Is (new) Apple TV really a television?
Let me preface this with a few bullet points.
- By Apple TV, I mean the new unannounced Apple TV people are talking about. Not the Apple TV puck.
- By television, I mean a conventional television most of us have in our homes.
- Although people are spending more time in front of TVs, even more people are starting to spend more time in front of computers. With the introduction of iPhone and iPad, computers are becoming more mobile and in a few years, people might not be content with being stuck in front of a TV to watch their favorite shows and live events.
- Introduction of iPhone was expected but iPhone—the phone itself—was unexpected. Everyone thought about a phone with an Apple logo on it. It turned out to be an Apple device with an phone app. It was a phone only by name.
- iPhone was a runaway success that changed the landscape of the smartphone industry and the mobile industry at large because it approached the industry with a new paradigm (see last bullet). For Apple to replicate its success and Steve Jobs to declare that he finally “cracked it,” Apple should do the same with TV: challenge and change the paradigm.
So exactly how did Apple challenge and change the paradigm with iPhone? It made phone an app. I think Apple would do the same with TV by making TV an app. More specifically, an app on the iPhone, iPad and Mac. I’m not exactly sure what the app would look like—you could pay to subscribe to a channel or a show, stream live channels or supported by Siri. Perhaps, I’m thinking too conservatively here; I really have no idea what the app would look like.
What I’m confident about is that TV would become an app that we could use anywhere—as long as you’re on an Apple device. Apple—being hardware and software company—would not be content with a dumb television at the mercy of cable companies and therefore, by making TV an app, they would act as a middleman between the users and the content creators, bypassing cable companies completely.
We are hearing rumors of an Apple television set and I’m confident Apple is indeed making a television—in the same vein as Apple TB Display—but that’s probably not their end game. Besides, people don’t buy TVs as often as they buy other consumer gadgets so there’s not too much money in it (unless you manufacture panels). Also, most people wouldn’t dish out a lot of money to replace their current television with Apple’s. However, with the Apple TV app, Apple would solve the first problem and the latter problem with a model similar to current Apple TV.
Of course, I could be totally wrong. The bandwidth to support millions of channels is tremendous among many other things that could prevent this from reality. But knowing what Apple has done in the past, I know damn sure Apple wouldn’t announce just a television set.
