“When I heard Steve Jobs’ ‘special’ announcement about a new product for 2007 called the ‘iTV,’ [I] just rolled my eyes thinking ‘you’ve got to be kidding me,'” Cynical IT Guy blogs for Business 2.0. “I guess Steve Jobs thought he’d really get away with it. I mean, sure, what kind of pissed off freak would remember something as obscure as that from 11 years ago and then nail him on it today?”
“The MacTV inspired another product (other than my performa) that is virtually unknown and will amaze you. And in 1995, I repeat 1995, this amazing product was called the ‘Apple Interactive Television Box,'” Cynical IT Guy writes.
Cynical IT Guy writes, “It was designed to stream content into a television. And this product looks awfully familiar to something Steve (11 years later) invented and called the iTV. But I guess when Steve Jobs announced the iTV, he must have forgotten that his own company had already made the iTV over a decade ago.”
MacDailyNews Note: “Stream content into a television” via wired connection, not wirelessly.
Cynical IT Guy continues, “It’s called iTV. That’s a codeword. We need to come up with a better name. -Steve Jobs quote from the iTV announcement speech. Aren’t you excited? It has a ‘codeword’ because it is so new that no one has even figured out what to call it yet. Now, I’m a nice guy, so when I hear Steve Jobs say that he’s trying to think of a name for an 11-year-old ‘new- product, I get confused and just want to help. So Steve, how about calling it the ‘Apple Interactive Television Box’ like Apple did in 1995. It’s catchy huh?”
Full article with more photos here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Michael” for the heads up.]
Wikipedia says:
Since the box was never marketed, no official technical specifications have been released by Apple. The following describes a typical unit:
• A/V ports include composite video on an RCA jack with two additional RCA jacks for stereo sound, an S-Video port, two RF coaxial cable jacks, and two SCART jacks.
• Mac-like ports including a Macintosh serial port, an RJ-45 ethernet port, and a SCSI port.
• The front of the unit has an Apple logo and an infrared receiver, apparently for interface via the remote control.
• The unit contains a 68LC040 CPU, and 4 megabytes of built in RAM, but no hard drive.
• An internal expansion slot of a type not found on other Apple products. There is speculation that this may be based on Apple’s PDS expansion slot.
Apple intended to offer the set-top box with a matching black ADB mouse, keyboard, Apple 300e CD-ROM drive, Stylewriter printer and one of several styles of remote controls.
“Apple Interactive Television Box” via Wikipedia here.
Related articles:
Apple’s new iTV universal remote control patent application published – October 12, 2006
Apple’s iTV will be much more like an upscaled iPod than a downscaled PC – September 30, 2006
Apple’s iTV: Where’s the DVR? – September 27, 2006
Intel’s Conroe-L the brains behind Apple’s iTV? – September 22, 2006
Cringely: Apple’s iTV strategy is iChat on steroids – September 22, 2006
The Motley Fool examines Apple’s iTV victims – September 22, 2006
Disney CEO Iger: Apple’s ‘iTV’ has ‘small hard drive on it’ – September 19, 2006
Disney sells 125,000 movie downloads via Apple’s iTunes Store in first week – September 19, 2006
The most exciting feature of Apple’s ‘iTV’ may be its USB port – September 15, 2006
Cringely: How Apple plans to own your living room – September 15, 2006
LA Times: With iTV+iTunes Movies, Steve Jobs stumbles over the last 100 feet – September 14, 2006
BusinessWeek: If anyone can make bridge the great divide, Apple can with ‘iTV’ – September 14, 2006
The Beeb asks: Would you buy the Apple iTV? – September 14, 2006
Three markets that are different today after Apple’s ‘It’s Showtime’ event – September 13, 2006
Cramer: Apple’s ‘iTV’ all about ease-of-use; Apple shares are going higher – September 13, 2006
Apple + Living Room = Logical Marriage + Boon for Stockholders – September 13, 2006
The Register: Apple event more like ‘No Show’ than ‘Showtime’ – September 13, 2006
The Telegraph: Steve Jobs’ genius making people desire gadgets for which they have absolutely no use – September 13, 2006
The Guardian: Steve Jobs needs ‘a charisma download, Apple risks being left behind’ – September 13, 2006
Mark Cuban: Things that are special about Apple’s announcements – September 13, 2006
Apple’s ‘iTV’ strategy – September 13, 2006
How will Apple’s ‘iTV’ work? – September 13, 2006
Apple eyes living room market with device codenamed ‘iTV’ – September 12, 2006
Analyst: Apple ‘s iTunes+iPod+iTV model ‘the gold standard for the digital home of the future’ – September 12, 2006
Analyst: Apple ‘s iTunes+iPod+iTV ‘will be hard for other players to match’ – September 12, 2006
Apple gives sneak peek of ‘iTV’ set-top box to debut Q1 2007 (with images) – September 12, 2006
Apple’s QuickTime stream of Steve Jobs special event now live – September 12, 2006
Apple debuts iTunes 7 – September 12, 2006
Obiusly, this guy get the notice from some one else becase the iTV was mede a long time ago and this guy just note it today? Hey pal, why don’t you just try to watch TV or internet once in a while?
Good one, Ron!
The big difference now is that Apple is on top of the digital content
game. Content and distribution control mean a lot.
That just means Apple (even without Jobs) was thinking 11 years ahead of the technology and the public mindset that would make the product successful. Newton was way ahead of its time, but it was released too early and inferior products that came later became more successful. Apple thinks now is the time to make such a product successful. Like with MP3 players, Apple is not going to be the first to do such a product, but it will probably the company that can execute it successfully.
This post by the Cynical IT Guys shows exactly what is wrong with the Ameican education system today. The guy quotes the dictionary definition of innovation as being something “new” and then promptly alters the definition of “new” to mean “first.”
Example. The peanut butter and jelly sandwich was in its own right an innovation. Peanut butter and jelly had existed for decades, but no one thought of putting them together until World War II, when they were both packed together in K-rations for GIs because PB&J proved to be a high protein, high calorie compact food.
The point? Neither peanut butter nor jelly were new inventions, but what was new was putting them together in a sandwich, which took nearly 40 years after the invention of peanut butter for people to figure out. The rest is history.
Secondly, there is the fallacy of assuming that something dervied or depending on an earlier innovation is itself non-innovative. By that logic, sliced bread would not be innovative because it relied on the innovation known as bread. Nevermind that sliced bread totally changed the way bread was marketed and consumed.
In other words, people like the Cynical IT Guy are so upset that the iPod is the juggernaught it is today when it wasn’t the first MP3 player that they fixate on trying to prove Apple is not innovative by pointing to superficially related predecessors. You might as well say the vaccuum tubes that powered ENIAC, the first all electronic computer, were just glorified lightbulbs and totally non-innovative.
Idiocy knows no bounds.
May Apple laugh all the way to the bank. Cynical IT guy does have a point, Microsoft keeps releasing the same NT-based garbage for the past 14 years.
who the F had content on their macs 11 years ago to do ANYTHING with an iTV…?
Gee I wonder why it was… never released…
Nice ‘typical specs’… totally baseless
well it has kinda been done before but not done right. also this was apple when Steve Jobs wasnt with the company when they were trying to just make anything with the Apple logo on it which turned out to allow them to waste money over and over again. there also was not a program called iTunes back then so everything this guy is saying has no relevance to anything except for him being an idiot.
I don’t think the new device is going to look anything like what is pictured there from 10 years ago. And wired and wireless are two different worlds.
Hey, ITs Miniscule Guy
There is Steve Jobs, and there is snow jobs. What is the point of this story? Is Jobs lying? Taking credit for someone elses idea? Or are you trying to impress by linking the two boxes because they are sqaure and video goes through them? That is a snow job.
The wheel is thousands of years old. What’s Goodyear trying to pull!?!
Yeah, right… The guy just “rolled his eyes” when Jobs announced iTv…. That’s why he waited more than 2 months to write about it.. Most likely, he just heard about this and decided it might make a story.
huh? this guy is wrong.. that Apple Interactive Television Box, I believe was supposed to be new product to compete with webTV but it never came out (according to the wiki site) you see that the spec mentioned mouse, keyboard, printer such like that
and the 90’s was the Interactive TV era. and WebTV cornered the market and Apple decides not to release it like Apple decide to scrap Pippin because PS1 and Nintedo was so popular and hard to beat.
As for iTV, it is different beast, because it just stream content from your mac to tv which can be musci, movie, tv shows or whatever. not the way AITB was intended to.
You could say that iTV may be superior product than Eyehome.
Ane we know that iTV will be sold eventually under new name instead of the codeword “iTV”
Check this one out:
apple-history
And this one:
apple-history
MDN Magic Word: quite
As in It’s quite obvious that Apple has been dabbling in this sort of thing for years.
“Yeah, right… The guy just “rolled his eyes” when Jobs announced iTv…. That’s why he waited more than 2 months to write about it.. Most likely, he just heard about this and decided it might make a story”
More likely is that it took him 2 months just to write his “article.”
simply proves – beyond ANY shadow of a doubt, Steve Jobs is so far ahead of his time … he is … the Leonardo Da Vinci of our century.
Perhaps, in addition to being avant-garde, he was also perceptive enough top realize that it wasn’t quite ready for prime time. Sure the Newton was in the same category and maybe shouldn’t have been released at that time but hey, this is how you gain experience.
And that experience is saying….now is the time.
Apple had the right idea in 95 but their were no Intel Core 2 Duos, 802.xx, OS X, iTunes Store and USB 2 around back then. Today it’s a whole new ball game! This one will be a winner.
I always thought Apple should design a cable box. Whether cable or satellite, TV is only going to become more interactive and require a better box. The maker would have to be partnered with the content provider for decryption purposes. The current boxes supplied by the cable companies are slow and the GUI is terrible. There is a market here.
Steve Jobs wasn’t even with Apple in 1995.
I would like to propose not to hold back until you earn enough money to buy all you need! You can take the home loans or auto loan and feel free
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