“The narrative seems to have shifted in the interactive television market. For years consumers and tech writers (myself included) have been obsessed with the day that Apple will release its iTV,” Anthony Wing Kosner writes for Forbes. “But what if that day will never come? What if the fact that Steve Jobs cracked something turns out to have not been enough to enable Apple to deliver the kind of product consumers expect from the company?”
“The latest shift among Apple watchers towards obsession with a possible iWatch, which may or may not have been stimulated by Apple itself, could signal this very scenario,” Kosner writes. “Far from Apple’s delays with releasing an actual TV (and continuing to ‘pull the string’ on the AppleTV puck) giving Samsung a chance to catch up—Apple has not succeeded in keeping Samsung from pulling away into high orbit. And pulling away it is.”
Kosner writes, “At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year and then at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Samsung introduced products that are getting awfully close to the kind of all-in-one solution that we have been expecting from Apple. ”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: One not-so-minor issue: You do not know what to expect of Apple. Nobody outside of Apple does.
Apple delivers the type of products that people did not even know they wanted until they were unveiled.
A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them. – Steve Jobs, May 25, 1998
Once unveiled, the lines begin forming outside stores and the ethics-free rivals such as Samsung start working on knockoffs.
Whatever Anthony Wing Kosner or anyone else thinks will be the most important must-have feature of “Apple iTV,” odds are that it won’t even matter at all.
Any writer obsessed with when a company will release a new product is totally off his rocker. I’m not a writer but dies my one know when the heck Apple will release the iPhone 5s!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’
Does anyone understand why anyone would want a TV that will spy on them too?? (Like everything else we own?) I guess I’m just too old to get it.
Has any one here used a Samsung smart tv? My brother has one and they suck. Super clunky interface and slow. I think it’s all about the second screen
Yes I have one and they suck hard core. There slow buggy and hav an extremely poor interface. Besides the fact that 90% of people with a home entertainment center use there tv’s as just a monitor and not the center of there home entertainment system
Maybe, JUST maybe, Apple WANTS Samsung to release thier Updated TV before the release of any new device from Apple is debuted. Why? Because we all know the copy machines will once again be revved up. I sense Apple wants to have Samscum show thier hand first. Once a Samscum product is released and has flaws Apple will play to that weakness for once. Contrary to ANALists belief Apple still has time to drop a doozy on Samscum.
I think this could be the trap that is being set for Samsung.
Samsung will release their idea of what iTV might be and then when Apple announces their product, Apple will be able to say that is what “smart’ televisions have been like so far and this is what truly smart TVs should be like. Then the world will be able to see how Samsung abruptly changes course and starts copying again.
Possible. Apple TV (2nd coming) could be huge. It could be a new cornerstone of Apple, no longer a project. Full of content. Integrated as hell. Super simple. Gorgeous.
Maybe Apple is just fighting to get that killer content feature. The “Oh, and BTW it has everything from HBO” feature or whatever.
And Samsung will be left with some sloppy boxee thing stuck inside a huge TV.
all the things leading up to what TV will be have nothing to do with what TV is today. It all is inching towards more of an iTunes type future. Its really nuts how the TV networks clamp down on streaming on their live TV. It doesn’t take a genius to see TV as we know it and the Internet being one and the same thing.
Last I checked, Samsung is a manufacturing company. Troweling features onto a TV will not improve margins in a cut-throat market. Further, I seriously doubt Samsung can both aggregate content and provide an intuitive and seamless delivery mechanism so that avenue is closed to them, too.
In short, Kosner has neither defined a market need nor articulated a breakthrough TV technology that Samsung could exploit that would launch them into even low-earth orbit.
Like inventing a double-ended remote control (TV Clicker). Whatever end you point at the TV, it still works! Wow, just Wow, right?
More like even leaving the ground. I have a smart tv and there the worst inerface available and slow. They should be named dumb tv
Apple is not above scamming competitors by hinting about TVs to throw them off, when in fact Apple is developing something else entirely different.
Apple is anything but dumb. Selling large area LCD screens is not profitable guys! It is pure commodity pricing and the shipping bulk is VERY high (& many sizes).
Think Real (to coin a phrase).
Hmm. I seem to recall articles posted here very recently (although MDN didn’t include them as related articles) about how all Apple would have to do is release a SDK for TV and devs would have games and other content available so fast it would blow the smoke back up an analyst’s anal orifice.
Apple’s television is not about the screen, its the content access and delivery time that counts. Apple is gathering together content providers and selling ads to STREAM the shows we want when we want them and with well targeted ads to pay for it and / or a simple payment method (credit card) to have it ad free. The old model of channels and TV networks will be dead when Apple introduces the new paradigm.
It’s called cable TV. And we have that now. I don’t believe that your take on this is accurate. Apple is up to something obviously. But they aren’t the only one out there trying. They had better hurry up.
I am not aware of cable TV having targeted personal ads and I wasn’t aware that you could watch what ever program that had been produced whenever you wanted. I still have not found a way to find the content I want easily from cable TV’s ‘great user interface’.
I guess it doesn’t take much to make you happy.
Between on-demand, Netflix and iTunes, yes you can pretty much watch whatever you want whenever you want. As for the ads, personally that’s something I’m not looking forward to. But it sounds like you might. Good luck with that. Your idea is not well thought out or innovative.
I suggested two models to pay for content: one was targeted ads and the other was paid content. iTunes was not and is not that innovative but was and is very disruptive to the music industry. The video industry (TV is dead) needs the same sort of shake up but not through iTunes like interface but more like Apple TV or Netflix.
Live content like news may be an option to have like a series or ‘breaking stories’ that interrupt our viewing if we choose to allow it and may be done by subscription. It could be an icon that appears and is the viewer’s choice to click.
The innovation that Apple can supply is the business dealings with the content producers and aggregators to allow time insensitive distribution and ad insertion. iAd seems to be key for the business model to work and create personalized targeted content.
I agree with you that the issue is content. The new paradigm could be a DBS satellite system, done Apple-style.
Although you could be right, I doubt it. I think that standard terrestrial fibre that already exists is the way it will go.
I would say you hit the nail on the head. When apple does there tv upgrade whatever it is it will be the ecosystem that sets it vastly apart from the rest of the industry trash. Just like iTunes hammers the mobile industry in content an profits.
Will Apple unleash 3D glasses-less viewing upon the world? Roll out iPhones, iPads, and a TV at the same time? AppleTV units could still display 3D on existing sets.
I’d guess we’re still a year or two off but patents lead in this direction.
Differentiates from standard displays and can control pricing via quality and patents.
Will need to convert existing 3D blurays.
Maybe Apple could put a few people to work on a new Mac Pro… I’m still a computer guy when it comes to Apple. TVs and the rest are largely commodity items, and content distributors are everywhere already, so I don’t see that as being Apple’s identity in the future. They shouldn’t lose sight of what got them here, and differentiates them from the Samsungs, Sonys, Sharps, HPs, Dells, LG (Lucky Goldstars,) of this world… Their OS and user experiences. It’s not just the walled garden that works… it’s the brilliantly imagined user interfaces where simpler is more…
I don’t really need an Apple branded TV, but I would like my hockey puck to give my TV it’s brains. Let it be about the software, and cut the developers loose with that SDK for AppleTV.
Totally. I think Apple is just burning time to “get it right”. Some feature involving content that is hard to organize. They will have a developer SDK. Maybe they started down the path of content-is-app, and are now reworking things to make it even simpler.
And yes, they need a Mac Pro.
is it possible the Mac Pro will usher in OS 11?
Coming soon this year
IMO Apple should do what everyone making these so-called smart tv’s so far refuses to do. They should sell something that makes watching tv cheaper as well as easier. Let me record like a TiVo without paying a monthly fee … let me store locally without using a cloud connection (which means paying for internet bandwidth) … let me rip my dvd collection so i don’t have to buy all new stuff … basically, if this AppleTv is going to be worth my time & disposable money, which I have less and less of these days, I want it to do the stuff I need it to do not what comcast (or Apple for that matter) want me to pay extra for.
my 2c