Apple has talked with cable companies about 'new TV product,' but launch not imminent - Page 3

I don't buy that argument, one of the first companies to build a 7" tablet was Samsung, surely they would be able to provide themselves with 10" screens. Again I don't think "me too" products are a bad thing especially when the newer product is that much better than its predecessor.

Then we're working from different ideas of "me too". I take a "me too" as offering something that doesn't really add anything to the market other than another SKU.

When was the last time a product was introduced as "It's exactly like our competitors product"? Most "me too" products are an improvement on a competing product even if just a slight one. Amazon "me too'd" the Samsung Tab 7 and has beaten them on sales then there's all the crappy 7" tablets that only offer a lower price point.

I don't see the Kindle Fire HD being a technological improvement over the other 7" Android-based tablets. It's success is mostly geared around its price point. The only caveat would be the Amazon integration.

The Nexus 7 is nothing that any other Android-based vendor could create.

The MS Surface is not an example of a "me too" product because it's trying to do something unique on many levels. From changes in Windows 8, to the HW, to the accessories it's trying to capture a segment of the tech market in a different way.

I think the Surface is going to fail and the Kindle Fire is a success but those do not define if a product is "me too" or not.

The difference doesn't have to be technological. The lure for the Nexus 7 is of course the pure Android experience and it's a device that will always get the latest version of Android first, a vendor can build a device as good as the Nexus 7 but will always be behind in the OS. While MS isn't a "me too" in hardware, they changed their previous ideas of the type of software to put on a tablet, so it's not as obvious but nonetheless a "me too" product. I mean seriously if the iPad didnt exist would the MS Surface exist and would MS 8 look anything like it does? MS had a big lead on Apple in the smartphone department or at least the OS side of it and they left Windows CE stagnant for many years. They rested on their laurels and got left behind in the dust. While the latest Windows phones look intriguing I fear they'll get few defectors from Android and fewer yet from Apple.

You're conflating cause and effect in the market with "me too" products. The former builds off previous market successes with new and unique market innovations whilst the latter is a way to quickly dump something onto the market to gain a foothold and/or turn a quick profit. The MS Surface, for all its faults is not a "me too" unless you want to call it "Windows ME 2.0"... then I'd agree.

Apple has plenty of room to move they could set it on top of a tv add FaceTime Camera and mice. Upgrade it to a full iOS, upgrade processors and stuff( or keep same os). Add $50 or less.

Add a screen everything else, thunderbolt and USB ports. Add higher resolution than other TV's. Better speakers. Add apps and nearly haft to have IOS. At a price at $1000 to $2000 to the price.
Or keep it the same as it is with minor upgrades

I see apple to option for the top box or the full tv. The top box is most needed features but Apple could do both( or all 3) with current one half price with the upgrades.

My friend who bought a coupe Kindle Fires for her kids told me today that the devices are starting act up and not working right. I'm not sure what that means but apparently they are not as high quality as expected. She and her husband have a lot of Apple products, even more than we have but they just bought the Kindles as disposable tablets for their very young children. Looks like they will be disposed sooner than expected. She really wants an iPad mini although she already has an iPad 3 primarily because it will fit in her purse.

I've recently heard the same thing from a Kindle owner. They have their pros and cons with that curated environment. If the iPad is to the internet as the Kindle Fire is to AOL. It has its purpose and i think there is a market for that type of user for the time being (several years) but I wonder if how they making the OS is sustainable when most (if not all) of their services are available on competing devices.

 

Its sole purpose seems to be abuse by DaHarder.

 

The idea of wanting a television set from Apple certainly seems to be, yes.

 

… Am I old for still calling it a "television set"? How long has it been since "set" was appended?

You forgot about the 4 races:
White, Black, Mexican, and Chinese


The problem with MLB.tv or any major sport is the blocking of local teams. I would've cancelled cable- but FSSW has the rangers contract and MLB blocks them out as I live in Dallas. So unless you live away from the team you like- its pretty much useless.
Ideally, at least for me, they team up with ATT or Verizon fios and make the UI for the cable box. Att can charge a fee- like they do with their current boxes, and apple can take a cut of their movie rentals through iTunes. Win-win-win.

I think a lot of people are over thinking Apple's moves. If they advance successfully, more power to them. If not, there are other products and companies to choose from. I don't think the 'new' Apple is like the 'old' 'new' Apple - when Steve first left. That Apple didn't care about Steve's way of thinking. Now, after going through bankruptcy, the 'new' 'new' Apple appreciates Steve's contributions. And Steve himself groomed Apple for this moment. He may have given 20 years of guidance and then some. If some people on this board were told 'Steve said to make the iPad mini'. Then they'd say it's the best product ever. If they were told 'Steve wasn't involved in the iPad mini', they'd say it's the beginning of Apple's decline. The fact of the matter is, you don't know what Steve said, so assume it's all good.

 

No, that's called under-thinking. What's the point of even following Apple if you don't care at all what happens?

 

We know exactly what Steve said. He said it publicly.

Huh? Your post makes little sense. As far as resolution goes it doesn't matter how good it is because content is transmitted no higher than 1080i.

Get a digital tuner if your TV doesn't have one and catch the OTA broadcast of the Rangers games.

Hardware is the least of what Apple will bring to the game. Considering the price range where Apple would likely compete, they will have a hard time out-designing some of the svelte designs Samsung and others been pumping out. And let's face it, all they would really ad is a FaceTime camera, something they could easily add to an ATV box for use with any TV.

So software and content is what Apple will bring to the TV to revolutionize it, the same thing they have brought to every piece of hardware they introduce. And the software is easy, but we won't see what Apple has in mind until they have the content in place, because they don't want to tip their hand to the competition. And the content will not come easily. Granted the TV business is headed down the same path as the record company found itself in when Jobs was able to leverage the iTunes deal, but it's not there yet. The complicated and lucrative sports deals will be the most difficult to close.

But apple can't sit around while other companies saturate the market for this technology. What has become abundantly clear is that Apple has become primarily a media company, not a computer company. And if Apple is too late to the game with a TV product, they will lose the "prize" they have been working so hard to attain with iTunes, but if they strike too early they risk giving their competition who have a significant head start in this area an edge they need to dominate.

Perhaps they can have digital licenses that get installed on the client. The content wouldn't necessarily need to be DRM encrypted that way.

Then you can buy licenses for content streams from a single source. Without the license, the stream won't start. These licenses can then be synced between devices and they'd also be stored in a central online account. You wouldn't have to login as long as you had a license installed and installing can send the device ID with it.

Given that subscriptions are more affordable, you'd subscribe to license bundles - not necessarily a bundle of licenses but a license for multiple streams. This can be paid directly to the content provider.

Then you just install it on the devices, point the browser to the stream (HTTP Live Stream?) and it uploads your license for validation. If it checks out, the stream starts. The stream itself can come from any host.

It would be flexible enough for pay-per-view and subscriptions. People couldn't hack the licenses are they are uploaded to the provider for verification against the payment and device ID. If a license is found to be used on too many devices, it can be invalidated and if the licenses link to different bill payers, they can be too.

I disagree, there's no Napster to facilitate the theft of TV shows. Apple is falling behind more and more with each passing day, why would I pay $. 99 for a show that's free in On Demand or on Hulu? Amazon adds more and more free shows and movies for their Prime members. I am curious to see what Apple can do but excuse me for not believing it's going to be better than what I already have.

It's fox sports southwest. Only ~20 games are OTA unfortunately.
Really? The forum has to relive out this tired argument? Ok- you don't like the iPhone name- yet every post for a month you tried to shoehorn it into a thread. Ok- you don't like the iPad mini- no need to shoehorn it into every thread for the next month too... This is about Apple TV
Can't you moderate yourself as we'll as you moderate others?

Well that's ~20 less games you have to worry about. Although I wholeheartedly agree with Tallest Skil but I don't share his passion. It takes a lot less work to just agree with him than to argue.

I m
I meant for there apps and things would run it. Probably call it a extended retina for extended distance. Instead of 20" it be 20 feet retina graphics. They would do it like there iPad or retina macs. In that case not saying more than 100 pixels per inch and it play video at that.

Plus the tv be less than 10 mm thick so (worlds thinnest). Plus apple might have it require Internet and TV from cable providers with -$5. Then make a remote with a just a button, hold it and Siri. Also Ir for wii like pointing, and duh a microphone if not a nything else. Then IOS and Mac have it with full remote. This is all could be Apple exclusive.

Hahaha! That is too funny!

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Is the word 'condescending' appropriate to label Gazoobee's line here?

Actually they did redefine it. With the iPad mini you get the full iPad experience (as in tablet-optimized apps) in a smaller / lighter package. The other small tablets are just running stretched smartphone apps.

Of course they didn't. They tried 20 sizes. From the bio:

"The process began with Jobs and Ive figuring out the right screen size. They had twenty models made—all rounded rectangles, of course—in slightly varying sizes and aspect ratios. Ive laid them out on a table in the design studio, and in the afternoon they would lift the velvet cloth hiding them and play with them. “That’s how we nailed what the screen size was,” Ive said.
As usual Jobs pushed for the purest possible simplicity. That required determining what was the core essence of the device. The answer: the display screen. So the guiding principle was that everything they did had to defer to the screen. “How do we get out of the way so there aren’t a ton of features and buttons that distract from the display?” Ive asked. At every step, Jobs pushed to remove and simplify.
At one point Jobs looked at the model and was slightly dissatisfied. It didn’t feel casual and friendly enough, so that you would naturally scoop it up and whisk it away. Ive put his finger, so to speak, on the problem: They needed to signal that you could grab it with one hand, on impulse. The bottom of the edge needed to be slightly rounded, so that you’d feel comfortable just scooping it up rather than lifting it carefully. That meant engineering had to design the necessary connection ports and buttons in a simple lip that was thin enough to wash away gently underneath."

In some ways, I think you have a point, but the reason to talk to the cable channels/networks is they own a lot of the content, but they're not going to let go and leave the hegemony.

It may be just as well, because even the best shows are getting annoying. I doubt there is 15 minutes of unduplicated footage and narration in a half hour. The ads are annoying and the recaps after every ad break get annoying too. Even with a PVR it gets tedious. My PVR Dish has a UI that looks and operates just as poorly as a unit made ten years ago too, the UI would be identical if the PVR feature wasn't there.

 

Er, no… It's not the full experience. Something has to give.

 

It's a sad state of affairs, in both content and UX. And Apple can only fix the latter. 

sorry bud, we know what he "publicly said". Which has no bearing on the reality of the situation. Nobody will ever know what his true thoughts/sayings/visions were. Case in point, he had said publicly that they would not do a small ipad, yet here we are. Gotta love speculation on this site... fun stuff. but again no bearing on reality. 

I think they said they wouldn't do a 7" iPad because that's too small for a tablet, and I tend to agree with that. The iPad mini has the area equivalent to larger than an 8" 16:9 tablet. I think iPad mini fits a goldilocks zone for a lot of people.

Apple does seem to dismiss things before going into said market, but a lot of the times, they do air valid concerns that needed to be addressed, which they generally do address them when they enter the market with their own interpretation of the idea.

I dunno. Steve said he had cracked the code so to speak with regards to tv. The cable/networks etc... do not necessarily own the content but are issued mechanical license for broadcast from the owners of the publishing, similar deal to the music industry. My thought is he was working the publishing angle to get the content turning the telcos and cable cos into what they really are, just dumb pipes. He was the only one in hollywood with enough "juice" to pull this off. As someone who was in the entertainment biz for over 25 years, from my perspective it was and always has been about the publishing. But like everyone else, just MHO.

1) So he's made comments in public that were recorded but you claim these are not "true sayings" despite proof that he made these comments? WTF?

2) He never said Apple would not make a smaller tablet.

I would agree with the goldilocks remark. but i would counter that the mini is not a "tablet" per se. an old saying comes to mind, mobility IS nobility.  

Jobs stated the current 7" tablets would fail... and he was right. The iPad mini has about 40% more display area than 7" tablets which makes it considerably more useful than those tablets. Portability is somewhat less in you are trying to put into a pocket since it's wider but it's also considerably lighter and thinner than those 7" tablets which has its own benefits.

Not a tablet? Further down the rabbit hole we go...

sorry man, to clarify...

1.) public comments are just that, so much smoke. 

2.) see #1

 

c'mon now Soli, you of all people here should realize that it is all part of dis/mis information. the Apple style. Claim you would never do it, take your time, do it right, then amaze the world.

well, I guess I could have said it better. The original concept of what we call a tablet was based off a laptop (modbook etc...). the 10" ipad changed that view. I would say that the mini (even though a full on pad/tablet whatever) while giving us that kind of power, while fitting in one hand does not "feel" like a tablet. Don't hate, just waiting on mine! ;)

I really don't see any need to disavow the term, it simply changed. Your argument would be like saying iPhone really isn't a phone because it's not anything like one of those Bakelite rotary dial devices from decades ago, the idea had gradually taken on a broader and different meaning.

I would argue that the working meaning of what a tablet changed the day Apple announced the iPad. The market share of hybrid/convertible computer tablets was decimated as a result, those devices never really fit the futuristic vision of what a tablet would become.

I would not go so far as to say disavow, but I agree in that it changed. As to the phone, from my perspective/use I could argue that it's really not a phone but a pocket mac that makes phone calls. The utility it provides takes it way past the ole bake-o-lite rotary phones (think i have one somewhere), but that is just splitting hairs. 

 

no need to argue the second point. I would concur that the definition of tablet changed with the introduction of iPad. However my remark was about the feel of the device not the "form or function".

 

Like that tragic iPad Mini debacle.  /s

Have they really failed? While they not selling as well as iPads they are being purchased in decent amounts.

I'd go along with you on the new definition of tablet, but I'd say that the new mini palm device is the real Pad, and the old 10-incher is the Tablet.

Anyway, holding the computer in one hand—one you can read on— is a fundamentally new experience, and should be recognized as a separate device category. If the medium is the message, the package is the experience.
Edited by Flaneur - 11/18/12 at 12:05pm