Apple reportedly manufacturing test batch of first smart TVs

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  • Reply 21 of 101
    drblankdrblank Posts: 3,386member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by drblank View Post


    iTsfreakincool.



    How about iPadTV?

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  • Reply 22 of 101
    charlitunacharlituna Posts: 7,217member
    And my informed sources have told me that it's a final prototype for the revised cinema displays which will come in a 27 and 36 inch size, add hdmi to the connection options, be 3/4ths the thickness of the current and have a retina display
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  • Reply 23 of 101
    aaarrrggghaaarrrgggh Posts: 1,609member
    inkling wrote: »
    Almost all current TV/entertainment systems ...To do something, you must decipher the cryptic meaning of all the obscure symbols on one of several remotes.

    Believe it or not, things have gotten better. I would say LG's "Magic Remote" TVs are considerably more intuitive than the current apple TV. There is plenty of room for improvement, but other vendors are getting pretty close now. The fact that you need extra components is the real bane of an intelligent entertainment system. That starts and ends at the cable STB; 93% of households have cable. That industry will need to be completely marginalized to make a smart TV truly useful.

    I tried an experiment when we moved to a new apartment. We wanted to ditch cable TV and just use Netflix on demand. There is exactly one show I want to watch 15 minutes of per day (Mad Money), and my wife wants to have access to more current TV series in general. So, we are doomed to get cable for access, a DVR for making it bearable, and all the junk that comes along with it. Or, I need to do some more digging for torrents of current episodes.

    If Apple is to innovate in the TV space, they need a full catalog of current programs available at a reasonable price.
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  • Reply 24 of 101
    red oakred oak Posts: 1,117member
    Samsung sells about 30 million TVs worldwide, generating $30 billion a year. TVs account for roughly 25% of all of their revenue. The TV market overall is 110 million units a year

    This is a big opportunity for Apple, even more so of they are able to tie it to profitable content subscription services. I can see them targeting and capturing the top 10% of the market. At $2k per, $20 billion a year

    At a minimum, iTV has the potential to lay waste to Samsung's TV business by stealing away their most profitable customers. This plus the shift of components to other vendors...I say Samsung is in the shi*ter. And I will not even bring up the uglier than crap Galaxy III
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  • Reply 25 of 101
    rogifanrogifan Posts: 10,669member
    "Unused product concept #524"
    How much money is Apple making off that $99 black box? If they have plans to revolutionize the TV experience they're not going to have you experience it on someone else's TV set. Especially when they make most of their profit on hardware. Other companies might not be, but that's why they're not Apple.
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  • Reply 26 of 101
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    red oak wrote: »
    Samsung sells about 30 million TVs worldwide, generating $30 billion a year. TVs account for roughly 25% of all of their revenue. The TV market overall is 110 million units a year
    This is a big opportunity for Apple, even more so of they are able to tie it to profitable content subscription services. I can see them targeting and capturing the top 10% of the market. At $2k per, $20 billion a year
    At a minimum, iTV has the potential to lay waste to Samsung's TV business by stealing away their most profitable customers. This plus the shift of components to other vendors...I say Samsung is in the shi*ter. And I will not even bring up the uglier than crap Galaxy III
    But how much profit do they take in? Is it 25% of all their profit?
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  • Reply 27 of 101
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Rogifan View Post

    How much money is Apple making off that $99 black box?


     


    On the hardware itself? Plenty. On the content sold? Even more.


     


    Quote:


    If they have plans to revolutionize the TV experience they're not going to have you experience it on someone else's TV set. Especially when they make most of their profit on hardware.



     


    There is not a single thing a $2,000 panel can do that a $99 box cannot. Apple has revolutionized cell phones and they did it on someone else's cell phone network. Apple has revolutionized desktop computing and they did it on someone else's Internet connection.




    Apple already makes hardware on which they make profit. Televisions are NOT a profit-making market.

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  • Reply 28 of 101
    maecvsmaecvs Posts: 129member


    Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the WI biography Steve Jobs said he had cracked the "interface." A far cry from the actual TV. He said it was "so simple."

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  • Reply 29 of 101
    red oakred oak Posts: 1,117member
    I don't know. But I assume Apple would require at least a 30% gross margin, if not higher

    At 30% margin, it's $6 billion+ profit. Worth about $100 billion in market cap
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  • Reply 30 of 101
    oflifeoflife Posts: 120member


    You are spot on. I stayed with the iPad until about 6 months ago, and after waiting and hoping that Apple would merge their two OS's and create a proper cloud service to enable colaborative document sharing AND editing, I have up, and went back to a MacBook Air.


     


    Apple have chosen the easy route and simply left innovation in the hands of the (app) developers, but even that doesn't produce a genuinely open productivity enhancing solution.


     


    Apple created the best desktop publishing machine with the Mac in the 1980s, with a snappy pleasing OS. Today, it is all shiny and there is not a single thing you can do on a Mac that you cannot do on a PC, other than admire the superb industrial design.


     


    Where did Apple go wrong? They forgot their roots - to empower people. Today, they are a very very successful money machine, from expensive iDevice cases and docks (that Apple get a small royalty on if the manufacturer uses the Made For iDevice mark) to garden walled content that is not accessible on anything other than an Apple product.


     


    I love Apple, but they have spent the last few years building robust foundations based on a hugely flawed paradigm.


     


    And it is Android Jelly Bean and Chrome that is going to sort all this out, no matter your opinion of Google.


    (For all Apple's flaws, their ethics are light years ahead of Google.)

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  • Reply 31 of 101
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Maecvs View Post

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the WI biography Steve Jobs said he had cracked the "interface." A far cry from the actual TV. He said it was "so simple."


     


    This is what Steve is quoted as having said:


     


    "I'd like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use. It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud. It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it."


     


    Personally, I believe that anyone who thinks Apple's reinvention of television demands an Apple-branded LCD panel isn't thinking outside the box enough. Apple already knows everything about televisions they need to create something that works with every television out there.


     


    I'd like to see Apple force their way into HDMI 1.5 by adding support for control of all devices connected in that manner from a single source.

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  • Reply 32 of 101
    cnocbuicnocbui Posts: 3,613member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


     


     


    There is not a single thing a $2,000 panel can do that a $99 box cannot.



     


    You mean apart from display an image and produce sound and allow you to connect your xbox360 or PS3 or....

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  • Reply 33 of 101
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by cnocbui View Post

    You mean apart from display an image and produce sound and allow you to connect your xbox360 or PS3 or....


     


    Your implication is that no one on Earth has a TV and that it isn't the third most saturated electronics market on the planet.


     


    Apple has never entered an established market. They've either created the market entirely or jumped in early.




    Unless you want to get picky and say 'headphones', in which case… 

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  • Reply 34 of 101
    gazoobeegazoobee Posts: 3,754member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Oflife View Post


    You are spot on. I stayed with the iPad until about 6 months ago, and after waiting and hoping that Apple would merge their two OS's and create a proper cloud service to enable colaborative document sharing AND editing, I have up, and went back to a MacBook Air.



     


    This seems ridiculously rash to me.  


     


    First off, shared documents and shared editing of documents (a la Google Docs), has never been promised or even talked about by Apple, so you "jumped in" at least initially on a hope and a prayer. 


     


    Then you quit, while iCloud document syncing is basically still on it's first revision.  


    It already works on iOS flawlessly for the most part and works with a bit of a kludge on OS-X.  


    A kludge that's strongly rumoured (and even hinted at by Apple) to be fixed in the very next release.  


     


    So IMO you jumped in too early, based on information not in evidence, got pissed off when it didn't immediately turn into the service you expected, and then quit in a huff without waiting for even the second revision.  

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  • Reply 35 of 101
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    red oak wrote: »
    I don't know. But I assume Apple would require at least a 30% gross margin, if not higher
    At 30% margin, it's $6 billion+ profit. Worth about $100 billion in market cap

    Maybe Apple could do that and have excessive sales, too, but so far the TV market hasn't been able to do that in a very long time.
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  • Reply 36 of 101
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    gazoobee wrote: »
    This seems ridiculously rash to me.  

    First off, shared documents and shared editing of documents (a la Google Docs), has never been promised or even talked about by Apple, so you "jumped in" at least initially on a hope and a prayer. 

    Then you quit, while iCloud document syncing is basically still on it's first revision.  
    It already works on iOS flawlessly for the most part and works with a bit of a kludge on OS-X.  
    A kludge that's strongly rumoured (and even hinted at by Apple) to be fixed in the very next release.  

    So IMO you jumped in too early, based on information not in evidence, got pissed off when it didn't immediately turn into the service you expected, and then quit in a huff without waiting for even the second revision.  

    He lost me at the idea of making the iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad and all Macs into one convoluted OS despite different I/O needing different UIs and vastly different HW and expectations.
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  • Reply 37 of 101
    kotatsukotatsu Posts: 1,010member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by MMTM1983 View Post


    iScreen


    iPanel


    iView


    iEye


    iSee


    iMax


    iTV


    Apple TV


    iWindow


     


    place your bets now on what it be called????



     


    It certainly won't be called iTV.  www.itv.com 

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  • Reply 38 of 101
    rainrain Posts: 538member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Slurpy View Post


     


    I'll put my money on Apple, they've seemed to deserve my benefit of the doubt during the last 10 years or so of launching new products, instead of a random poster declaring it a failure while not knowing a single detail about the imagined product. 





    Wanna place bets on crippling and stifling DRM?


    Don't get me wrong, i'm sure it will be be a fantastic product otherwise. But it's the 'otherwise' that will make it a fringe product.


     


    Apple still doesn't let the Airport Express work with anything outside of iTunes. Result - [fringe]


    AppleTV is so crippled that retail has to explain it can be jail-broken to function. Result - [fringe]


    We will see if Apple comes out with the next 'best in class' product - or another Apple Hi-Fi (remember that game changer).


     


    It needs to be free of iTunes to succeed. That's my point.

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  • Reply 39 of 101
    timmydaxtimmydax Posts: 284member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by rain View Post


    It needs to be free of iTunes to succeed. That's my point.



     


    Unfortunately, it seems that iTunes is The Way. What it actually needs, given that, is the media monkeys to pull their heads out of their collective asses and start selling TV Shows for what, 10c / ep (20p to me) or some other measure so that one is discouraged to "pirate" them.


     


    The whole "pirating" thing being a whole other issue all together (especially if your cable subscription includes them).


     


    The media companies have to do a music industry and face the fucking music, frankly.


     


     


    In other news, iBooks still doesn't cut it as a Bookstore. The selection in the UK makes it next to useless.


     


    Apple have historically always tried to line up their suppliers behind a good price point (even if that isn't reflected internationally) before launch.


     


    We can but hope (and pray to our god, who resides with the angels).

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  • Reply 40 of 101
    gazoobeegazoobee Posts: 3,754member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by zklausz View Post


    I really hope it is not a TV but rather a liquid metal morphing remote. It should have a camera to take pictures of other remotes and match their buttons layouts and functionality.  And while their at it how about a keyboard/trackpad hybrid made out of liquid metal that morphs depending on which program or function is in the foreground.  ...



     


    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."

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