Walter Isaacson is the author of ‘Steve Jobs,’ the best-selling biography published last month.
The New York Times has published an edited version of Nick Bilton’s interview with Isaacson. On question touched on a possible future products from Apple:
Bilton: When he discusses his future, what were the next products he was planning?
Isaacson: He had three things that he wanted to reinvent: the television, textbooks and photography. He really wanted to take these on. I didn’t go into details about these products in the book because it was implicitly Apple’s creations and it’s not fair to the company to reveal these details. But, he did talk about the television. He told me he’d “licked it” and once said, “There’s no reason you should have all these complicated remote controls.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Attribution: MacRumors. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
the remotes would go away if apple allowed people to use bluetooth for something other than talking on the phone or streaming music
Spelling fail prior to end of paragraph. “He told me he licked it”. I’m sure Steve Jobs never licked an apple product
Figure of speech.
Like, “Timex – Takes a Licking and keeps on Ticking”
Contextual comprehension fail…
But when they introduced OS X Quartz, etc., Jobs did say that it looked so great that you almost want to lick it. Or something to that effect.
But was it apple flavoured?
Really, you misunderstood that correct spelling, yet failed to point out the way more obvious “On question touched on a possible future products…”? DOUBLE FAIL YOU ARE THE WEAKEST LINK GOODBYE!
Siri.
Exactly.
Apple will make more money bringing out a 4″ iPhone and 7″ iPod touch than farting around with a TV in which they have absolutely no expertise whatsoever and will be eaten alive by the Japanese and Korean consumer electronics giants.
ahem.. that’s what everyone said about the iPhone too. But you already know that don’t you?
A 7 inch iPod Touch could work because the little children playing games on them already have tiny fingers and thus would not need to file them down
But a 4 inch iPhone—I’d prefer a more petite device than that
Points well made. Perhaps they can make a 4.5″ iPhone for people like me and smaller ones for people like you but I suspect that won’t happen. But a 7″ maxi iPod touch or mini iPad would be very pocketable and handy if I find my iPhone screen a bit too small to view large diagrams on and the iPad a bit too big to lug around everywhere.
“Eaten alive by the Japanese and Korean consumer electronics giants”
Ha, ha, that’s some funny shit. I think that’s been the other way around sense about 2001.
The American Jeopardy Champ will be eaten alive by high school drop outs? LOL!
Here’s a concept: Apple has MORE proven success and expertise in consumer electronics than ANYONE and a TV is, in fact, FOR consumers and made of ELECTRONICS.
I’m sure Steve figured it out but here is my take.
Start with the freak’n cable box. That needs to go, no reasons for it other then control by the cable and satilite companies (one remote gone). Then, integrate Apple TV into the actual TV, maybe. This does create a problem “if” you change TV’s or your TV goes out so I’m not sure Steve would go that direction unless he was absolutely sure the TV would last a long time.
Next, get rid of the TV remote. Done if the Apple TV controls the TV (HDMI/interface). Make the Apple TV RF & WiFi instead of IR so wall’s are not an issue (again easy).
Well, Audio/surround, DVD, BlueRay, VHS (cough, cough), Sony PS, XBox, etc. Not that any of these things will matter in the near future except Audio and maybe the game devics, but all these can be plugged into a Multiport- HDMI bank and be controlled by the Apple TV. Better yet, make that wirelss and leave them in the closet.
There you have it, Apple TV and a TV (any kind) and an Apple remote. All the other shit stays stays in the closet out of site.
I’d buy that.
There should be three kinds of companies with respect to television at this point in our technical abilities:
1. The infrastructure people (this is what cable/telephone companies should become . . . just piping bandwidth into your home and that’s it).
2. Content creators (right now these are networks, but they could just as easily be people who produce movies, television shows, music, etc.)
3. Digital distributors (like Apple, perhaps Google after Apple shows them how).
With this method, the best technology will be developed. Imagine telling Siri: “I want to watch the newest Family Guy.” Or, “Let me know when the Nebraska-Michigan game starts.” Or, “Play Saving Private Ryan.” In each case, Siri will be able to pull from the content creators through the infrastructure companies to deliver what you want.
And how do you pay for it? You can choose. Want it commercial free? Then by default you set up your television to buy these things at $.99 each unless you say, “Play newest Family Guy with commercials.”
For sports, you get the broadcast piped into you so the ads are part of that. Some content would be ad free, some wouldn’t. That’s where the content creators still have control.
And since the infrastructure people no longer have to pay networks for their programming, they can take their revenues and actually improve things like download speed.
Apple should to do away with the network requirement for the eventual (I hope!) ATV3 and/or whatever TV product they end up releasing. All the devices should be able to connected via Bluetooth as well as Wifi and ethernet.
I personally would like to be able to bring the highly-portable ATV to a friends and control it from and iOS device without having a network connection. Please correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think an iPad and ATV2 can do a peer to peer Wifi connection without a network / router in the house.