New cloud-based Apple TV to cost $99, run on iPhone OS 4 - Page 3

No surprise here. Like some others, I had predicted such a move previously.

An ARM-based architecture running the iPhone OS (or hybrid) is the logical step in terms of developing applications, keeping costs down (and Apple's margins high), and providing a pleasant end user experience.

A $99 add-on device is far more easier to implement and distribute than trying to get TV manufacturers to put your technology in their products, plus Apple has total control over the hardware, software, and services. Joe Consumer can use the device on existing televisions; TVs have a much longer service life in respect to consumer electronics.

Agreed. I think, the obvious answer though, is iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad.

Which is why they can price it this cheap. They expect you to own another Apple device.

Ouch.

+1

I was thinking this too.

I think people are forgetting that if the AppleTV is running iPhone OS and it's plugged into your home network that there are all kinds of home automation tasks that become no-brainers. There are already apps in the app store by the major players in the field, and Apple has tons of patents on exactly these kinds of ideas.

This could be waaaay bigger than "GoogleTV" (which won't actually fly very far without content agreements). This could be the same thing, *with* the content agreements, and also home automation and a bunch of other stuff as well. Any vendor of furnaces, stoves, fridges, lighting etc. will jump at the chance to include a network interface and an iPhone app, all of which you will also be able to access remotely from your phone.

IMO this is not just Apple selling you some movies or even some games, this is the beginning of Apple taking over your entire house.

My vision on the service:

There will be a subscription service and it will have ads (iAds) for probably ~$50/month. The most likely reason for no significant storage is probably for reducing any concerns of the content providers about piracy. Apple will distribute iAds over the air give a significant portion of the revenues to the networks and studios. You will be able to interact with the ads through the Apple Remote and you iPhone/iPod. The iDevice can also act as a controller for games but I would be surprised to see a dedicated controller or gamepad that the iPhone is inserted in.

This seems like the potential game changer that everyone was hoping for. Google TV was a joke because it never solved the main problem that everyone wanted; to get rid of the cable box and middleman fees. I think that Apple is willing to make little money on this service or the the box itself so that they can push along the transition to web. Along with the iPad, it seems that Apple has is pushing another low-margin, high-volume product.

Just bought an ATV box. Sometimes it sucks not knowing what is in the pipeline. This new box sounds like it will be awesome.

It all depends on what that streaming content is.

And it depends on how they sell the device. Google TV is not a box. It's an operating system that will sooner or later be on a vast majority of cable boxes out there. The boxes that people rent from the cable/satellite service provider will have Google TV. The TVs people buy will run on the Google TV "OS". Etc. To compete with that, Apple has to start selling their boxes through non-Apple channels like Best Buy or maybe even the Cable/Satellite Cos. themselves.

Other than that, there has to be good content. What's on iTunes at the moment is not sufficient. To make me want to ditch cable, this new service has to offer the convenience of cable. I should be able to get the latest shows at a reasonable price, in high def.

As for the Google TV vs. Apple TV contest. I don't see how they are related yet, other than that they are playing in the same pool. Google TV is basically a search widget and broswer slapped on to existing STBs. Apple TV is supposed to be altogether different box on its own, offering a different service (streamed content from Apple). I fail to see how Google copied anything when the concepts behind each are so different. Google's going after TiVo. Apple is trying to get you to ditch cable and satellite altogether.

I think you're reaching a bit.

100 bucks is like dinner for four at an average restaurant. lots of people spend multiple hundreds of dollars on going to sporting events on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. buying a tshirt and a pair of pants is more expensive than this.

I think people who say Blu-ray is dead don't have it or don't appreciate the awesome picture quality. I own AppleTV but I bought a Blu-ray player because it played my DVD's, the picture and sound was better, I ran out of disk space ripping my DVD's for AppleTV, I didn't want to pay so much for higher internet speed and many movies on Blu-ray are cheaper on Amazon. I think these are some of the things that would prevent most people from moving from disc to downloads.

People keep saying this but where are you going to get your Internet from without cable? Then they say "I'll just drop the TV part and keep the Internet part." Have you called your cable provider to see how much just the internet is without a package? Do you ever watch sports, nightly news, or other live broad casts? So once you drop the TV part, how much are you going to pay? $75 plus the Internet and no live content?

Cable has got you by the nads. At least with phone service you have options. Not so with broadband because DSL ≠ broadband.

It was "free" in that consumers go shopping for a good tv and, because almost all mid and high-end HDTVs now include streaming services, they got the internet capabilities whether they wanted them or not. Of course the cost is accounted for somewhere, but the consumer isn't opting to pay extra for netflix, amazon, or blockbuster streaming in their television; if you pick a tv based on picture quality, you get that stuff to boot because the better tvs just come with it. Likewise for bluray players; most of them include streaming services as a bonus to their main functionality.

Even if and when the $99 device is out you will still be able to sell your ATV's more for then $99. People use them as webservers and other items and those uses will not be devalued by the new A4 based ATV.

If you mean attach an external hard drive directly to AppleTV, I didn't mean that, though it's not a bad idea. I meant that the standard AppleTV supposedly plays media from local computers running iTunes just fine. Dropping the internal hard drive might have been enough to get the price at $199, simplify the product, maybe make it run a bit cooler. Apple has said in the past that $199 was a "magic" price point for iPods, nano and Touch


I think it almost goes without saying that future generations of iPads will be more capable. Apple seems to add features on its own time, not when everyone else thinks they should.

why leak to these guys? the story makes some basic sense. but the writer doesn't seem to be able to think on his own.

ATV already can stream media content from your LAN or iTunes (and YouTube) in "the cloud" to your TV. nothing really new there except a spec bump to 1080p. and btw, there will undoubtedly be an ethernet port too.

the real importance of running the iPad OS on ATV would be putting its amazing apps on your TV screen - that would be something entirely new and remarkable. their display will work fine - there is no scaling issue as the writer suggests to present their 4:3 768p screen image on an HDTV. the real question/issue he misses totally tho is what will be the new UI for such an ATV?

the current ATV remote just won't work with the iPad's OS. so ... does your iPhone/touch/iPad become the remote instead?

very likely. and then a $100 price for this ATV makes sense, because it will really just be an accessory peripheral to one of those mobile Apple products you also have to buy to use it. the cheapest package would be a $200 touch plus a $100 ATV for $300 total. not bad at all. of course Apple really wants to sell you iPads at a significantly higher price.

btw, this would also turn the ATV into a potentially very important new home game console, unified with the mobile iPad platform. hello Nintendo!

I am not sure if anyone remembers the announced $500M? LG TV screen deal sometime last year or 2008, I think. I thought they were finally going to revamp the Apple TV project. But nothing further was reported.

I was not really as enthused that the deal was made with LB, because I did not like their phones; worst experience I had, when I was forced to be given one when my phone broke while I was on trip in Louisiana in 2007. It was dropping calls like every few minutes while I was there. It was embarrasing to those I was talking to,

The LG TV I saw in Best Buy, were cheap but they were not really at par with some of the usual Japanese or even South Korean brands.


Anyway, when Apple rushed the North Carolina facility, I thought they were finally becoming serious with their push to cloud computing, as speculated by the media at the time. Other areas where the facility may be useful for Apple, was the Maps project, especially after they bought the Maps start up company.

I use the Google satellite maps right now, as we are screening facilities and areas around California for a business project. The Bird's Eye view of Bing, I found very useful much more than the satellite view or in conjunction wi the satellite maps. I like to rotate the Bird's Eye view from Bing to get a 360 perspectives of a building. What I also found was that there were more errors in identifying the actual building sometimes when I use the Google maps vs the Bing maps.

The 360 views are useful for prelimary site plans to share with architects, they could be used to prepare concept designs before the actual site visit, especially if the person is abroad. The database for thuse images are enormous.

I hope now that every component is in place. Cloud computing is one area where Apple lags behind other companies.

I hope they go beyond the Apple TV though. This would also apply for all the Apple iPhone OS mobile computing devices -- iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, for now. These devices would be more truly portable if cloud computing comes to Apple.

CGC

Live streaming can be handled on Apple's end. It is not as big of a deal as you're making it out to be. They've already been using the HTTP Live stereaming protocol on Akamai for the iPhone for live events. The main difference now is Apple can serve ads for more revenue to on par with cable and OTA.

$50/month for a subscription service and $75 for broadband would sound like a good price to me. It's about the same as a normal Triple Play subscription package without any premium channels. If you have multiple boxes, it costs more. So does DVR through cable. I live in NY and there is competition going on between different cable companies which will help to keep prices low.

DSL users may be screwed but, if they're living in a region where tat is the only option, they've been getting screwed for awhile now.

I agree. I have 1.5 Mbps DSL which was great for general internet use but was such a pain when I got my AppleTV. And I wasn't going to switch and pay more for faster internet just so I could download movies, especially when I already had Netflix.

h.264 is now getting professional blu ray encodes down to 15 mbps or so. so figure that would give you "blu ray quality" (as if that is some standard).

1/2 that, about 7-8 mbps and you could have some really high quality streaming media.

this sounds good to me, as i just switched from verizon's crappy 3 mbps dsl+ phone for $90 a month to comcast's 20 mbps cable + comcast phone (it was required) for $55 a month - and saved myself $35 per month in the process!! (not an ad, it is just ridiculous how verizon is raping its dsl subscribers) i only switched because the "premium" 3 mbps DSL was set to go up to $119 a month (including phone) as my 12 month discount was up.

Very insightful. And yes, Nintendo should be worried.

Why is he wrong? Apple TV is basically an iTunes portal today and it's not selling spectacularly. He's totally right. If it's just another iTunes portal, it's going to be tough sell even if it's $99.

Say what you will but conventional cable is deady easy to use and consumers like the idea of a flat price for a bunch of channels. Paying for individual shows is not going to have mass market appeal over conventional TV.

If this is running on iPhone OS, would it be possible they could enable a browser on this bad boy?

Hmmm good point I guess... its got a SATA connection and a WIFI cardslot and USB even thi the ATV-OS (stripped down OS X) doesn't utilize it, it works and you can boot from it as any self respecting ATV hacker can attest to...

Yea okay, the ATV has more utility given the proper retrofitting of the boot drive.

Right, because Apple never gets sued for violating patents.

Earlier this week, this site had an article on 2 Apple patents that "borrowed" ideas from other companies: 1) Amazon's Whispersync utilized in the Kindle and 2) Song tagging already available in the Microsoft Zune (think some car stereos have it as well).

Please get off the high horse when it comes to Apple. They are just as apt to borrow/steal another company's idea as Google, Microsoft, etc.

Why would anyone assume it would just be another iTunes portal though? Would Apple really miss an opportunity to include an App Store? And what of the rumored iTunes subscription service?

I live in a Country that gets me 1000Mbps FTTH for less then $30.
So yes, Local Streaming of Blu-Ray will work here.

I don't know about US though...... 3Mbps just simply wont do 1080P. ( At least in Decent quality )

That would be nice.


Content will come if you have the user base to make it attractive to do so...with millions of iPhone and iPad eyeballs an TV based on the same ecosystem will get content anyway...sales will be more dependent on what else it can do besides show content.

I have BD and Dish. That pretty much covers my media needs well without much hassle or even cost. I don't really need or want internet streaming in yet another device.

But a $99 TV that can also play my scads of iPhone/iPad games at 720p on my HDTV? Yeah, I'd buy that even if it required me to have an iPhone/iPod Touch or iPad as a controller for many of the titles...since I already have one anyway.

Personally, I think $99 is a bit of a stretch given the Nano is $149 for 8GB. $149 for what is essentially an iPod Touch without screen sounds more likely.

I am not saying he's right. Just that his point is not wrong. It may not be another iTunes portal (or at least we all hope it won't be). But if it is, then Cory Bauer may not be wrong. Who's going to buy a box that won't let them get rid of their cable box?

That's the thing. For Apple to add any value in this game they have to deliver both a device and a service that let's you ditch your existing setup.

Google on the other hand is taking an incremental approach. They are bringing the internet to the TV. You still have the cable companies however. And over time, they'll probably help the cable cos. to migrate to IPTV and use Google TV spec'd boxes to deliver something akin to an iTunes streaming type of service.

Unless Apple plans on selling boxes through the telcos and imitating Google's approach, they have to go for broke and simply cut out the Cable/Satellite Cos. (for TV anyway). They've got about 2 years to do it, before the Google TV OS starts becoming standard across all the box makers and TiVo starts being replaced by Google TV boxes bought at Best Buy or rented from the local cable/satellite co.

Perhaps you'd like to ignore the illegal Google Books program? And Schmidt's seat on Apple's board, where he obviously had direct, insider access to Apple plans? It's entirely relevant to bring these issues up as they represent a corporate disregard for right and wrong orders of magnitude more serious than the "patent squabbles" most companies get involved in. Just because it's uncomfortable to hear doesn't mean it shouldn't be said, nor is it "BS". (And we haven't even touched on any of Google's other illegal activities.)

I'm saying he *may* be wrong, because 100 bucks is basically nothing nowadays relative to the intended market.

Apple doesn't keep products on sale that lose money or don't make money and they haven't ever broken out AppleTV sales, so all the stuff you hear about how "unpopular" AppleTV is really just wild speculation. Everyone I know that has an AppleTV and everyone I have ever seen post about it here or on any other forum enjoys it, and finds it both useful and a "good deal."

Despite the often heard "tech wisdom" from those that don't even own one that they "suck," you don't see hordes of folks who bought them, posting to forums about how crappy they are or anything like that. Mostly it's like the MacBook Air in that all those that don't own one, make fun of them, forcing the people who actually bought one, to come to the forum to defend them. People generally like MacBook Air's and AppleTV's. Customer satisfaction is quite high on the products. The tech blogs are just filled with folks that give them unrealistic slanted reviews based on nothing more than smugness and some kind of misguided tech elitism.

If the next model does nothing more than reduce the price to a hundred bucks then it will be one third the price of the current model. Changing nothing and reducing the price by 60% is not a "tough sell" by any stretch of the imagination.

Anything they *add* to the feature set on top of that is gravy.

Yes, I have a Wii and frankly it's gathering dust except when we have parties. I'm more likely to buy 5 $4.99-$9.99 games for my iPhone before I pony up $50 for a Wii title...

This doesn't make sense. iPhone OS is designed for a touchscreen, TVs are clearly not touchscreens. I call bullshit.

not if google v. viacom is any indication. a guaranteed $500 million couldn't buy google/youtube the content it wanted.

content owners are *very* wary of Apple at the moment, and have been since the inception of the iTunes Music Store.

Another way to look at it is that iPhone OS is simply a slimmed down version of Mac OS X, designed to run on ARM processors. The UI/event layer (i.e., CocoaTouch) is easily replaceable with another.

What's interesting though is that in many places where FTTH or some similar service is being rolled out (say FTTC), cable cos are bundling TV with internet to subscribe to the service. In Canada, Bell has started rolling out its Bell Entertainment Service, an IPTV service. It's a cable service which comes with internet. You can't get just internet without cable. If that's the case, Apple has to either cut a deal with cable cos. to sell its box through them or watch as companies like Bell slowly migrate to Google TV boxes as they look for boxes with a better UI.

http://entertainment.bell.ca/en/package.html

Keep in mind that cable cos. aren't going to simply let Apple make them irrelevant (and kill half their business) in one go.

The point of that thread is there are a handful of software-based limitations of the iPad that severely limit its potential market; how well its currently selling within its limited market is rather irrelevant, as eventually sales will level off unless Apple addresses said software limitations. Multitasking is on the way, and like you said printing will probably come too.

Comcast, the largest cable provider in the US, allows internet w/o tv. actually, you need to get at least two of their three services - phone, internet and television. i have phone and internet for $55 a month. and an antenna on my roof for free HD tv.

Omg, finally. I will use apps like Airvideo which can stream about any file format from my netdrives, so you will be able to bypass itunes and its strict file format.

And Iphone OS means its also a game console, an internet browser and the possibility to subscribe from something else than itunes.

99$, sold big time, for all my TVs

Sure. Everybody that has one at the moment is happy. I am sure they are. It's an Apple product after all. However, that does not necessarily translate into mass appeal, which is what I think Corey was getting at. The current Apple TV is great but hardly a resounding sales success for Apple (hence why they call it a "hobby"). Nobody has disputed the quality of the current platform itself. He never said, "Apple TV sucks." He merely said that if it remains an iTunes portal, it won't sell well, even if it's $100. And really, is it that hard to comprehend this point?

You may like iTunes. But let's face it, the vast, vast majority of people out there aren't going to give up their cable box for an iTunes solution unless its as easy to use, as easy to understand (pricing structure wise), and can access the same content, in the same timely manner as a cable box.

Oh ok, forgot about the plan. Out of curiosity, if you wanted to buy an iPone 3Gs at Walmart to use as an iPod (just for example) what would they charge, i.e. without a plan?

I think you are right about Apple being able to make a stripped down one for retailing at $99. They also get a scaling up of the use of the same components which no doubts reduces costs across the board.

Same in Canada. But that's not for services like BES where they are installing fibre. That's my point. You can Bell ExpressVu which is satellite or Rogers cable and not subscribe to Bell DSL or Rogers cable internet. However, when it comes to services like fibre they seem to be going to an all or nothing package. You want the speeds that come with fibre? Then you get the IPTV service too.

Is Comcast fibre or is it just conventional satellite/cable?