doubt they really thought about those consequences initially...)
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That's about half the bitrate needed for BD movies - so it may have just as many pixels as a BD, it won't be the same quality for the video and audio.
Common BD drives can read in the range of 288 Mbps to 360 Mbps, and write at 72 Mbps or more - so greatly increased bitrates can be used when needed.
and, the tech. is improving. i mean, in every thread bout Apple TV there are talks about 4k. Now, good luck pushing that through your old wires.
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The current system is a mess with no choice for customers. Content and distribution have been combined and the consumer has suffered. Why can't we buy a la carte programming? Why do i have to pay for HSN or so many channels I don't want? We used to be forced to buy albums for $15 even though we only wanted 2 songs. Apple changed that.
What Apple did for cell phones is to take the carrier out of the equation for branding and ongoing support. All iPhones have access to the same content (OS, apps, music, etc.) and same payment system no matter the carrier. Before Apple, the carriers dictated that and fragmentation ruled.
It may never happen for TV but separating content from distribution would benefit the end customer.
You do know that Apple stuck with just 1 carrier (in America) for quite some time, and that the rest of the world doesn't work like America?
In short, the situations are anything but analogous. Yes, both scenarios had gate-keepers, but Apple did little to displace them with the iPhone - and displace them is what they'd have to do to make the MR wet-dream of the ATV working.
Also, you're revising history. The current system is what enabled the massive distribution of content(systems) to begin with. Of course, in states other than America, the government could've made the infrastructure happen. But other than that, how the hell do you expect your cables to be dug into the ground? Tight coupling of transport layer and service layer is what made the model work. Its what provided return on investment. Simple as that, really.
TL;DR: Consumers
has benefited vastly from coupling of content and distribution.
Addendum:
Just struck me. With the iPhone they sidestepped carriers wish to be the service-providers. Most likely, with the iPhone relying on web-apps, Apple convinced them that they could "make this back in data". Sounds plausible at least. Either way, the iPhone was hardly the first phone to a) offer apps (or even app stores), b) not be screwed over by the carrier (at least not outside of the US and A).
Last, since no carrier ever really succeeded with services*, i guess some of them were realizing that it was just a pipe dream, and that they were better off thinking new (e.g., capitalize on data... something everyone* had pretty much failed doing too)
* exception being NCC DoCoMo and their i-mode, which was successful on a scale that parallels the iPhone - in Japan :- )
