“Myriad issues have held back the new Apple TV, from complex dealings and integration with established broadcast cable providers to hardware design and supply issues to the necessary evolution of iOS SDKs — but we won’t be kept waiting forever,” Jeremy Allaire, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Brightcove, writes for AllThingsD. “There’s every reason to expect the new product to launch in 2013. When it does, we’re likely to see massive disruption of the broadcast and gaming industries, the rise of an age of TV apps and an even stronger leadership role for Apple in software, media, communications and consumer devices.”
The new Apple TV will be defined by three key values for consumers:
1. The best way to consume broadcast TV and any online video
2. The ultimate game console
3. The best way to experience all of your apps
Apple needs a two-pronged strategy:
1. A new companion device for TV that starts at $149, attaches to nearly any existing TV, and does not require customers to buy an expensive new monitor
2. A new family of ultra-thin TV monitors that bundles all of the capabilities of the companion device and includes beefed up computing power
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Rich Wolfert” for the heads up.]
In case this guy has been in a coma for the past 5 years and has just woken up, the companion device to the TV he speaks of costing $149 is the Apple TV which costs $99.
The rest of his analysis is…bullcrap.
Just a truckload of uninformed, speculative horse-hockey from another pundit whose editorial is nothing more than a dream journal from nap time.
What the author described was more than an Apple TV. It included camera and microphone, but more important was a cable input which implied so ability to decode each cable providers signals and to interact with their associated schedules, security, etc. needed to easily work as a cable box replacement. The camera would support current iOS apps and use A/V for a home security function. However, I would expect Apple to include a controllable zoom and point option for enhanced FaceTime use.
Apple TV… yes but there is a but…. Mac Mini with the right horsepower, Parallels or Fusion and voila! Apple can sell iVaccums to it’s supporters so no doubt that there will be TV sets, and other gadgetry but Apple already gives us lots of options including AirPlay.
The question will be sustainability post the Apple folks buying up the goodies.
Agreed…
The $149 device has to include a camera and microphone so FaceTime/Skype will work. Otherwise, there’s not point…
I meant (of course) “no point”
IF Apple could get extensive access to virtually all content, we might see a ‘massively disruptive’ new product line and ecosystem. Without those deals in place, the current AppleTV is as much as anyone needs.
However, WITH those deals in place (as with the record industry when iTunes arrived on the scene), then MAYBE such a device would be disruptive.
Games are a different story. Apple can offer pass-through of popular gaming consoles, but creating a new game ecosystem (including their own controllers, API’s, etc.) is a real uphill struggle. Touch-based devices won’t cut it.
Brightcove has been WAY behind the curve for years in the OVP and streaming industries. I don’t know why anyone takes them seriously. Their products are laughable at best, and archaic at worst.
This article is just plain silly. No way an iTV has touch screen controls. Do you really want your 7 year old with sticky fingers trying to stretch up to your wall-mounted iTV to change the channel? iPhones and iPads are already tough enough to keep clean, now I have to do almost daily cleaning of my TV?
I think we’ll see very comprehensive gesture controls, with the option to control everything from an iOS device as well. Or the remote may even be an iPod nano-like device. While Siri could be included, it won’t work through the TV directly but instead through the remote to reduce ambient sound or sound from the movie you’re watching (imagine the frustration of trying to get Siri to pause or stop an action movie like The Avengers with all of the explosions, screaming, crashing, grunting, etc. going on).
I posted about the two-pronged approach last week, however it may be a limited attachment for an existing TV while iTV has even more features, plus hardware-based features that AppleTV doesn’t offer. Gaming could gain a new level with gesture control and cameras, as well as iOS devices available as controllers. But gaming won’t be Apple’s focus; it will be a nice addition which happens to fit well with the feature set.
“No way an iTV has touch screen controls.”
Every picture in the article had an iPad being used for the Touch interface.
Content is all crap. Sell your TV. Go outside. Talk tow your neighbors.
…”These three keys from Orient are…”
AppleTV needs a controller to play games/interact with apps. If Apple does not come up with something innovative in this area there will be no use to have apps for it beyond “channel” type apps.
I have a perfectly good controllers in my iPhone, Touch, or iPad.
While you’re waiting around for Apple to do something innovative, grow a brain.
A paradigm shift is imminent.
The whole concept of Television is over. The limited channels, seasonal programming, advertising models, stables of talent, and multi-year contracts is being eschewed for a platform capable of delivering a far superior interactive experience.
As soon as computers began mimicking the television/movie viewing experience in the early Nineties, there has been a force in play to destroy it. The television and movie industry spent the last twenty-five years attacking the computer industry so the nerds have a big fuck you in store for them.
Computer apps will destroy television in a death by a thousand cuts.
I like this point:
2. A new family of ultra-thin TV monitors that bundles all of the capabilities of the companion device and includes beefed up computing power
IOW: Dual purpose displays. Use it as your TV OR use it on your computer / iOS device. The connection will be wireless.
Note that I said it first, despite the fact that it’s bloody obvious. Feed me attention, feed me, feed me. 😉
Oh and of course these dual purpose displays will all have iSight and noise reduction microphones. DUH.
The box, which will cost 199, is not an Apple TV. It’s a Mac nano. You get an Arm powered $200 Mac nano that runs OSX , but not windows. It’ll be called a “computer” rather than an iOS device like the existing Apple TV. That way, the content providers will have to treat it like any other computer. It’s only video out will be an hdmi port. It will have USB ports. It’ll also run flash, if you want. Don’t call it “apple tv”. When you call it “—tv” the content providers immediately block it to extract extra fees.
Instead, you produce a low cost computer with a desktop (non-iOS) interface with “lightning-fast” video streaming that “brings all your favorite free Internet video to your own monitor”. In fact “you can even connect it to your big screen home theater with its built-in hdmi cable or our new Apple refina 60″ TV via thunder port.”
Now, how can apple do that for $199? Abondon intel for ARM, first on this product to be launched this spring. But you can’t call it an Apple TV. “This is the new Mac nano.”
This, IMHO, is how Steve “cracked it”.
I do all of that and more with my current 1st-gen TV.
A Broadcom Crystal HD chip extended my viewing rez to 1080p. All of the video crunching is offloaded to this graphics chip and thanks to the XBMC project I have more channels than I need and an interface that kicks neck.
Your idea sounds good too. But you’d better double your price estimate.