“Rather, look for CEO Steve Jobs to focus on the ability for customers to watch their favorite TV shows and movies on their iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches, says a person familiar with the plan,” Burrows reports. “The company will announce that customers can rent many TV shows for 99 cents—the same low-enough price that convinced millions of people to buy iPods to play songs purchased from iTunes (Also, thousands of 99-cent iPhone apps helped make the iPhone a hit, by making it popular for mobile gaming and other things). And Jobs will also show off a new iPod Touch that features a high-resolution screen like the one in the iPhone 4. That’s important, because the company can now say that all of its products are capable of near-HD quality video. Rent a TV show once, and you’d be able to enjoy it on your iPhone during the morning commute, on your PC during a lunchbreak, or on your iPad after dinner.”
Burrows reports, “Making Apple TV the tail on Apple’s video strategy makes sense. Kaufman Brothers analyst Shaw Wu estimates that Apple has sold fewer than three million Apple TVs since the product was introduced three years ago. Even with the refresh, Jobs isn’t convinced the new version will be a mainstream hit, says the person familiar with Apple’s plans. Most consumers aren’t ready to cut the cord to their cable company, or put up with the tech-nastics required to stream content from the iTunes collection on their PC to their living room big-screen TV. In other words, it’s a product that at best will delight some of the “hobbyists” that have always been interested in the product.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If the thing runs iOS and is compatible with the App Store, either with iPhone and/or iPad apps or apps designed expressly for Apple TV, then it will be a success regardless of the TV show price(s) or service(s). Right now, it sounds like whatever the content owners finally allow Apple to do will simply be a footnote.
Mr. Jobs need not be unsure. Name the thing properly (for a change), price it right, and market it as “Apps on your TV” and “Boom!” it’ll be a hit product.
(Obviously, you’ll need an iPod touch or an iPhone or, best option, an iPad to get the most out of your new Apple TV or iTV or whatever they call it.)
I figure it’s a new A4/iOS-based “Apple TV” and iTV is a new app a la iBooks, that lets you get the new TV rentals on any iOS device.
Apps, music, whatever. That’s all nice add-on stuff iTV could/will have.
Until it allows me to stream live content (sports, news, etc…) it’s not going to break the foothold of the cable industry and Jobs knows it.
It can’t be a game changer until the networks let Apple change the game, which will only happen after viewership drops off to record levels via pirating or just not watching… perhaps a combo of both.
Or, Jobs can simply pull the trigger and buy Comcast in a year or so. He’ll then be the owner of roughly 40 networks that will sign onboard Apple’s new direction, and everyone else will need to cave.
I love my Apple TV.
Not enough worthwhile content to warrant Apple’s buying Comcast.
Looks like the movie and TV industry is the one nut Steve can’t crack.
Have to agree with MDNs take here–if Apple can find a way to easily offer good looking HD apps very quickly and have a drop-dead simple control scheme via iPhones, iPod touches, Macs or even cheap Bluetooth controllers.
Aren’t we all forgetting iOS 4 for iPad??
@Steve and Cascadians,
Maybe no content worthwhile, but worth it to strong-arm the studios into giving the people what they really want instead of the bundle of crap we have to buy now. Of course, it would also be a good way to get the FTC crawling all over them.
No, Apple will play the waiting game with the studios just like they did with the music labels and after the studios finally see the handwriting on the wall (that Apple already can see), they’ll come around. I give it about 2-3 years before we can get most of the same content from Apple that we get now from Comcast, DirecTV, etc.
I’d much rather pay Apple $50-60/mo to watch exactly (and only) the programs I want than pay DirecTV $100 for a bunch crap, most of which I have no interest in. I think I watch the same 10-15 channels, and never the other 100 or so.
All the bloggers and writers who say the iTV might be compatible with existing iPhone/iPad apps is an idiot! Obviously the interface is different, so requires different apps specially made for it! Even if you use an iPhone/iPad as remote control, it still needs to be specially adapted to a TV screen which is not touch-enabled, so it’s obvious that existing apps won’t run! Duh!
Jesus, how dumb can some people be. It’s not “apps on your tv,” it’s “GAMES on your tv.”
iTunes cloud + A4 iDevice + Bluetooth + HDTV = iTV!
ed malloy,
Games are just a subset of Apps. I see Apple commercials showing off the Weather Channel app, FaceTime (new iSight camera, sold seperately), Stocks, etc. on a 60″ screen that the whole family can enjoy.
I’ll stick with the net and get what I want to watch and ONLY that. EVERYTHING except sports and home improvement stuff pretty much gets posted to alt. there anyway.
> If the thing runs iOS
Speculating that a new Apple TV will “run iOS” makes zero sense to me. The name “iOS” refers to an OS that uses a multi-touch GUI; THAT is the defining characteristic of iOS. Currently, all devices that use iOS are hand-held devices that have a multi-touch capable display. Even the folks who believe iOS will be on Macs understand the a touch screen (with no “pointer” or “cursor”) is an essential design element of iOS.
No matter how radically different, the new Apple TV’s interface is NOT going to involve the user touching the screen, so it is not iOS. It is also NOT going to involve the user having a keyboard and mouse-equivalent, so it is not Mac OS X. Although its internal foundation may be the same as both iOS and Mac OS X, its GUI will be something very different from either iOS or Mac OS X. It will be optimized for a very large 720p screen that is 5 or more feet away from the user, who is leaning back on a couch. There may be “touch” involved in its interface (just as trackpads involve “touch” in Mac OS X), and I hope it has its own app store.
But will I be able to touch or shake my TV to play my iPad games?
Maybe, but what if it came with the Magic Trackpad?
Why not buy one of the satellite distros and sell your own service encrypted with Fairplay and tell the Cable/Telcos to suck it?
Just under $8 Billion buys a nationwide footprint for satellite TV (read broadband data). Change the service to use fairplay encoded .264 video that will play on TV or any iTunes/iPod/iPad.
This bypasses the telcos and kills the bandwidth caps of the ISPs. Commands up could be via wifi (very little data) and content down via satellite (gobs of data). One box to rule them all.
@ “@ken1w”
> Maybe, but what if it came with the Magic Trackpad?
Then, it would not be “iOS.” In order to make a Magic Trackpad useful in this case, there would have to be a “pointer” on the screen to show you what your action on the trackpad is doing. The iOS GUI has NO pointer. That’s what makes it distinctive and brilliant. You don’t point at something on the screen and click a button, you touch it directly and interact with it. THAT is iOS. If you put a pointer on the screen, you might as well use the Mac OS X GUI, which is designed to have a pointer on the screen.
Also, a pointer on the screen that needs to be carefully aimed at something, followed by a click, is an overly complicated interface for a “TV entertainment” device. Apple would never require the user to do something like that, just to make selections. Now, it may have a “tracking” element (it could also be “motion-based” tracking) for use in apps and games, but basic functionality (such as selections and video playback control and volume control) need to be simple, intuitive, and efficient. Using touch just for the sake of using touch is dumb.
Me thinks that there is something cookin’ at the huge secret server farm center back east that has something to do with this…
Nobody seems to know what that warehouse is for & the whole idea of a “hobby” to me is just smoke & mirrors to throw everybody of the path of what is coming…
Jobs is a master showman & visionary that throws the word “magic” around. Magicians are masters of distracting the audience before the “big reveal”.
“Boom” and “Otomatic” (Automatic in Steve-talk)
To address those of you who can’t understand ios on your TV, start with a history lesson.
ATV was introduced as “an iPod for the big screen”. It was designed almost solely to access your iTunes library via your tv.
The new product will be marketed as “an iPad for the big screen”. I think it has to provide all iPhone apps (sans phone function, of course). It should include safari. It must include gaming.
I totally agree the apple remote is inadequate, but I would sell ATV with NO REMOTE! Sell the box for $99 but stipulate that it is useless without purchase of an iDevice to control it! Everyone has one (try several) already, anyway. You’ll mirror the tv screen on your iDevice, where you can multutouch and gyro it, and gps it and speak to it. The netflix and abc and hulu apps can run on your tv. with that feature set, we are talking 6 million boxes sold in US this Xmas (at $99 price point).
@ macerroneous
I question the overall usability of “iDevice as remote control” for a TV media player. It would be cool for controlling some types of apps and games, certainly. But it would be a pain in the butt for “normal” stuff, such as playing video content.
I like having a small number of well-placed physical buttons that I can “feel,” so that I can use the remote control without looking at it. Apple understands this too, because that description IS Apple’s current and previous remote controls (as well as the iPod shuffle before the current one with buttons on the cord). Most “universal” remote controls are annoying, because they have so many buttons that I have to occasionally glance down to see what I’m pressing. And it would be REALLY annoying to “mirror the tv screen on your iDevice” because that means I have to constantly look back and forth (and refocus my eyes) between something that is about five feet away to something that is 12 inches away. It’s a no-go solution…
My requirement for a remote control that comes with an “Apple TV” is that I have to be able to “use it blind.” It can have a tracking surface, or perhaps motion-based tracking, but I need to be able to use those controls without looking at device.
uhhh… netop. AAPL –> $400 duh.
Really love mac but why would I pay .99 cents for free tv show