Apple’s Not Making An iTV, They Are Just Bringing The iMac To The Living Room [Analyst]

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about the so-called iTV, Steve Jobs’s “cracking” of the HDTV problem. But what if the iTV is just a rumor, and Apple instead plans on fixing television by making iMacs into HDTVs?

According to Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair, the iMac could work as a “bridge” TV to the eventual iTV:

Blair envisions the company pushing the largest screen sizes of the iMac toward the TV market by integrating Apple TV and iCloud features into a slimmer all-in-one PC with TV capabilities.

“We think this makes sense because while we typically think about the newest TV’s hanging on the wall in large form factors, Apple could effectively start with what they already have on the manufacturing line and slowly push their offering from 27 inches and scale up from there to 32 inches and then move on to the 42, 50 and 55 inch market,” he writes. “In short, we believe the initial Apple TV is their iMac computer that can function as a TV, over the iCloud platform.”

In essence, what he’s saying is that if you turn Front Row into the Apple TV’s interface and make iMacs in slimmer sizes up to 55-inches, Apple can have their cake and eat it too: iMacs could work as both mountable HDTVs and desktop computers, just by knocking off the base.

That’s interesting, but what will ultimately make or break the Apple TV isn’t the hardware, it’s how you control it. The iTV is all about the interface, and it’s the minutiae of how Apple intends for us to finally get rid of our remotes that will really prove if Steve Jobs really did “crack” the HDTV problem.

[via MacRumors]

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