“Steven P. Jobs, Apple Computer’s chief executive, concluded a company event on Tuesday morning with his usual tease, noting that he had ‘one last thing’ to introduce,” John Markoff writes for The New York Times.
Markoff writes, “Then, in an unusual departure from the company’s practice of announcing new products only when they are ready to ship, he talked about a product due out early next year that will be the company’s first step into the living room. The device, which Apple is calling iTV for now, will wirelessly stream video and music from a Macintosh computer or from the Internet to a television. The $299 box is about the size of a slim paperback novel.”
MacDailyNews Take: Correction: “iTV” will wirelessly stream media from any Mac or PC running iTunes to any TV, monitor or device connected to it. People haven’t fully grasped the implications of “iTV,” yet. We’ll give them some time to catch up.
“The iTV device places Apple squarely in the consumer electronics market and gives it a way to compete directly with Microsoft and PC industry giants like Dell and Hewlett-Packard, which are also eagerly eyeing ways to deliver entertainment beyond the PC screen. Apple is a late entrant to the living room market, which is already crowded with video players like the Xbox and PlayStation and Microsoft-based Media Center personal computers, along with extenders of every shape and function,” Markoff writes. “That appeared not to faze Mr. Jobs, who showed off a simple interface for playing video and music on a TV, patterned on the company’s Front Row software.”
“The new streaming device partially sheltered Mr. Jobs from criticism that he had failed to line up Hollywood movie studios in the same way that he won the backing of the music industry when he originally launched the iTunes store. Mr. Jobs suggested that other studios would join the movie service in the future,” Markoff writes.
Full article here.
Apple launched TV shows via their iTunes Store with just one network, Disney’s ABC. Take a look at how many other networks, cable outlets, and TV shows there are now, less than a year later: 220 shows and 40 networks. Hollywood studios can hear money talking better than most anyone else; they’ll come a-runnin’ soon enough.
Steve Jobs gives sneak peek of Apple’s “iTV” wireless set-top box:
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