“Television is an application platform, and all of the cable and satellite companies, all of the TV networks, movie studios and cable channels are just apps. That’s what Steve Jobs ‘cracked’ about TV, claims Jeremy Allaire, founder, Chairman and CEO of Brightcove, in an article published yesterday in The Wall Street Journal’s All Things D,” Anthony Wing Kosner writes for Forbes.
Kosner writes, “Since we know that Apple will need to bring developers on board before the launch of these actual products, it is possible that, despite Tim Cook’s protestations about doubling down on secrecy, Allaire is indeed in possession of some inside information here. The timing would make sense, given that Apple is expected to demo a new version of the Apple TV operating system next week at WWDC. What rings true about Allaire’s predictions, if that’s what they are, is that there are already, in his words, ‘fantastic iOS Apps that take nice advantage of [AirPlay] — Netflix, MLB At Bat, CNN, MSNBC and dozens of other mainstream video sources can be browsed and selected on an iPad and beamed to the TV set.’ And once the app platform is in place, many, many more will follow suit. He imagines that ‘soon potentially tens of millions of HD capable monitors will become a screen for the hundreds of thousands of apps running on devices that are already in your hands.’ That sounds like something that could be rolled out for Christmas.”
Much more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Nailed it!
…except, of course, for the “TV monitor product…”
Sounds like what Microsoft debuted yesterday.
Exactly what they announced yesterday. Microsoft’s smart and they are hedging their bets by supporting iOS devices. If a hundred million iOS users buy an Xbox and those users are using Bing search, I don’t think Microsoft will care that much about their mobile efforts. Like Job’s said, for Apple to win doesn’t mean Microsoft has to lose.
I think it’s much more than simply AirPlay with independent TV apps.
Maybe a kind of Newsstand: containing TV and Movie apps with a common search function
What am I missing here? We can already beam hundreds of thousands of apps to our HDTV’s already today with the iPad and AppleTV.
Actually, Steve Jobs claimed to have cracked the TV interface – not TV in general, which makes his comment about TV being made up of apps moot. I still agree with him, I just don’t think that’s what Steve Jobs meant by his comment in the biography.
I don’t think that’s accurate. If you look at what Jobs said before, that the main problem he saw with TV was the “go to market strategy,” then his comment about cracking the TV was a solution for the go to market strategy.
Exactly.
The problem was the ‘go to market strategy’.
Solution: The App is the Channel!
I was on vacation with the fam not long ago. Had taken pics that day that I wanted to show to the crowd… Only, no ATV there on the screen to AirPlay to.
That was when I realized why a full scale actual AppleTV makes sense. Not just for hotels, but in the office, at the church, at grandma’s, for new college grads. Create a tv that you just plug in and that’s it. No DVD, or DVR, no CD or cable box, or ATV hockey puck and the gnarl of cords accompanying… Just a screen. A gorgeous, beautiful screen, ready to stream, to AirPlay, to screen mirror, to open the Comcast app or NBC app or hulu or whatever.
It just makes sense. “Use the hockey puck if you prefer, but we bet you’ll buy our full-out tv for your next purchase.”
Boom.
I think they have figured out a way to shrink it down to USB memory stick size or there abouts. Just plug it into the USB slot on most HDTVs and then wirelessly stream it from your iOS device to the big screen.
will it have a Bluetooth controller to play call of duty? Because I have got to get rid of this awful ps3. It’s the size of a cat. And it has a noisy fan.
Why do these articles still get so much hype? Because people like us read them over and over, boosting publisher page views as we look for nuggets of Apple secrecy revealed. Problem is that this one, like many others, is shrouded in misconceptions about how TV works. Why would broadcasters and cable networks create apps and risk destroying their healthy cable distribution royalties? They won’t. Unlike the record companies, content owners are enjoying increased distribution fees with the emergence of digital platforms along with the cash cow that is the traditional TV channel business. I would jump at the chance to watch ESPN or TNT as an app on my myriad of Apple devices but there’s not enough upside in it for Disney or Turner. Every cable and Satellite company in the US pays over $5 per subscriber per month to Disney for just ESPN. One channel. No 30% app fee to Apple. No additional delivery costs over IP. That is there business today. Healthy and growing in a traditional method that Grandpa can understand. Apps for the little guys make sense, but for the content we care about it just doesn’t add up.