“Steve Jobs couldn’t hide his frustration. Asked at a technology conference in 2010 whether Apple might finally turn its attention to television, he launched into an exasperated critique of TV,” Robert D. Hof writes for MIT Technology Review. “Cable and satellite TV companies make cheap, primitive set-top boxes that ‘squash any opportunity for innovation,’ he fumed. Viewers are stuck with ‘a table full of remotes, a cluster full of boxes, a bunch of different [interfaces].’ It was the kind of technological mess that cried out for Apple to clean it up with an elegant product. But Jobs professed to have no idea how his company could transform the TV.”

“Scarcely a year later, however, he sounded far more confident. Before he died on October 5, 2011, he told his biographer, ­Walter Isaacson, that Apple wanted to create an ‘integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’” Hof writes. “It would sync with other devices and Apple’s iCloud online storage service and provide ‘the simplest user interface you could imagine.’ He added, tantalizingly, ‘I finally cracked it.’”

Hof writes, “Apple would not comment. But it’s clear from two dozen interviews with people close to Apple suppliers and partners, and with people Apple has spoken to in the TV industry, that television—the medium and the device—is indeed its next target. The biggest question is not whether Apple will take on TV, but when.”

Much more in the full article – recommended – here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Fred Mertz" for the heads up.]