Apple is rumored to be teaming up with a major TV maker to sell Apple-branded TVs in the fall.
According to DailyTech, citing a former Apple executive, Apple’s TVs will be sold through Apple’s retail stores and will “blow Netflix and all those other guys away.”
We’ve heard this one before. So often, in fact, I’m inclined to roll my eyes. The TV business is hyper-competitive and hard.
But Apple has a big new technology that might make all the difference:
AirPlay.
According to DailyTech, the iOS-powered displays will combine the Apple TV + iTunes in one box — a television set.
Apple has been rumored for years to be making a TV — it’s a major industry set to be disrupted. Apple’s latest Apple TV has done failry well, selling millions of units, but Steve Jobs still describes it as a “hobby.”
Regarding the TV industry, here is what Steve Jobs said last year at AllThingsD:
Q: Is it time to throw out the interface for TV? Does television need a new human interface.
A: The problem with innovation in the TV industry is the go-to-market strategy. The TV industry has a subsidized model that gives everyone a set top box for free. So no one wants to buy a box. Ask TiVo, ask Roku, ask us… ask Google in a few months. The television industry fundamentally has a subsidized business model that gives everyone a set-top box, and that pretty much undermines innovation in the sector. The only way this is going to change is if you start from scratch, tear up the box, redesign and get it to the consumer in a way that they want to buy it. But right now, there’s no way to do that….The TV is going to lose until there’s a viable go-to-market strategy. That’s the fundamental problem with the industry. It’s not a problem with the technology, it’s a problem with the go-to-market strategy….I’m sure smarter people than us will figure this out, but that’s why we say Apple TV is a hobby.
The big difference now is that Apple has a killer technology that allows Apple to bypasses the cable carriers: AirPlay.
AirPlay is Apple’s go-to-market strategy. AirPlay could be the value-add that convinces consumers to buy an Apple-branded TV.
Apple will continue to distribute content through iTunes and The App Store. Customers’ iPhones, Macs and iPads will be the portals to content (bypassing the cable companies’ set-top boxes), allowing them to play their own content — or Hollywood’s — on the big screen via AirPlay built in.
The App Store will serve up TV shows, movies, videos and music, as well as new classes of apps like games and living-room oriented stuff we haven’t seen yet.
Apple already has a huge entertainment ecosystem. With this in place, an Apple-branded TV doesn’t seem so farfetched. Anyone disagree?
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
