I have this all the time. Recently I had 4 people staying with me and none of them had ever heard of an AppleTV, but when I showed them all the content I had available without having to flick through DVDs or rentals, they were amazed. It was the hit of my house. The AppleTV is truly a great product, and if they upgrade it and make it more like an iOS device, but for the living room, even better.
Why would adding an HDMI port indicate a future plan to sell internet connected TVs?
Because Apple like to buy parts in volume to keep costs down.
By incorporating HDMI ports into more products they can purchase them for less.
This fall Apple will most likely introduce a 4th gen iPod Touch for $299 that mimics the iPhone 4.
The most expensive components of the iPod Touch are the Display, RAM and battery.
An AppleTV based on the iPod Touch would not need a display, battery, multitouch, speaker, accelerometers, etc.
Apple could offer it as a $99 set top box that bring an App Store to your TV.
At $99 they would sell like hotcakes.
It would also serve to reinforce the iOS ecosystem, as certain apps would require an iPod, iPhone or iPad as a controller. I think it could also be a revolutionary gaming platform. It would be very similar to how Scrabble for iPad can use iPods and iPhones as virtual tile racks. It adds a very cool dimension to gaming that Apple's competitors can't.
The current Apple TV has proven that simply delivering media isn't enough. I think Apple should try to leverage the App Store's success and make Apple TV a third "screen size" for iOS apps. Apple was surprised to see that iOS games are becoming extremely popular on iPhone/iPod touch and iPad, so that obviously wasn't part of the plan for the original and current Apple TV.
But to fully leverage iTunes and its App Store, Apple needs to get developers to build yet another class of iOS apps for big screen HDTVs. Doing so could make the next Apple TV a far better value if the price is kept down. Gaming, TV/movie purchase and rental, HTML5 web apps, and general-purpose iOS apps would make Apple TV a great product. (Blu-Ray? PVR features? Forget it - Apple wants you to go through iTunes for everything except YouTube and Hulu.)
I think iAd is another essential ingredient to any future Apple TV success. In fact, I think iAd is designed for Apple TV more than any other Apple product. The first thing I thought when I saw that Nissan Leaf iAd was "The production quality is almost that of a TV ad." So yes, free and paid iPod/iPhone/iPad apps can benefit from iAd. But I would expect iAd's real value to come from replacing both traditional TV ads and web ads on Apple TV content.
Traditional TV ads are time-based. Advertisers buy 30 seconds of time on a network, pay an ad agency to create a commercial, then ask the network to fill the time slot with that ad. It's too easy for viewers to just fast-forward over them. iAds seem to be time-independent. The user can launch the iAd, play around and watch videos, then quit back to the app whenever they want.
Traditional web ads are just plain boring, and users have been conditioned to ignore them. They're hardly more effective than spam email. And Apple is strongly motivated to out-do AdMob and other web ad agencies in the long run. Hardware costs keep going down every year, and it will get harder and harder over the years for Apple to sustain its profits, which come mostly from hardware. At the moment.
iAds could also reduce the retail price of a future Apple TV by subsidizing its cost with ad revenue. The same way that iPhone is subsidized by the various cell carriers around the world.
I have this all the time. Recently I had 4 people staying with me and none of them had ever heard of an AppleTV, but when I showed them all the content I had available without having to flick through DVDs or rentals, they were amazed. It was the hit of my house. The AppleTV is truly a great product, and if they upgrade it and make it more like an iOS device, but for the living room, even better.
For all its faults, limitations and seemingly "left for dead" HW and SW, it's still the best user interface of any media extender appliance I've used.
With iOS, a 1GHz A4 with Imagination GPU and 1080p decoder it will be even better. Add in an SDK and you have a product no one will be able to compete one-on-one and Apple can carve a profitable chunk out the last remaining media holdout.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny Mozzarella
Because Apple like to buy parts in volume to keep costs down.
By incorporating HDMI ports into more products they can purchase them for less.
This fall Apple will most likely introduce a 4th gen iPod Touch for $299 that mimics the iPhone 4.
The most expensive components of the iPod Touch are the Display, RAM and battery.
An AppleTV based on the iPod Touch would not need a display, battery, multitouch, speaker, accelerometers, etc.
Apple could offer it as a $99 set top box that bring an App Store to your TV.
At $99 they would sell like hotcakes.
It would also serve to reinforce the iOS ecosystem, as certain apps would require an iPod, iPhone or iPad as a controller. I think it could also be a revolutionary gaming platform. It would be very similar to how Scrabble for iPad can use iPods and iPhones as virtual tile racks. It adds a very cool dimension to gaming that Apple's competitors can't.
I wholeheartedly disagree with your reasoning aston why Apple will make HDTVs, but I think the other paragrpahs are dead on. I especially love the example of playing Scrabble in the living room using iDevices but displaying the board on the TV. That's excellent imagery and would sell thing faster than you can yell, "Developers! Developers! Developers!"
The iPod was just the natural evolution of the portable music player. Before that, we did have MP3 Players. And i will argue that wasn't really a re-invention either, just the natural evolution of portable music players. All Apple did was market it in such a way to allow the music industry to gain sales back from people who turned to the black market illegal downloads. Ok, 99 cents per song was a brilliant move. The iTunes Store was a great way to sell it, but not a re-invention. It all boils down to the most compelling argument to obtaining (leagally) music. They didn't create a device that psycically transmits the music to our brain or anything that would fundimentally change how we listen to music. We used to listen in the car, at home, in the office, on trips on portable devices. Apple (and many before them) just allowed us to take a greater amount of it with us, on a smaller device. we don't have to plan on bringing the music we like with us becuase is all there, in the size of a deck of cards.
If the evolution was so "natural," somebody else would have done it. It took Apple to put the pieces together in a way which redefined the experience of owning a digital music player. The results speak for themselves. The same goes for the iPhone. It doesn't require science fiction fantasies coming to life to break new ground. The same goes for the iPad. Lots of people around here and elsewhere complained that the iPad was a big yawn because it wasn't Star Trek enough. But that's looking like yet another category redefined by Apple.
So the bigger picture is that total reinventions are not the key to Apple's success. What they've been doing is looking at existing products and rethinking the way they work. They've had three big hits in a row from doing just this. They only look like natural evolutions after the fact. As with any good idea, lots of people slap their foreheads when they first see it, and say, "I could have thought of that!" But they didn't, did they?
If the evolution was so "natural," somebody else would have done it. It took Apple to put the pieces together in a way which redefined the experience of owning a digital music player. The results speak for themselves. The same goes for the iPhone. It doesn't require science fiction fantasies coming to life to break new ground. The same goes for the iPad. Lots of people around here and elsewhere complained that the iPad was a big yawn because it wasn't Star Trek enough. But that's looking like yet another category redefined by Apple.
So the bigger picture is that total reinventions are not the key to Apple's success. What they've been doing is looking at existing products and rethinking the way they work. They've had three big hits in a row from doing just this. They only look like natural evolutions after the fact. As with any good idea, lots of people slap their foreheads when they first see it, and say, "I could have thought of that!" But they didn't, did they?
Exactly - the world is full of people who "could have thought of the air plane ...".
Exactly - the world is full of people who "could have thought of the air plane ...".
my point is, there were iPod, iPad, iPhone - like products out there ALREADY!
Granted they weren't succesful becuase they didn't know how to market and design them and back them with the quality/namesake that Apple has.
we've had this discussion already years ago on the forums. Apple didn't do anything that hadn't already been done before. They just did it better and more compelling.
here's a few examples.
Online digital Music Store - IUMA (internet underground music archive) 1992, 9 years before iTunes
Digital Music Application and organization: Windows Media Player 2000 - Windows ME/2000, 1+ years before iTunes
First commercial MP3 Player - Audio Highway 1996, 5+ years before the first iPod
First smartphone - Simon by IBM 1992, 15 years before the iPhone, 10 years before the Blackberry
First iPad-like device - that's a tough one because they've been around in many forms...let's just say the iPad is like a PDA, which Apple did coin the term in 1992 with the Newton, so i'll give you that one. They just "revolutionized" the idea this year...18 years later, and after countless other less successful tries at it. However, if you were to find a deivce that was like the iPad out there prior to launch, the Archos devices, the first closest to the iPad being the AV300 in 2004.
E-Book Readers, the first was called the SoftBook and the Rocket Ebook in 1998, 9 years before the Kindle and 12 years before the iPad, granted the iPad isn't only an Ebook reader but it falls into the category, so i'll give that the iPad is still the only leg you got.
my point being, Apple wasn't the first, they just did it better, with better marketing and design and reputation. I wouldn't call that a bunch of "could-have's". But, i'm beating a dead horse. I respect your opinion, I have mine.
my point is, there were iPod, iPad, iPhone - like products out there ALREADY!
Granted they weren't succesful becuase they didn't know how to market and design them and back them with the quality/namesake that Apple has.
we've had this discussion already years ago on the forums. Apple didn't do anything that hadn't already been done before. They just did it better and more compelling.
here's a few examples.
Online digital Music Store - IUMA (internet underground music archive) 1992, 9 years before iTunes
Digital Music Application and organization: Windows Media Player 2000 - Windows ME/2000, 1+ years before iTunes
First commercial MP3 Player - Audio Highway 1996, 5+ years before the first iPod
First smartphone - Simon by IBM 1992, 15 years before the iPhone, 10 years before the Blackberry
First iPad-like device - that's a tough one because they've been around in many forms...let's just say the iPad is like a PDA, which Apple did coin the term in 1992 with the Newton, so i'll give you that one. They just "revolutionized" the idea this year...18 years later, and after countless other less successful tries at it. However, if you were to find a deivce that was like the iPad out there prior to launch, the Archos devices, the first closest to the iPad being the AV300 in 2004.
E-Book Readers, the first was called the SoftBook and the Rocket Ebook in 1998, 9 years before the Kindle and 12 years before the iPad, granted the iPad isn't only an Ebook reader but it falls into the category, so i'll give that the iPad is still the only leg you got.
my point being, Apple wasn't the first, they just did it better, with better marketing and design and reputation. I wouldn't call that a bunch of "could-have's". But, i'm beating a dead horse. I respect your opinion, I have mine.
With all due respect to your opinion I think it's hard to argue in any way shape or form that Apple is "only" ... anything. It kind of makes all the other companies out there look incredibly stupid since they can't seem to do what Apple is [only] doing.
Apple has invented so many things in it's lifetime, and reinvented a lot as well. So they are doing "just" a big thing
With all due respect to your opinion I think it's hard to argue in any way shape or form that Apple is "only" ... anything. It kind of makes all the other companies out there look incredibly stupid since they can't seem to do what Apple is [only] doing.
Apple has invented so many things in it's lifetime, and reinvented a lot as well. So they are doing "just" a big thing
that's exactly it, Apple was following a natural progression of technology, they just happend to skip steps 4-9 on a 10-point process. Some call that a re-invention, other call it an evolution. I am the later.
Let's hope so. If android is first to market it would easily take the market. I hope apple stirkes first or at least very close to Google's release date.
The device could also be control by a magic mouse since its wireless and multi-touch. But I am more than curious on what controller will be used out of the box. At 99 its probably gonna be the cheap apple remote. But I hope for a revolutionary small multi-touch pad that would be very low cost.
Comments
It is really impressive when friends come over.
I have this all the time. Recently I had 4 people staying with me and none of them had ever heard of an AppleTV, but when I showed them all the content I had available without having to flick through DVDs or rentals, they were amazed. It was the hit of my house. The AppleTV is truly a great product, and if they upgrade it and make it more like an iOS device, but for the living room, even better.
Why would adding an HDMI port indicate a future plan to sell internet connected TVs?
Because Apple like to buy parts in volume to keep costs down.
By incorporating HDMI ports into more products they can purchase them for less.
This fall Apple will most likely introduce a 4th gen iPod Touch for $299 that mimics the iPhone 4.
The most expensive components of the iPod Touch are the Display, RAM and battery.
An AppleTV based on the iPod Touch would not need a display, battery, multitouch, speaker, accelerometers, etc.
Apple could offer it as a $99 set top box that bring an App Store to your TV.
At $99 they would sell like hotcakes.
It would also serve to reinforce the iOS ecosystem, as certain apps would require an iPod, iPhone or iPad as a controller. I think it could also be a revolutionary gaming platform. It would be very similar to how Scrabble for iPad can use iPods and iPhones as virtual tile racks. It adds a very cool dimension to gaming that Apple's competitors can't.
But to fully leverage iTunes and its App Store, Apple needs to get developers to build yet another class of iOS apps for big screen HDTVs. Doing so could make the next Apple TV a far better value if the price is kept down. Gaming, TV/movie purchase and rental, HTML5 web apps, and general-purpose iOS apps would make Apple TV a great product. (Blu-Ray? PVR features? Forget it - Apple wants you to go through iTunes for everything except YouTube and Hulu.)
I think iAd is another essential ingredient to any future Apple TV success. In fact, I think iAd is designed for Apple TV more than any other Apple product. The first thing I thought when I saw that Nissan Leaf iAd was "The production quality is almost that of a TV ad." So yes, free and paid iPod/iPhone/iPad apps can benefit from iAd. But I would expect iAd's real value to come from replacing both traditional TV ads and web ads on Apple TV content.
Traditional TV ads are time-based. Advertisers buy 30 seconds of time on a network, pay an ad agency to create a commercial, then ask the network to fill the time slot with that ad. It's too easy for viewers to just fast-forward over them. iAds seem to be time-independent. The user can launch the iAd, play around and watch videos, then quit back to the app whenever they want.
Traditional web ads are just plain boring, and users have been conditioned to ignore them. They're hardly more effective than spam email. And Apple is strongly motivated to out-do AdMob and other web ad agencies in the long run. Hardware costs keep going down every year, and it will get harder and harder over the years for Apple to sustain its profits, which come mostly from hardware. At the moment.
iAds could also reduce the retail price of a future Apple TV by subsidizing its cost with ad revenue. The same way that iPhone is subsidized by the various cell carriers around the world.
I have this all the time. Recently I had 4 people staying with me and none of them had ever heard of an AppleTV, but when I showed them all the content I had available without having to flick through DVDs or rentals, they were amazed. It was the hit of my house. The AppleTV is truly a great product, and if they upgrade it and make it more like an iOS device, but for the living room, even better.
For all its faults, limitations and seemingly "left for dead" HW and SW, it's still the best user interface of any media extender appliance I've used.
With iOS, a 1GHz A4 with Imagination GPU and 1080p decoder it will be even better. Add in an SDK and you have a product no one will be able to compete one-on-one and Apple can carve a profitable chunk out the last remaining media holdout.
Because Apple like to buy parts in volume to keep costs down.
By incorporating HDMI ports into more products they can purchase them for less.
This fall Apple will most likely introduce a 4th gen iPod Touch for $299 that mimics the iPhone 4.
The most expensive components of the iPod Touch are the Display, RAM and battery.
An AppleTV based on the iPod Touch would not need a display, battery, multitouch, speaker, accelerometers, etc.
Apple could offer it as a $99 set top box that bring an App Store to your TV.
At $99 they would sell like hotcakes.
It would also serve to reinforce the iOS ecosystem, as certain apps would require an iPod, iPhone or iPad as a controller. I think it could also be a revolutionary gaming platform. It would be very similar to how Scrabble for iPad can use iPods and iPhones as virtual tile racks. It adds a very cool dimension to gaming that Apple's competitors can't.
I wholeheartedly disagree with your reasoning aston why Apple will make HDTVs, but I think the other paragrpahs are dead on. I especially love the example of playing Scrabble in the living room using iDevices but displaying the board on the TV. That's excellent imagery and would sell thing faster than you can yell, "Developers! Developers! Developers!"
There's an interesting article on MyAppleSpace on it.
Also discussed in this thread on AppleInsider
i'm not sure what you mean by bigger picture?
The iPod was just the natural evolution of the portable music player. Before that, we did have MP3 Players. And i will argue that wasn't really a re-invention either, just the natural evolution of portable music players. All Apple did was market it in such a way to allow the music industry to gain sales back from people who turned to the black market illegal downloads. Ok, 99 cents per song was a brilliant move. The iTunes Store was a great way to sell it, but not a re-invention. It all boils down to the most compelling argument to obtaining (leagally) music. They didn't create a device that psycically transmits the music to our brain or anything that would fundimentally change how we listen to music. We used to listen in the car, at home, in the office, on trips on portable devices. Apple (and many before them) just allowed us to take a greater amount of it with us, on a smaller device. we don't have to plan on bringing the music we like with us becuase is all there, in the size of a deck of cards.
If the evolution was so "natural," somebody else would have done it. It took Apple to put the pieces together in a way which redefined the experience of owning a digital music player. The results speak for themselves. The same goes for the iPhone. It doesn't require science fiction fantasies coming to life to break new ground. The same goes for the iPad. Lots of people around here and elsewhere complained that the iPad was a big yawn because it wasn't Star Trek enough. But that's looking like yet another category redefined by Apple.
So the bigger picture is that total reinventions are not the key to Apple's success. What they've been doing is looking at existing products and rethinking the way they work. They've had three big hits in a row from doing just this. They only look like natural evolutions after the fact. As with any good idea, lots of people slap their foreheads when they first see it, and say, "I could have thought of that!" But they didn't, did they?
If the evolution was so "natural," somebody else would have done it. It took Apple to put the pieces together in a way which redefined the experience of owning a digital music player. The results speak for themselves. The same goes for the iPhone. It doesn't require science fiction fantasies coming to life to break new ground. The same goes for the iPad. Lots of people around here and elsewhere complained that the iPad was a big yawn because it wasn't Star Trek enough. But that's looking like yet another category redefined by Apple.
So the bigger picture is that total reinventions are not the key to Apple's success. What they've been doing is looking at existing products and rethinking the way they work. They've had three big hits in a row from doing just this. They only look like natural evolutions after the fact. As with any good idea, lots of people slap their foreheads when they first see it, and say, "I could have thought of that!" But they didn't, did they?
Exactly - the world is full of people who "could have thought of the air plane ...".
Exactly - the world is full of people who "could have thought of the air plane ...".
One of the great intangibles in any kind of art is making the impossible look obvious, effortless, and even easy.
The new ATV will need a USB port ala WDTV if it wants to succeed.
I want "Light Peak" instead of USB and Firewire
One of the great intangibles in any kind of art is making the impossible look obvious, effortless, and even easy.
and since Apple is VERY good at doing just that, it makes everyone go "I could have done that douh".
I agree.
Exactly - the world is full of people who "could have thought of the air plane ...".
my point is, there were iPod, iPad, iPhone - like products out there ALREADY!
Granted they weren't succesful becuase they didn't know how to market and design them and back them with the quality/namesake that Apple has.
we've had this discussion already years ago on the forums. Apple didn't do anything that hadn't already been done before. They just did it better and more compelling.
here's a few examples.
Online digital Music Store - IUMA (internet underground music archive) 1992, 9 years before iTunes
Digital Music Application and organization: Windows Media Player 2000 - Windows ME/2000, 1+ years before iTunes
First commercial MP3 Player - Audio Highway 1996, 5+ years before the first iPod
First smartphone - Simon by IBM 1992, 15 years before the iPhone, 10 years before the Blackberry
First iPad-like device - that's a tough one because they've been around in many forms...let's just say the iPad is like a PDA, which Apple did coin the term in 1992 with the Newton, so i'll give you that one. They just "revolutionized" the idea this year...18 years later, and after countless other less successful tries at it. However, if you were to find a deivce that was like the iPad out there prior to launch, the Archos devices, the first closest to the iPad being the AV300 in 2004.
E-Book Readers, the first was called the SoftBook and the Rocket Ebook in 1998, 9 years before the Kindle and 12 years before the iPad, granted the iPad isn't only an Ebook reader but it falls into the category, so i'll give that the iPad is still the only leg you got.
my point being, Apple wasn't the first, they just did it better, with better marketing and design and reputation. I wouldn't call that a bunch of "could-have's". But, i'm beating a dead horse. I respect your opinion, I have mine.
my point is, there were iPod, iPad, iPhone - like products out there ALREADY!
Granted they weren't succesful becuase they didn't know how to market and design them and back them with the quality/namesake that Apple has.
we've had this discussion already years ago on the forums. Apple didn't do anything that hadn't already been done before. They just did it better and more compelling.
here's a few examples.
Online digital Music Store - IUMA (internet underground music archive) 1992, 9 years before iTunes
Digital Music Application and organization: Windows Media Player 2000 - Windows ME/2000, 1+ years before iTunes
First commercial MP3 Player - Audio Highway 1996, 5+ years before the first iPod
First smartphone - Simon by IBM 1992, 15 years before the iPhone, 10 years before the Blackberry
First iPad-like device - that's a tough one because they've been around in many forms...let's just say the iPad is like a PDA, which Apple did coin the term in 1992 with the Newton, so i'll give you that one. They just "revolutionized" the idea this year...18 years later, and after countless other less successful tries at it. However, if you were to find a deivce that was like the iPad out there prior to launch, the Archos devices, the first closest to the iPad being the AV300 in 2004.
E-Book Readers, the first was called the SoftBook and the Rocket Ebook in 1998, 9 years before the Kindle and 12 years before the iPad, granted the iPad isn't only an Ebook reader but it falls into the category, so i'll give that the iPad is still the only leg you got.
my point being, Apple wasn't the first, they just did it better, with better marketing and design and reputation. I wouldn't call that a bunch of "could-have's". But, i'm beating a dead horse. I respect your opinion, I have mine.
With all due respect to your opinion I think it's hard to argue in any way shape or form that Apple is "only" ... anything. It kind of makes all the other companies out there look incredibly stupid since they can't seem to do what Apple is [only] doing.
Apple has invented so many things in it's lifetime, and reinvented a lot as well. So they are doing "just" a big thing
With all due respect to your opinion I think it's hard to argue in any way shape or form that Apple is "only" ... anything. It kind of makes all the other companies out there look incredibly stupid since they can't seem to do what Apple is [only] doing.
Apple has invented so many things in it's lifetime, and reinvented a lot as well. So they are doing "just" a big thing
that's exactly it, Apple was following a natural progression of technology, they just happend to skip steps 4-9 on a 10-point process. Some call that a re-invention, other call it an evolution. I am the later.
Because Apple like to buy parts in volume to keep costs down.
By incorporating HDMI ports into more products they can purchase them for less.
That's right, Apple adds HDMI just in time for its death?
http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/7/1/tv-b...-hdmi-goodbye/
ZZZZZZZZZZZZ............
You have been talking about this Apple Television for the past 6 years if I recall exactly.
Boy, let's keep waiting for it.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZ............
You have been talking about this Apple Television for the past 6 years if I recall exactly.
Boy, let's keep waiting for it.
I only registered 4 years ago, but yes, it feels like 6 years.