Apple reportedly manufacturing test batch of first smart TVs - Page 2

 

This is dumb.  What possible purpose could putting hundreds of dollars worth of Liquid Metal into the body of the remote have?  

 

The "morphing remote" patent Apple has is to do with the UI not liquid metal.  You make it sound like the device is going to change shape like the robots in the Terminator movies.  And the morphing keyboard is already here for that matter, it's called "the iOS keyboard."

 

27" and 36" are both far too small for a TV set.  Anything below 50" is currently being sold as "small."

 

Point received. And ignored, because you don't seem to understand what Apple's plan is.

The Only Way is Essex, Coronation Street & Emmerdale dominate.

 

This is why Apple should buy ITV and give the money back to the shareholders.

 

Is he joking? I mean, wtflmfaonfwih!

Most input devices for TV are horrible.  Even Apple's remotes are bad.  A remote with a little joystick on it would be more appropriate.  Then you could have the windowing interface similar to desktop computers.  

 

I'd like to have a TV that is Internet connected and that I could program Internet channels into.  They would be like favorites but I could flip through them like TV stations or bring up a guide to find what is playing.  The internet channels would be a separate input from cable channels.  Video and audio Podcasts could fill-in content along with well established site such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Hulu Plus, etc.  It would be a television revolution. 

If they are done right, they can make a profit. It helps drive more iTunes business, it makes the user experience better if they are using iPads, IPhones, etc.  If you had a chance to sell units and make $500 to $1000 net profit per box, you might think differently.  Some models don't make much profit, but some models do.  Yeah, it is kind of hard to make a profit selling a 50 inch TV for $700, but that's not the entire market.  You can make a profit if done properly.

iTV

Don't give up your day job.

They did keep the word Phone though, and it worked.. even though talking is the thing I do the least with my iPhone.
I see what you mean though, I think they're aiming for something so much more. It's probably gonna be TV, facetime, apps and family bulletin board something.
I hope they'll just keep voice recognition out of it and they'll be fine.

 

I think you are wrong on all these points, although I know nothing about Airport Express so I'm not positive about that.  

 

AppleTV is not "crippled" in any sense of the word and AppleTV jailbreakers, at least in Canada get no benefit for their troubles.  The only thing you can put on it is stuff like Boxee which is only available in the USA.  If you want to do anything creative that way, attaching a Mac mini is the way to go.  A jailbroken AppleTV in Canada is useless.  

 

AppleTV works perfectly off of iTunes, so anything you have in iTunes "just works" including adult or illegal content, content ripped from physical media, and torrented content.  Your problem  (revealed by your last statement), is just that you don't like iTunes. 

 

Possibly you are one of those people that just don't like having to import or convert your content, and have oodles of basically ripped off content that you are too lazy to put into iTunes so it will work on the AppleTV.  It's perfectly valid that you don't want to do that, but it has no bearing on whether AppleTV is a good product or not, or whether the vast majority of users aren't completely satisfied with it.  

 

Personally, I love AppleTV although I rarely ever buy or rent content because the prices are far too high and only ever use it for Netflix or my own content from iTunes.  If I had one complaint it would be the fact that even if the prices were more reasonable, you can't actually buy content through the AppleTV at all currently.  I'm pretty sure that with a new "iTV" this restriction will likely be removed or rolled back however.  

 

Ah, but there is also nothing that a $99 box can do that a $2,000 panel with the same circuitry cannot do either though.  :)

 

The point being they are equal solutions with the exception of one of them having an integrated display.  

Technically, the balance (in terms of "what they can do"), is actually in favour of the display because the box has to be connected to something.  

 

It seems to me that it's even if they come out with the integrated TV, it's likely that they would continue to sell the box for those that just want the box.  The people who refuse to give up on old media inputs, cable, X-Boxes and the like will want the box.  The people who are ready to move forward will want the integrated solution. 

 

In my case for instance, I have a giant TV, connected to an AppleTV box and have no other inputs at all.  I get all my content from the Internet. 

The integrated solution would work well for me because it would turn my two remotes and two devices into one.  

 

A $99 box can be bought by me and tens of millions of others. A $2,000 panel won't be.

 

You sound like Michael Dell a bit on that one

 

This is called "shifting the grounds of the debate" (in order to win). Your original argument was obviously about utility and not price. 

[ And wasn't/isn't the same thing said about laptops? A low margin commodity business? Apple seems to be succeeding there when the Dell's and HP's of the world are struggling.

At Apple's annual shareholder meeting Tim Cook said (in reference to a question about coming up with an alternative to Netflix or Hulu): " We get profit from selling devices...our focus is not on making a lot of money in content".

In Q2 Apple recorded $39B in revenue. Of that $2B came from iTunes. They don't break it down so have no way of knowing what the profit margin is but at one point I believe it was pretty much a break even business. Thy can't be making much money off of music and video sales...revenue increases are likely due to the 30% cut they get on app sales. I just can't see how that $99 black box is making them a ton of money in hardware or content. If it was Tim Cook wouldn't refer to it as a "hobby".

And if any company knows how to make a profit where you wouldn't think they could it's Apple. Apple's brand value is huge. They come out with a TV that's a work of art and has an integrated, simplified UI people will buy it.

Ahh but I can always dream.  Would it really be that expensive to have a remote about the size of an iPhone covered in a thin layer of liquid metal?

 

Fine. 
 

You can't take your $2,000 panel to your friend's house when you want to show him stuff on your iDevices. The $2,000 panel doesn't let me choose display quality. The $2,000 panel creates physical waste with which you have to deal, and waste with which technology reclamation centers have to deal. You say the box is for people that don't want to change their televisions out, but selling both is selling a full solution and a solution and a half. It's like Tesla selling the cars and then becoming a power provider to sell you the electricity. It's unnecessary.

A $99 Apple TV will do that...

Sony's TV business has lost money for eight straight years (last year $2.2 billion).

Sharp lost Y376.08 billion

Panasonic lost Y780 billion

 

Really big opportunity...

It could just be another bubble. I don't know how long it would hold out. TVs tend to be long term purchases. You have somewhat of a misconception on OSX vs. Windows. Windows does release service packs with major updates. They do significantly more within a release like Windows 7 than you would see in changes going from one .x release to another under OSX. As an example, Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion are in many ways cleanup revisions. I actually dislike annual update cycles here, as it takes quite a bit of time for Apple to get out proper bug fixes. It also takes time for software developers to release updates for full compliance under a new OS revision. I do hope that this doesn't lead to a lack of a stable current OS. 

Right now you pay more than that for a song on itunes. Why would they set the price so low, then hand over 30% of that tiny profit to Apple? You would be subsidizing the living hell out of it with advertising, likely to the point where it would become obnoxious. 

 

This would test if people really will buy anything with an Apple sticker unless they're able to add something more than that to it. Some of this stuff is just unimaginative. There are many TVs with nice unobtrusive designs. Smaller ones can easily be wall mounted. As for the display panel engineering, this hasn't been Apple's strong point in the past. 

 

???

hasn't apple's motto always been if they can't improve on something they won't do it? I'm excited to see what they do in the TV space. Whenever I think they can't surprise or wow me they do.

 

Any DRM is because the content creators demand it and Apple doesn't yet have leverage to say no. 

 

As for the Apple TV comment I don't know you expected it to do but it works just fine at the tasks it was created for without jail breaking. 

 

And we may find that you are wrong about how it must be 'free from iTunes' to be successful. Well so long as 'successful' doesn't mean that it does what you want it to, how you want it to. Then it will be a failure. 

 

That's a tad low but yes they could probably knock a $1 off each range of ep prices and still do just fine. Other things they could do that would help sales are get things out in all markets after first OTA and none of this making us wait until 60 days after the DVDs are out that HBO etc loves to do. And they wonder why their shows are the top tormented. Also, get all shows at least in 720p if not 1080p. Get subtitles and languages added at all and certainly sooner. Especially CC and Visual impairment audio.

 

More features adding during the season wouldn't be bad either. Some of us buy off iTunes because we don't want the clutter of disks but we still want to see the behind the scenes etc. The Avatar re-release was a nice one for features. More movies and even TV shows need to follow that kind of idea. And either make iTunes Extras work on the Apple TV and iPad, make some system where if you bought the movie or got a digital copy those in app things like Warner Bros has done show the title as bought, or both. And make those apps work on the Apple TV. 

 

But that's why you have an iPad. The new ones will allow you to just swipe things back and forth. Very sci-fi awesome. You'll just swipe what you want off your panel to your iPad, go to your friends and swipe it up to his panel

 

And if he doesn't HAVE the panel… you can't carry yours to his place. You can carry a 0.6 lb. box and power cable.

 

Complain and contribute to the Hunspell project. The project could use all the help and make sure the pathways aren't failing anywhere.

 

If it's a dictionary issue you can update dictionaries yourself: http://www.oxygenxml.com/doc/ug-editor/tasks/add-Hunspell-dictionary.html

 

Then who is going to spend $2000 when they can simply just $99 instead and get the same stuff?

 

1) I think you need a vacation.  :)

 

To go this far, and spout all this nonsense, doubling back on your own statements, making up weird scenarios, etc. just to be "right"  is ... well, more than a little weird.  I see you on here every day posting twice as much as anyone else, and also on two or three other sites, posting, posting, posting, ... all freaking day long.  

 

I mean seriously.  Re-cycling fees and odd scenarios about taking your AppleTV to a friends house is all you got?  Why bother?  

 

"... selling both is selling a full solution and a solution and a half." WTF????

That doesn't even make sense. 

 

As I've already said, obviously the integrated one is a "full solution" and the box alone would be something less than that because you have to buy a TV or monitor to make it work.  Even if I agree that the box is a "full solution" there is no such thing as a "(full) solution and a half."  

 

In any case, you aren't defining what a "solution" is.  Solution to what? For whom? If it's the obvious, which is a "solution for someone's entertainment needs, then obviously both are full solutions for different individuals as I originally said. 

 

This is all meaningless garbage and you used to post some intelligent, insightful stuff.  

 

2) GOTO 1

 

I picture you saying that with that little Ballmer sneer and laugh...

Of course Apple  TV is already doing far better than Google TV , Boxee, etc...

Even though it's been rumored that SJ never liked the "i" next to every new device they sell (i thought i heard that someplace)...I think if this new "thing" is going to communicate with all other iOS and/or OS X devices, I think the "i" has to be there.  I think the reason why the Apple TV didn't have the "i" in it was two-fold...one was that it is just a "hobby", more like a beta iTV.  Second, is because of the British network (iTV) that currently owns the TM on the name.  But i digress...i'm thinking iPanel, but even that doesn't fully describe what (IMO) is will do.  My hopes are that it's like a the digital hub to your home.  iHub doesn't really jive to me.  It could be even an new nomenclature entirely, but I'm thinking the "i" has to be there to tell the lay-people subconsciously that it's part of the iDevices they all know and love.

 

iHome would been just OK if another company didn't already have the TM

iLife would have been great if Apple didn't already have that as a software Suite name.  However, I think they actually almost have dropped that since all new Macs now come with the full iLife suite now.

 

Or, it could be something totally new and different.  by the sounds of the rumors, it could be something that could define a whole new type of computing device, thus changing to a whole new naming strategy altogether.

 

For me, now that I have one of everything Apple (MB, iPhone, iPad, iPod Classic, Apple TV, Airport Extreme) I find that I use my iDevices about 90% of the time and my MB about 10% of the time.  For me, really the only need for the laptop is the digital hub that stores all my data that gets synced to my iDevices...And that's simply because the iDevices have no way of possibly storing everything I own digitally.  Wireless speeds and cost to store Data in iCloud and iTunes Match are just two things that prevents me to from that option. So my hope is that this iPanel (or whatever) is that last bit to convince me that I probably don't need a full computer for my home needs.  I only use my computer to store my itunes, download new stuff, very light word processing and Numbers work that I could do on my iPad, and organize/edit photos.

 

I'm almost thinking that if/when this new thing comes out, it might start the ball rolling for Apple to actually shift the company/consumers almost completely away from computers in general and into a new terrain of the digital home.  I've been waiting for something like a storage hub that talks to every iDevice I own for a while now.  This new device could be it.  But I'm about 50/50 on if that's really what this new thing is.

 

What I'd like it to be is something that replaces both my computer and my TV Entertainment center into a single device that talks to all my other iDevices.  So if my significant other wants to watch TV but I want to do the bills, I can transfer that data to my iPad (as an instant save/sync like in Mountain Lion), pick up the iPad and continue.  Then when the show is over, I can continue working on the TV screen if I so desire.  If i'm watching a show but need to get on the plane in 2 hours, I can instantly transfer the show to my iDevice and watch the rest on the plane.  Of course for it to fit most users, it's going to have to have external jacks for things like a surround sound system and a Blu-Ray and whatever Cable TV you may choose, that has to happen.  I mean, they could start their own service to bypass that, but the rumor mill hasn't shown any sign of that so I'd say it won't have the capability (if ever) for some time.  But, this is all just dreaming now.

Edited by antkm1 - 5/28/12 at 11:03pm

Wow, I do the same thing with my TV. Most content is utter crap anyway. I agree with your second point too.

That isn't a bad point, but I wouldn't assume they're actually doing this. This string of rumors started with the Steve Jobs biography, and there isn't anything credible to suggest it will really happen.

Nice try, but this has come up before. iTV already exists. They own the trademark worldwide, and they're big enough to resist Apple. There are several old articles on this. They didn't use the name, because it was not available or for sale.

Are you saying that Apple should have designed these devices to do something OTHER than what they already do extremely well?  Sure, we'd all like that but they weren't designed for that.  Patience young Jedi.

Aiport Express: a portable router that can be used for transmitting iTunes to external speakers and wireless printing...works exactly as described...brilliantly.

Apple TV: watch TV, movies, podcasts, Radio and others from your TV and watch stuff you already own.  Netflix, Photos, YouTube, etc....works Great!  Wish it had more apps but it's coming; i'd bet on that one;)

So, no fringe for me, unless you're talking about the TV show on Fox, then yes.

 

iTunes could be your service provider if you do the math.  For most cable subscribers, they typically have basic and some digital channels.  Some have HD as well and some premium (I don't).  If you were look at what it costs you annually, then figure out how many shows you watch...then add up how much it would cost you just by using iTunes (then over the Air free broadcast for sports and news programs), I'd almost bet that it would come out pretty close to a wash.  Personally, my Cable bill is about $100/mo.  you do the math.

 

If you want these devices to do something they weren't designed to do, or have different ideas of how they should function, there are plenty of alternative for you to choose from.  Or you could just wait for Apple to do is RIGHT.

 

I think that's the problem these days (meaning over the last 10 years) with consumers...expectations are way too high.  Annual MAJOR updates are getting out of hand.  Even if this iPanel comes out this year, I will probably NOT buy it because I know the 2nd or 3rd editions are going to have way more bang for the buck.

Obviously, you forget to read the next phrase after that in my post?

Try skimming less and reading more, unless you like to quote people out of context?

And at $99 one can buy multiple units and make every TV in the household a "Apple TV "

Here's what Tim Cook said earlier this year about ATV: "always thought there was something there, and that if we kept following our intuition and kept pulling that string, we might find something larger." He also said, that Apple needs "something that could go more main market for [the Apple TV] to be a serious category."

Not sure exactly how to read that but when he was asked about tablet/laptop convergence he was quite clear that Apple isn't going down that path. So sometimes we do get a clear answer from Cook on where they're not going, I would think if they had no plans to build a tv (like they have no plans to build a laptop/tablet hybrid) we'd get an indication of that from Cook. These rumors wouldn't persist if Cook was leading us down another path.

Smartphones?

Tablets?

Mp3 players?

All established markets before Apple. Albeit they were small and some (tablet) were kind of non-existent, but there was a market of them all before Apple.