iTV - page 3

An unconfirmed report surfaced yesterday saying that Apple CEO Tim Cook was spotted at Valve’s headquarters in Bellevue, Washington. Whenever Cook is spotted out and about, people take notice. The CEO of the world’s most valuable company doesn’t personally visit other tech companies to simply have a chat.

Many speculated as to why Cook would be visiting Valve, maker of popular game series like Half-Life, Team Fortress and Portal. Valve also boasts an incredibly robust online PC gaming platform called Steam that operates similarly to Apple’s App Store.

We’ve gotten word that Cook was indeed at Valve yesterday, and what’s more, Apple is planning a full-on assault to take over the living room. This assault won’t just be limited to the long-rumored Apple HDTV set, but will also include a revolutionary home console as well.

Over the last couple of months Sharp has been rumored to be Apple’s partner for producing the LCDs of the mysterious “iTV” the world is waiting for. While analysts, such as Peter Misek, have been linking Sharp to Apple for a while now, definitive proof of their connection has yet to surface. However, adding to the rumors, Sharp announced today that they have begun production on 32-inch Hi-DPI LCD’s displays this March that could be used in Apple’s new iMac line that is expected to be unveiled in June.

Popular belief is that if Apple does end up releasing their long-rumored smart TV, they’ll call it the iTV… but there’s problems with that, not least of which is that there are at least two companies out there called iTV who are threatening to sue if Apple does so.

So what will they call it? Analyst Peter Misek — who believes the Apple TV is imminent — thinks it’ll be called the iPanel, and Apple will be building up to 5M of them starting in May.

Apple’s stock price has continued to rise at an incredible rate for months, leading one analyst to predict that its shares will reach $1,000 by 2014, making it the world’s first trillion-dollar company.

Most analysts have seemed to agree that Apple’s new Apple TV set, dubbed the “iTV,” is going to launch sometime during 2012. However, Asian research group CLSA has released a note today saying that Apple won’t release the product until 2013, with Sharp providing the display panels.

Complementing the launch of the new Apple TV, an iOS software update made some significant changes to the Apple TV user interface after the new iPad keynote. Over the last couple weeks the new UI has received a heavy dose of criticism from fans who feel like the new interface is a step backwards, and it turns out that those criticisms may be true. Literally.

According to one ex-Apple TV Engineer, the new Apple TV UI has been on the table for about five years, but Steve Jobs himself allegedly didn’t like it and rejected its implementation. Now that Jobs isn’t around “to say no to bad design,” the UI was resurrected.

With all the rumors surrounding Apple’s intense negotiations to acquire licensing agreements with Hollywood studios for its upcoming television, it can be easy to forget about another aspect of the equation that needs to be reinvented: the remote. When Apple does unveil its long-awaited ‘iTV’ to the dismay of cable providers, you can bet that it won’t come with a clunky clicker like every other TV on the market. If there’s anything that needs to be changed about the industry, it’s the tool we use to communicate with our TV sets.

How would Apple do its own remote? Some have speculated that the iTV will be completely controlled by Siri, but there’s more to the puzzle than just voice control. In fact, you probably already use the future iTV’s remote every day.

Does the idea of an Apple TV with Siri functionality make the insides of your toes tingle with excitement? We’re there with you, and we totally want to know what it would be like to have Siri in our living room whispering us sweet nothings. Apple didn’t announce a new iTV with Siri functionality yesterday, so we’ll have to wait a little while longer to see what the future holds, but to hold us over till that day comes, Tripp and Tyler made a new video to show us what a Siri TV would be like.

It is absolutely breathtaking.

Although bloggers and analysts refer to Apple’s rumored upcoming HDTV as the iTV just out of simplicity, there’s no actual indication that Apple would call it that. None. No one knows for sure if Apple’s even working on an HDTV, let alone what they’re going to call it.

The only evidence that Apple might call an HDTV the iTV is US Patent Patent No. 2011/0154394 A1, which has a solitary image indicating that Apple might, at least, be using the name iTV internally. But that’s not stopping the usual cadre of doofuses from trying to eke some payouts (or, at least, some free publicity) out of the whole thing. In this case, it’s American-based iTV Entertainment, who are threatening to crash tomorrow’s iPad 3 event to prevent Apple from releasing an HDTV with the same name.

We’ve heard whispers of Apple launching a streaming video service in the iTunes Store before, and now a new report from The New York Post claims that the company is “pushing ahead” to get such a service off the ground by Christmas.

According to the report, Apple “point man” Eddy Cue has been in talks with leading content providers to negotiate distribution deals for what will presumably pave the way for the mystical iTV.

Another day, another Samsung employee throwing dirt on the rumored Apple television. If you recall, a certain Samsung suit called Steve Jobs’ dream for the iTV “nothing new,” indicating that Samsung is already playing the game and playing it to win.

This time, a Samsung product manager is back to let us all know why Apple’s unannounced TV won’t be able to compete with what the South Korean company already has on the market. How comforting.

After having its tablet banned in one Chinese city today for using the iPad name without permission, Apple could be about to enter into another dispute if it names its television set the “iTV.” Britain’s biggest commercial broadcaster ITV has warned Apple not to use its name for the second time.

Canada’s two largest telecoms already have Apple’s rumored iTV in their testing labs, according to The Globe and Mail. Rogers and BCE have reportedly been “in talks” with Apple to become launch partners for the upcoming IP-based television.

The iTV will have Siri integration and users will be able to control programming with their voices or through hand gestures, according to the report.

Please don’t look at the following images on a full stomach:

Earlier this week, we heard a report from iTV obsessive Gene Munster that Apple was looking to buy up HDTV panels to launch their long-rumored connected television set by the end of 2012. But according to a new report from the sometimes-accidentally-reliable Digitimes, when Apple came knocking for display panels, the big boys all said ‘no.’

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has had an idée fixe about Apple’s so-called iTV for so long that before Steve Jobs said he’d “cracked” the television problem, we actually thought he seemed a bit ridiculous.

In 2012, though, it’s increasingly looking like Munster is right and Apple is planning an entry into the HDTV market. In fact, according to Munster’s own sources, Apple has been contacting major TV component suppliers about securing display panels for the iTV, which he believes will launch by late 2012.

The hope of a new Apple product on the horizon tends to make tech blogs a little fanciful, sometimes even delusional, so it’s hard to fault Techno Buffalo too much for their “exclusive” report that an Apple-made OLED HDTV with Siri functionalities — the much talked about iTV — is coming out “this April, or possibly May at the latest.” Hey, we all get carried away from time to time.

That said, TechnoBuffalo’s report isn’t too be trusted. In fact, it’s total bullshit. Here’s why.

Apple is expected to revolutionize television with a set of its own later this year, and while we’re all expecting the device to feature Siri, there’s very little else we know about it. But according to a relatively new Apple patent, credited to Steve Jobs, it may also feature digital video recording capabilities that allow you to save your favorite shows for viewing at a later date.

John Sculley, a former Apple CEO who was at the helm of the Cupertino company between 1983 and 1993, has no doubts that it can revolutionize the television set. If anyone’s going to change the experience and the “first principles” of TV, Sculley told the BBC in a recent interview, it’s going to be Apple.

With competitors already starting to anticipate Apple’s entrance into the TV market, Samsung has felt the need to clarify its confidence and throw Apple under the bus at the same time.

Philip Newton, Director of Audiovisual for Samsung Australia, told The Sydney Morning Herald that Steve Jobs’s revelation to biographer Walter Isaacson about “finally cracking” the iTV is “nothing new.”

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Want to see at a glance everything that’s wrong with Sony? Look at that monstrosity above. It’s Sony’s new TV remote, and while the Japanese electronics maker prattled on about its wireless capabilities, backlit keyboard and VoIP microphone, the rest of the industry at CES is showing off voice- and gesture- controlled Smart TVs in anticipation of Apple’s entry into the market.

Totally clueless. Sony’s press event on Monday evening was like watching a company that had never even heard of Apple, let alone seen it in the last five years topple Sony’s lead in multiple industries.

Nuance, a speech recognition company that powers Apple’s Siri service, has launched a new voice-controlled platform for television sets called Dragon TV. The service allows you to navigate your way around different content by “speaking channel numbers, station names, show and movie names” using natural language.

It’s everything you’d expect a Siri-powered Apple TV to be.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Like many TV makers at CES, Apple’s rumored entry into the HDTV market was the specter in the room at Samsung’s Monday afternoon press conference. However, unlike other makers who are flailing around blindly trying to add new bullet points to their spec sheets in the face of Apple entering the industry, Samsung’s next-gen Smart TV has a plan… and it’s just compelling enough that you wonder if Samsung has been tipped off on just what the iTV will entail, and is preparing in kind.

The Consumer Electronics Show has officially kicked off here in Las Vegas, and if there’s one thing every Mac fan should go into CES knowing, it’s that the whole television industry is petrified of Apple entering it.

As CEA’s Chief Economist and Director of Research Shaun Dubrovik made clear in his introductory presentation on the trends they expect to see this year at CES 2012, the whole television industry is scrambling. They are all trying to anticipate just what the heck Apple is going to do when they unveil their long rumored television, the iTV.

What are TV makers betting that Apple has up its sleeves? A bezel-less, ultra high resolution TV that runs apps and is controlled by a mixture of gestures and voice control and effortlessly interact with tablets and smartphones.

No wonder they’re scared: no one is better positioned to roll out a next-gen television that does all of the above things than Apple.

Even in the New Year, those iTV rumors just won’t quit. The latest word is that Jony Ive has been working on a 42- to 50-inch Apple television in his secret Cupertino design studio; probably the Siri-controlled Apple HDTV the whole industry has been quaking over for the last few months.