Apple TV Category
The Apple TV – a media extender for bringing iTunes video and music to a widescreen TV
If you believe the old adage that there is no smoke without first then the it’s a case of when rather than if Apple is going to release a television set. New rumors have emerged recently that suggest the product is certainly in the pipeline.
Previous iTV Rumors
It’s been a few years since rumors of an Apple television set began cropping up. The thinking was that Apple would try and do for the television market what it has done for the mobile and computing markets. It would certainly be an obvious next step for the company to take.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson just before his death last year that he had “finally cracked it,” the “it” being the television set and how Apple could disrupt the market. Which suggests something new, innovative, and enough to warrant a high price.
Rumors at the end of last year suggested that Apple was preparing to launch the Apple television set, possibly named iTV, at the end of 2012. That now seems unlikely, but you would have to be very cynical to believe the product doesn’t exist, even if it’s just in prototype form for the time being.
It looks exactly the same, it does pretty much the same things as it did before, and even under the hood little has changed. But we should still be getting excited about the new Apple TV.
It looks as though Apple could have a minor, at least by its standards, hit on its hands with the new Apple TV. Whether the admittedly-impressive early sales figures will continue in the longterm remains to be seen, especially with Google TV on the horizon.
Another day, another big media boss comes out against Apple’s plans to revolutionize online video. And this one really doesn’t look like he’ll be backing down anytime soon. Or ever, for that matter.
