Do you have to shout command after command to channel-surf?
What if different people shout conflicting commands?
Do you have to wear a Bluetooth thingy?
Solving these issues requires solutions that are just not Apple. They don't slap different technologies together just because it can be done. Nick Bilton is a good writer, but the biggest mistake made by technology pundits is to imagine themselves to be engineers. If they were, they would not be writing about it.
Part of a great UX is that it should be natural. Unlike the phone, talking to the TV is not natural (this could be why Siri may not come to iPad either).
This is not how Jobs *cracked* problems. It's not going to happen. If it does, Apple has lost its way.
A lot of uh ... younger people don't remember when TV's were like that. To most people today a TV has always been this thing that sits in a complex nest of wires, speakers and media players and is operated by the five or six remotes (all with dozens of buttons) on the coffee table.
It used to be that you bought a TV, plugged it in, connected one wire to the cable at the back and that was it. It just worked.
This is what Apple will do. They will turn it back to a device you can take out of the box, plug in with a single cable and it will just work. No speakers, amplifiers, wires, cable hubs, disc players etc. Just a TV. With probably one button or a one button remote.
And that's the problem for people who desire a home theatre experience. When I watch a movie, I want it to be at the highest possible quality and resolution and I want to hear it in 5.1 multichannel sound. (If I had a bigger place, I'd want to hear it in 7.1). Therefore, if, in the name of simplifying the UI and operation, an Apple TV doesn't connect to an A/V receiver and Blu-ray player, it's a deal breaker for me, even if it has lots of other very compelling features.
And for people who just want the simplicity and don't care all that much about picture and audio quality, they don't need the TV - they can watch on their iPad.
I totally agree that the UI experience for TV and connected devices has become a complex disaster. I'm an ex-recording engineer and it took me a while to figure it all out and like complex applications, I still don't understand every last bit of the available functionality. But if Apple is going to not have ISF controls for calibrators and remove most of the color, black level, white level controls and doesn't connect to a receiver or blu-ray player, they're going to get persecuted by the A/V community. That doesn't mean there won't be a market for this set - but people on the high end won't want it.
Personally, I'd rather see them do a high-quality remote control application that controls all the devices in a home, streams from the computer or network, takes over the TV UI, uses Siri, etc. - with the ability to control all of my existing devices.
The problem here is that extreme scalability: With TVs you just not only deal with all types of humans but also with all types of feeding equipment. Second is a problem you don't have in the phone market. There are some 2 or 3 mobile transmission standards worldwide to be covered and you're set.
I think the major problem is NOT the integration of the Apple TV box into the TV. As even grandma knows how to switch source she already knows how to switch to the AppleTV. Probably Apple could just implement kind of an HDMI command that tells the TV to switch source to it, then all TV set vendors are free to adopt it. And then tell me why Apple should take the risk of producing large panels with low margins ? Also, an Apple HDTV would be required to eat all signals from the myriads of existing STBs, DVRs and stuff... and the Apple logo on the screen could then be identified with that crap coming in from outer there... maybe sluggish STBs, bad signals, crypto-DRM and the like... no way!
Other way, if Apple limits interface to zero - which would be typical Apple - that could even distract those users which are said to be non-geeks, the grandmas. This problem just does not scale! We have to live with current TV sets, there is no way around !
As a dev I was overwhelmed, that iOS5 has many new APIs regarding screen mirroring and respective ViewControllers, aspect ratio and overscan control of 2nd screens. This strongly points to a iPad/iPhone remote control strategy which we already have and which is by far best. It also considers that Big Screens are becoming less important as we more and more watch on the mobiles itself or want to quickly switch displays. A core Apple HDTV does NOT fit this strategy.
As AppleTV2 owner I really like this device and I see friends who are rather non-tech also using it with joy, if they already own iDevices. The problem also is not search in my opinion: On day 1 I look up show A, on day 2 I query for movie B but I found out that I mostly search for the same stuff. The still existing true sex appeal of TV networks is their random character: People zapp around to get 'invited', they wanna be surprised by something they didn't expect...and stay there for a while. They don't wanna 'search' for something! GENIUS could be an Apple offering here.
I don't think that Apple can ever replace TV networks. Sorry, but people also want regional news, silly game shows, docus, adult stuff, child stuff, exotic sports events and and and. It's just waaaayyy different to cover all that on an 'iTunes TV' just like with music. Music is international to 90%, Apps are international to 90%. But TV stuff is REGIONAL, highly specialized and exotic to 90%. It's not suited for Apples distribution model. And why should any provider of such exotic and regional content jump on Apples ship ? I live in Berlin, Germany and so how could our regional TV networks be forced to offer via an 'iTunes TV' ? No way!
It's not about cracking up the HDTV set hardware, and it's also not about cracking up existing content delivery models: how much does Apple earn from iTunes Music+Movies+Apps today and how much more from iPhone sales ?
The solution:
Crack up the existing concept of a 'movie' from ground up! It's now 100y old and people have already seen every imaginable sujet/plot/theme now in 1000 versions. It's not the tech complexity, it's not the channel complexity, it's the uniform ART which needs to be cracked up ! People don't buy music because since hiphop & techno there has been nothing revolutionary anymore. Same with movies. Today from 100 movies I see there might be five which I rate as 'interesting' or 'nice', the rest is just boring. I think now it's time for technology to step in and revolutionize the formats, create new art !
I'm not Steve Jobs so I have no clue how to do that, but Isaacson in his book heavily stresses Jobs' position at the crossroads of tech and arts, so this might be the key: don't invent the 1001th version of a home theater but make the tech part of the art ! Kind of a 'movie' that bears a touch of 'holy shit!' interactivity which only plays on Apple devices. If the studios don't want to play that, then Apple go and directly work with the artists ! 'From the ground up' means just that.
Your post is the most interesting one I've seen on all of AI. I think you may be jumping ahead 10 years and I love it! I posted on another thread that AppleTV box etc. could easily auto detect the device IDs, and integrate them on whatever to be something like a personally programmed remote. But all the while I was thinking about this idea I have that in the future, out of the million folks running around with HD good enough cameras, some of them will start to get good. Same with news/bloggers. I'm just in the wrong decade, I'm so tired of the pablum that the big studios produce. Genius will key in on your interests. Already I'm watching pretty good podcast series cause cable is so lame. Looking forward even to the cultural potholes we will fall into.
What is the point of entering a market that is saturated? everyone has a TV
Because the system is broken. Everyone's setup is a confusing mess of cables, boxes, remotes, inputs and UI's. People are juggling remotes like they are part of some crazy CE-circus and all those universal removes that some people buy, have and sit down to go to the bother of programming are doing is acting as a band-aid for cancer.
We need Apple to make this product. Desperately! I believe there's a HUGE need for this product, but the reason we aren't aware of or vocalising such a need is because the product doesn't currently exist. Sure there are some crappy Smart TV's popping up here and there, but Apple will change the game and show them how it's done. Mark these words. Write them down. Remember what I said.
And yes, btw, we all know they need the content so could you guys quit saying that because that's a given.
That is the first repomse I thought of and the same could be said about Apple entering the smartphone makert. But then I thought about what all these dumb TVs are attached to; expensive and intelligent appliances.
How does Apple get around or worth with the content owners and/or content providers to make a single appliance, an Apple HDTV, the only device you have in your HEC? I don't see a solution all I see is the simplistic and obvious move to put an AppleTV in a TV. That's not the solution.
I don't see a solution all I see is the simplistic and obvious move to put an AppleTV in a TV. That's not the solution.
Yeah, that's not enough to get partners on board. Perhaps all that's needed is an open standard broadcast protocol that works like HTTP, FTP, RTSP etc. TV networks could start ditching their proprietary set-top boxes in favour of data-only networks that broadcast over e.g TV://.
Then, any box manufacturer, Roku, Apple, WD, Boxee can simply connect to the internet and decode that protocol and you'd have an account with a provider to access certain links e.g TV://HBO. If you only have a computer, it works the same way via a web browser and would work on a smartphone too.
When you hop onto the channel, it would just stream video at the full size of the window.
Netflix and Hulu would presumably adopt the same protocol and that allows a device manufacturer to have a single box to decode all broadcast content. PVR solutions can be built into the same box but the networks can do this themselves and offer full VOD or a catchup service.
This doesn't remove the Blu-Ray player but it can remove everything else and games can stream down too so that just leaves the TV and the Blu-Ray player, which will die out over time.
Apple Outsiders who want to become Apple Insiders (sorry AI) first need to "get" just what Apple does these days. Once you get "it" you'll know that Siri is the newest UI of the future, it will evolve, it will mature, and 10 years from now it will dominate the voice-driven gadget marketplace (and profits) the way the Apple's MultiTouch UI dominates the SmartPhone marketplace
That's what Apple does. Got it?
I speak not with arrogance but with battle-tested authority, I have held Apple stock now for 27 years. (I wish I had more.)
Newest UI? How do you figure? Speech driven computing has been around for decades. I give Apple credit for its latest offering based on this existing technology, but it's merely a step in the right direction. I see nothing groundbreaking or new here. I mean, I can talk to my car to program navigation or browse my cell phone book via bluetooth, with excellent results, especially considering the windows are open at highway speeds. That kind of noise filtering really impresses me. So to say Apple has created a whole new revolutionary UI with its latest iteration of speech technology is a bit generous. It may be fair to say Siri is the best speech recognition on the market today (and I'm not even sure about that), but that statement is for today. Someone else had the best speech technology yesterday, and someone else will introduce the latest and greatest tomorrow. Apple has done nothing permanent here, and that's OK. No reason to get bent out of shape.
This is all based on Nick Bilton's article in the NYT. If you read that article from beginning to end, the Siri is 100% speculation by Bilton. His *sources* only confirmed that there was a Apple TV project going on, but not about the nature of the technology. ...
And it's probably worth pointing out that Nick Bilton is a blogger, not a journalist, so anything he writes should be taken with a large grain of salt.
Comments
I NEED an Apple TV!
where's the line? I've got a couple of grand saved up. Will I be ok?
Does everyone in the room have to shut up?
How does Siri distinguish between a command and dialogue from the show? (http://video.aol.com/video/a-new-inv...lay/3666431115)
Do you have to shout command after command to channel-surf?
What if different people shout conflicting commands?
Do you have to wear a Bluetooth thingy?
Solving these issues requires solutions that are just not Apple. They don't slap different technologies together just because it can be done. Nick Bilton is a good writer, but the biggest mistake made by technology pundits is to imagine themselves to be engineers. If they were, they would not be writing about it.
Part of a great UX is that it should be natural. Unlike the phone, talking to the TV is not natural (this could be why Siri may not come to iPad either).
This is not how Jobs *cracked* problems. It's not going to happen. If it does, Apple has lost its way.
How close to the TV do you have to be?
Does everyone in the room have to shut up?
How does Siri distinguish between a command and dialogue from the show?
What if different people shout conflicting commands?
Do you have to wear a Bluetooth thingy?
Depends on the microphones in use.
Most likely.
Siri will mute the television show as it does the music on an iPhone.
It'll explode into fairy dust.
Don't know about a thingy, a headset on the other hand...
Talking to the TV is not natural.
Doesn't stop sports fans from shouting at it like you're threatening someone with disintegration.
This is not going to happen.
Agreed.
For me this comment sums everything up precisely.
A lot of uh ... younger people don't remember when TV's were like that. To most people today a TV has always been this thing that sits in a complex nest of wires, speakers and media players and is operated by the five or six remotes (all with dozens of buttons) on the coffee table.
It used to be that you bought a TV, plugged it in, connected one wire to the cable at the back and that was it. It just worked.
This is what Apple will do. They will turn it back to a device you can take out of the box, plug in with a single cable and it will just work. No speakers, amplifiers, wires, cable hubs, disc players etc. Just a TV. With probably one button or a one button remote.
And that's the problem for people who desire a home theatre experience. When I watch a movie, I want it to be at the highest possible quality and resolution and I want to hear it in 5.1 multichannel sound. (If I had a bigger place, I'd want to hear it in 7.1). Therefore, if, in the name of simplifying the UI and operation, an Apple TV doesn't connect to an A/V receiver and Blu-ray player, it's a deal breaker for me, even if it has lots of other very compelling features.
And for people who just want the simplicity and don't care all that much about picture and audio quality, they don't need the TV - they can watch on their iPad.
I totally agree that the UI experience for TV and connected devices has become a complex disaster. I'm an ex-recording engineer and it took me a while to figure it all out and like complex applications, I still don't understand every last bit of the available functionality. But if Apple is going to not have ISF controls for calibrators and remove most of the color, black level, white level controls and doesn't connect to a receiver or blu-ray player, they're going to get persecuted by the A/V community. That doesn't mean there won't be a market for this set - but people on the high end won't want it.
Personally, I'd rather see them do a high-quality remote control application that controls all the devices in a home, streams from the computer or network, takes over the TV UI, uses Siri, etc. - with the ability to control all of my existing devices.
Depends on the microphones in use.
Most likely.
Siri will mute the television show as it does the music on an iPhone.
It'll explode into fairy dust.
Don't know about a thingy, a headset on the other hand...
Doesn't stop sports fans from shouting at it like you're threatening someone with disintegration.
Agreed.
Jobs thought stylus use was a mistake for handhelds. I doubt he would have thought it natural that all TV viewers have to wear headsets.
The problem here is that extreme scalability: With TVs you just not only deal with all types of humans but also with all types of feeding equipment. Second is a problem you don't have in the phone market. There are some 2 or 3 mobile transmission standards worldwide to be covered and you're set.
I think the major problem is NOT the integration of the Apple TV box into the TV. As even grandma knows how to switch source she already knows how to switch to the AppleTV. Probably Apple could just implement kind of an HDMI command that tells the TV to switch source to it, then all TV set vendors are free to adopt it. And then tell me why Apple should take the risk of producing large panels with low margins ? Also, an Apple HDTV would be required to eat all signals from the myriads of existing STBs, DVRs and stuff... and the Apple logo on the screen could then be identified with that crap coming in from outer there... maybe sluggish STBs, bad signals, crypto-DRM and the like... no way!
Other way, if Apple limits interface to zero - which would be typical Apple - that could even distract those users which are said to be non-geeks, the grandmas. This problem just does not scale! We have to live with current TV sets, there is no way around !
As a dev I was overwhelmed, that iOS5 has many new APIs regarding screen mirroring and respective ViewControllers, aspect ratio and overscan control of 2nd screens. This strongly points to a iPad/iPhone remote control strategy which we already have and which is by far best. It also considers that Big Screens are becoming less important as we more and more watch on the mobiles itself or want to quickly switch displays. A core Apple HDTV does NOT fit this strategy.
As AppleTV2 owner I really like this device and I see friends who are rather non-tech also using it with joy, if they already own iDevices. The problem also is not search in my opinion: On day 1 I look up show A, on day 2 I query for movie B but I found out that I mostly search for the same stuff. The still existing true sex appeal of TV networks is their random character: People zapp around to get 'invited', they wanna be surprised by something they didn't expect...and stay there for a while. They don't wanna 'search' for something! GENIUS could be an Apple offering here.
I don't think that Apple can ever replace TV networks. Sorry, but people also want regional news, silly game shows, docus, adult stuff, child stuff, exotic sports events and and and. It's just waaaayyy different to cover all that on an 'iTunes TV' just like with music. Music is international to 90%, Apps are international to 90%. But TV stuff is REGIONAL, highly specialized and exotic to 90%. It's not suited for Apples distribution model. And why should any provider of such exotic and regional content jump on Apples ship ? I live in Berlin, Germany and so how could our regional TV networks be forced to offer via an 'iTunes TV' ? No way!
It's not about cracking up the HDTV set hardware, and it's also not about cracking up existing content delivery models: how much does Apple earn from iTunes Music+Movies+Apps today and how much more from iPhone sales ?
The solution:
Crack up the existing concept of a 'movie' from ground up! It's now 100y old and people have already seen every imaginable sujet/plot/theme now in 1000 versions. It's not the tech complexity, it's not the channel complexity, it's the uniform ART which needs to be cracked up ! People don't buy music because since hiphop & techno there has been nothing revolutionary anymore. Same with movies. Today from 100 movies I see there might be five which I rate as 'interesting' or 'nice', the rest is just boring. I think now it's time for technology to step in and revolutionize the formats, create new art !
I'm not Steve Jobs so I have no clue how to do that, but Isaacson in his book heavily stresses Jobs' position at the crossroads of tech and arts, so this might be the key: don't invent the 1001th version of a home theater but make the tech part of the art ! Kind of a 'movie' that bears a touch of 'holy shit!' interactivity which only plays on Apple devices. If the studios don't want to play that, then Apple go and directly work with the artists ! 'From the ground up' means just that.
Your post is the most interesting one I've seen on all of AI. I think you may be jumping ahead 10 years and I love it! I posted on another thread that AppleTV box etc. could easily auto detect the device IDs, and integrate them on whatever to be something like a personally programmed remote. But all the while I was thinking about this idea I have that in the future, out of the million folks running around with HD good enough cameras, some of them will start to get good. Same with news/bloggers. I'm just in the wrong decade, I'm so tired of the pablum that the big studios produce. Genius will key in on your interests. Already I'm watching pretty good podcast series cause cable is so lame. Looking forward even to the cultural potholes we will fall into.
What is the point of entering a market that is saturated? everyone has a TV
Perhaps but not everyone has a Smart TV.
What is the point of entering a market that is saturated? everyone has a TV
Because the system is broken. Everyone's setup is a confusing mess of cables, boxes, remotes, inputs and UI's. People are juggling remotes like they are part of some crazy CE-circus and all those universal removes that some people buy, have and sit down to go to the bother of programming are doing is acting as a band-aid for cancer.
We need Apple to make this product. Desperately! I believe there's a HUGE need for this product, but the reason we aren't aware of or vocalising such a need is because the product doesn't currently exist. Sure there are some crappy Smart TV's popping up here and there, but Apple will change the game and show them how it's done. Mark these words. Write them down. Remember what I said.
And yes, btw, we all know they need the content so could you guys quit saying that because that's a given.
Perhaps but not everyone has a Smart TV.
That is the first repomse I thought of and the same could be said about Apple entering the smartphone makert. But then I thought about what all these dumb TVs are attached to; expensive and intelligent appliances.
How does Apple get around or worth with the content owners and/or content providers to make a single appliance, an Apple HDTV, the only device you have in your HEC? I don't see a solution all I see is the simplistic and obvious move to put an AppleTV in a TV. That's not the solution.
I don't see a solution all I see is the simplistic and obvious move to put an AppleTV in a TV. That's not the solution.
Yeah, that's not enough to get partners on board. Perhaps all that's needed is an open standard broadcast protocol that works like HTTP, FTP, RTSP etc. TV networks could start ditching their proprietary set-top boxes in favour of data-only networks that broadcast over e.g TV://.
Then, any box manufacturer, Roku, Apple, WD, Boxee can simply connect to the internet and decode that protocol and you'd have an account with a provider to access certain links e.g TV://HBO. If you only have a computer, it works the same way via a web browser and would work on a smartphone too.
When you hop onto the channel, it would just stream video at the full size of the window.
Netflix and Hulu would presumably adopt the same protocol and that allows a device manufacturer to have a single box to decode all broadcast content. PVR solutions can be built into the same box but the networks can do this themselves and offer full VOD or a catchup service.
This doesn't remove the Blu-Ray player but it can remove everything else and games can stream down too so that just leaves the TV and the Blu-Ray player, which will die out over time.
Apple Outsiders who want to become Apple Insiders (sorry AI) first need to "get" just what Apple does these days. Once you get "it" you'll know that Siri is the newest UI of the future, it will evolve, it will mature, and 10 years from now it will dominate the voice-driven gadget marketplace (and profits) the way the Apple's MultiTouch UI dominates the SmartPhone marketplace
That's what Apple does. Got it?
I speak not with arrogance but with battle-tested authority, I have held Apple stock now for 27 years. (I wish I had more.)
Newest UI? How do you figure? Speech driven computing has been around for decades. I give Apple credit for its latest offering based on this existing technology, but it's merely a step in the right direction. I see nothing groundbreaking or new here. I mean, I can talk to my car to program navigation or browse my cell phone book via bluetooth, with excellent results, especially considering the windows are open at highway speeds. That kind of noise filtering really impresses me. So to say Apple has created a whole new revolutionary UI with its latest iteration of speech technology is a bit generous. It may be fair to say Siri is the best speech recognition on the market today (and I'm not even sure about that), but that statement is for today. Someone else had the best speech technology yesterday, and someone else will introduce the latest and greatest tomorrow. Apple has done nothing permanent here, and that's OK. No reason to get bent out of shape.
This is all based on Nick Bilton's article in the NYT. If you read that article from beginning to end, the Siri is 100% speculation by Bilton. His *sources* only confirmed that there was a Apple TV project going on, but not about the nature of the technology. ...
And it's probably worth pointing out that Nick Bilton is a blogger, not a journalist, so anything he writes should be taken with a large grain of salt.