“When Apple wanted to revolutionize cellphones, it held hands with AT&T. The partners fought endlessly, but the public loved the finished product: the iPhone,” Brian Stelter reports for The New York Times. “Now, as Apple tries to reimagine television, it is taking the partnership route again, collaborating with distributors like Time Warner Cable and programmers like the Walt Disney Company on apps that might eliminate the unpleasant parts of TV watching, like bothersome set-top boxes or clunky remote controls.”
“Apple’s broader strategy — what its chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, recently called its ‘grand vision’ for television — remains shrouded in secrecy, as everything Apple-related tends to be,” Stelter reports. “Some analysts continue to predict, as they have for years, that the company will someday come out with a full-blown television set.”
Stelter reports, “Apple last month turned on HBO and ESPN apps for Apple TV owners, much to the delight of all involved. But those work only for people who have an existing cable or satellite subscription. Coming next is an app from Time Warner Cable, allowing some of the company’s 12 million subscribers to watch live and on-demand shows without a separate set-top box. The app will effectively add an Apple layer on top of the TV screen, providing what its proponents say is a programming guide that is far superior to anything offered by Time Warner.”
MacDailyNews Take: Time Warner Cable’s software is an incomprehensible, unworkable, endlessly maddening, steaming pile of pure shit that would embarrass even Microsoft. Steve Ballmer himself – alone, in half a day – could program an interface that is far superior to anything offered by Time Warner Cable. And he doesn’t even know how to write code. It’s really that bad.
Stelter reports, “Apple could choose to market its box more heavily, especially as competition heats up from Amazon and other companies. Or it could eliminate the need for any box at all by building its own TV set. Reports this week that Apple may acquire PrimeSense, a maker of motion-sensing technology that could be used to control a TV without a physical remote, prompted a new round of guessing.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]