This is exactly what Microsoft has been building towards with the Xbox. The espn app on there is fantastic, and just added the ability to watch two events in split screen, while watching a customized news/score crawl at the bottom of the screen. You can invite friends to watch with you, and participate in quizzes relevant to the game you are watching. All this with Kinect voice support too. It feels pretty damn futuristic. And now they've announced apps for exactly the kind of services the article talks about: HBO Go, SyFy, Comcast On-Demand, etc. Add in the fact that it's already a game console, and I'd say they are closer to creating a central media hub than anyone else.
Haven't used the Xbox experience so I can't really say, but it seems like this could be another situation where Apple doesn't create an entirely new concept, but rather brings it to the masses simply and beautifully. I'd sure rather have an Apple experience when it came to TV
I just watched the rugby world cup at a friends house where the TV had a volume bar that honestly looked like a sperm. Wiggly tail and everything. It's not that Apple will get it right, it's that they'll do it less wrong.
It's interesting the players that will likely fight for the TV space - Apple, Google, Microsoft... and maybe Amazon. I wonder if Facebook has thought about it, or if they're just provide the social graph and friend activity on top of Apple/Google/Microsoft's own operating system for the next generation TV.
And these apps work well. There is some varying quality, but in the same way you see varying quality of apps in any store - Apple's included - or the quality of content, which is out of any "gatekeeper's" interest to control. An App Store that allows fart apps will be the same that allow "fart TV shows".
What makes me a little bit sad is that 3 years from now, you will hear how "Apple revolutionized yet another industry", when what happened was just them using their immense weight to corner another market and executing on an already established model. Hardly innovative.
I agree that this is the direction Apple will probably take, but I'm not sure I like it.
When I sit down on the couch my brain thinks "I want to watch The Walking Dead" not "I want to watch AMC's The Walking Dead."
Think of how poor the interface would be on the TiVo if, instead of show titles, you were presented first with folders of television networks to select from.
We may start seeing shows as apps, not channels as apps. So I can get The Walking Dead app, or the Battlestar Galactica app.
Television networks are like book publishers. They're not really needed anymore when content creators can sell their stuff directly to a willing audience.
This is why search needs to be a huge component of a successful product in this area. For Google, it's their tried-and-true search bar. For Apple, it seems like Siri is their entry point.
The problem isn't the networks, it's the infrastructure owners. They don't want to sell commodity bits through a dumb pipe, they want to provide premium content bundles.
I imagine Apple aggregating all the TV channel shows into a TV guide sort of interface, nothing to different than current cable offerings. So, it'll be very similar in experience. Just turn on TV and you'll see all the channels playing (all your channels at top and then other channels following). Choose what you want to watch, bam... you're watching it. The added benefit, is that you'll be able to watch past content somehow. Maybe it'll track your favorite shows and automatically show you all past shows you haven't watched as well. There's lots of possibilities. But I think whatever Apple does, they'll want to improve on the current TV experience, not degrade it.
I've never used Tivo but I do navigate to AMC to watch The Walking Dead on my cable box.
I'd agree that the situation is not ideal but I wonder how much Siri would play into this considering the NY Times report of integration of Siri and an Apple television.
I'm not sure I entirely understand his answer, but he seems to be saying that they can't innovate on the hardware because it's too commoditized and subsidized, so an innovative product can't be priced competitively. They can't partner with an entity providing the subsidy, as they did with AT&T, because there is no one entity big enough to make it worthwhile. And there is no way to connect to all the providers, without putting a set-top box in the middle, which is exactly what they are trying to avoid.
Here is Isaacson's "I cracked it" quote:
“‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”
What exactly did he crack? What will make the iTV so appealing that consumers will now be willing to pay a premium for it? He mentions a new user interface, as well as iCloud, which did not exist (publicly) at the time of the D8 interview. But what about the global connectivity issue? Are they just betting that people will give up cable TV for apps + itunes + icloud + magical interface? Or is there something else in there?
Software defined demodulators could solve this problem, just like software defined radio is now solving the problem of disparate wireless standards (e.g. for emergency responders). The A5 shows that Apple isn't afraid of application-specific processing units. iTV just ships with the correct dongle.
> Are they just betting that people will give up cable TV?
Gruber's article makes a lot of sense. TV content providers are already creating iOS apps, so why not pull them altogether into a Newstand-like app folder called iTV. And that would appear on your Apple TV as well.
Apple could also differentiate from Free TV "Channel" apps and Paid ones in the Appstore. Free channels apps would monetize through commercials. The paid ones would be subscription like HBO, etc. The TV channels could monetize even better because there's a direct relationship with the customer/viewer and they can target ads more specifically (location, demographic, age, gender, interests, etc).
In the end, Apple's new TV will be just a screen giving the user access to "channels" which will be apps.
Also, the apps might have two interfaces: one for iPad/iPhone (or separate) and also one for the iTV. The iTV interface will be really simple and will list out all your TV apps and what's playing or what's popular recently.
You could spin this further. Me thinks SJ might have been wrong with his analogy of "trucks" and PCs. Perhaps instead, TVs will become the center of processing power and memory/state in the home, with tablets/phones, in combination with an external keyboard, accessing the power like terminals used to in the 70s, except the mainframe is now in your living room instead of n km away. That would also require a unified OS so it's not one or two generations away. Still, this could be something to think about...
No, Microsoft tried to push things this way with their home media server in the early 00s, but it is too complicated for normal people (non hackers) to administrate. So everything is going to the cloud.
Your solution would be great if bandwidth didn't exponentially increase each year.
Where in the US is bandwidth increasing exponentially each year? Can you name even a single residential neighborhood in the US that has had significant increases in available broadband speed in two consecutive years? FTTN/FTTH services are still pretty rare, and basically nobody has the choice between multiple such services. If you've got a choice between DOCSIS 3 and VDSL, you're in a very special market.
(And it should go without saying that cellular ISPs aren't an option for a multi-user household.)
Also found this on Wikipedia (not saying it's exponential here but still supports my point):
>In 1998, all of the United States backbone networks had utilized the slowest data rate of 45 Mbit/s. However the changing technologies allowed for 41 percent of backbones to have data rates of 2,488 Mbit/s or faster by the mid 2000's.
Nielsen's law is basically saying that the highest available bandwidth anywhere increases exponentially. That doesn't mean that any one customer gets an exponential increase, or that the majority of customers get any increase at all. And backbone capacity increases don't help unless they significantly outpace the growth in the number of subscribers.
This all seems reasonable to me, but I'm not sure this is the full meaning of the "I finally cracked it" remark.
I know Steve was enthusiastic about the moment when he could see something that finally met his standards, but he also wanted to see all the details come together before being confident in something. When I read that quote, I thought that must mean that Apple has a fairly complete prototype experience that Steve was satisfied with. So I think this aspect could be at the core of what having "cracked it" means but it means more than that.
For another view on the Apple TV's near future, here are my thoughts on this topic from a month back, focusing more on the fact that apps are not going to be remarkable in their form yet still have the power to powerfully disrupt the massive cable industry: http://www.quora.com/What-apps-can-we-expect-for-Apple-TV/an...
By now I have come to believe the TV-set approach is for real. Dan Frommer's argument from yesterday is compelling and input switching is so awful that it may be the biggest opportunity to relieve consumer pain. Reworking the TV set looks more and more like a highly strategic and experience-changing way to put all of Apple's advantages to bear on this apps-as-channels approach.
I think "I finally cracked it" means that he finally discovered a way to get TV content directly to the view without the cable stations getting in the way. He described the problem in his Walt Mossberg interview @ AllThingsD conference in 2010, I think. He basically said the TV problem is very challenging and he doesn't have a solution because the cable companies control the viewing experience for the user, and Apple would be stuck with just adding another device onto the TV but wouldn't be able to really disrupt much (ie., current Apple TV as a hobby). SJ finally cracking it probably means he found a way to circumvent the cable companies... thus, apps as a means to directly give TV to users. But not just apps, but probably some kind of aggregation of TV shows from all the TV apps out there to provide a new interface/experience with all the content available, so you don't need a cable subscription anymore.
Steve Jobs has commented on how to disrupt the TV market before. Here is the transcript of the relevant parts:
"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, or for $10 per month That pretty much squashes any opportunity for innovation, because nobody’s willing to buy a set top box. Ask TiVo, ask Roku, ask us…ask Google in a few months. The only way that’s ever going to change is if you can really go back to square one, tear up the set top box, redesign it from scratch with a consistent UI across all these different functions, and get it to consumers in a way that they’re willing to pay for it. And right now there’s no way to do that.
The TV is going to lose until there’s a better — until there’s a viable — go to market strategy. Otherwise you’re just making another Tivo. It’s not a problem with technology, not a problem with vision, it’s a fundamental go to market problem. And then it not like there’s a GSM standard where you build a phone for the US and it also works in all these other countries. No, every single country has different standards, different government approvals, it’s very…Tower of Bableish. No, balkanized. I’m sure smarter people than us will figure this out, but that’s why we say Apple TV a hobby; that’s why we use that phrase."
For video see the section on, "On Apple TV and why television is balkanized:"
I've blogged about this subject before as well, but I'll include my thoughts here as well:
"Content producers like TV studios and stations control the entire TV industry because they control the content. They’ve created this market where customers pay for the content (subsidized by commercials) and get the hardware for free. But by getting the hardware for free, they’ve stifled any innovation and advancement downstream from content production.
Only through the magic of open-source software has innovation happened. XBMC is an amazing piece of software and is getting easier and easier to use very day. At the same time, downloading TV is now easier than ever and still getting easier. It’s only a matter of time before someone makes the 'Napster for TV shows.' People are already dropping their cable for Hulu and Netflix."
Throw Siri into the mix and it could be really cool. While watching a baseball game, just ask Siri questions about stats. "Siri, what is Albert Pujols' lifetime batting average with two outs and the bases loaded?"
Google had the best idea. Just search for the show you want to watch, don't worry about the source. Unfortunately, big media companies – in their infinite shortsightedness – decided to torpedo the project.
By contrast, the app solution would be totally voluntary on the part of the content owners, but less elegant.
It would also mean that your access to content would be even more subject to corporate whims than they are now. Say a bug was introduced into the ESPN app. Now suddenly you've missed a quarter of the season because ESPNs app programmers couldn't post a patch fast enough. Or the PBS app gets taken down due to a patent infringement case and you miss the airing of the Prohibition documentary.
I'm not sure that's true. There are two types of video content right now:
1) Ad supported
2) Pay per episode or subscription
Unless Google tries to block the ads or take an outsized cut of the episode or subscription fee, the content providers are no worse off than with Apple's current or proposed solution.
Edit: Outside of YouTube, the ads shown before videos online are one of the few places Google does not seem to have a near monopoly online. In my experience, most of the ads seem to be for cars and insurance companies and controlled by the website owner themselves (Hulu, Comedy Central, NBC, ESPN3).
Yeah, networks would stick annoying stuff and ads around the borders. They're already insufferable the way they put intrusive, animated ads for their other shows at the bottom of the screen.
I still think Apple-brand smart TVs have an inherent problem, in that people won't want to upgrade them very often compared to other devices (they're basically electronic furniture), so there'll be a lot of outdated hardware out in the market.
It's much easier to get people to upgrade a $100 add-on for their current TV.
Exactly. Apple could make the same (win-win) deal they made with the mobile carriers: Let us completely control the user experience, while you get to charge extra for a premium i(Phone|TV) plan and lock in your customers for two year contracts.
In the TV case, it also solves a big problem for the cable/fiber companies, in that they know IP will be enough for everyone in a few years (and is already enough for more and more subscribers) but it will be hard to suddenly start charging $100/mo for "just Internet" when they had been charging $40. The new "iTV" plan won't be a TV or Internet plan, it will be a unified plan. It won't matter how you consume your content, the cable company will get their piece.
That's interesting. My cable TV bill is about the same as my mobile phone bill, and it's not subsidizing any gear. And they call me about once a week with some upsell long-term contract "deal". Maybe it should be subsidizing something. Profits in their industry are about as obscene as in mobile.
Would seem very wasteful to be chuck a 40/50inch/whatever TV in trash/rubbish every 2 years just because it doesn't run the latest software. Whilst phones have a history of that, TV has the best part of century without it.
Depending on what Apple's vision is for SmartTV functionality the A5 or A6 platform can last the life-time of 1080P HDTVs. It will be more like gaming consoles than phones/tablets/computers that are more open ended in their functionality. A SmartTV is a less versatile device. All you really need is the horse power to playback video & games at 1080P and the ability to do other interactive features. That won't change radically over the lifetime of the device. I guess the next big jump would be to 4K displays with an A14 (or whatever) platform to go with it. I could also see the add-on Apple TV continuing as a separate product for various reasons. (I don't see Apple making a projector so... I hope so at least)
I guess the problem is that I think people will want and expect parity between apps on the TV and apps on their phone and iPad. If the TV lags behind the iPad and iPhone, that could hamper the kinds of apps that could be developed for the iTV.
Of course this assumes that Apple opens up the iTV for app developers, not just for media companies who want channel apps.
That may be why Apple has waited this long. Once you hit a certain level of performance (say a hypothetical A6 with a quad core processor, 1GB of RAM, and a very fast GPU) there's going to be diminishing returns with subsequent upgrades. We are probably pretty close to that point now. The GPU would probably be the biggest concern if they want to take on Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. (A6 paired with a discrete GPU?)
It could come in two parts, one replaceable. It makes sense if for some reason, the display part needs to be integrated more than with an HDMI cable. I think the remote control experience alone would justify it.
On the surface it does seem unlike Apple to release a two part unit, but I could see it being sort of like the Macbooks and Cinema displays. The display is plugged into the wall and then there is just one cable that has data/video and power for the external processing unit. When it's time to upgrade the processing unit you just unplug a single cable and swap it out. The display part would be expected to last through at least a couple upgrades of the processing unit.
I see why he's saying this, but I hope he's wrong. Apps as channels / shows have many of the drawbacks of magazines/weblogs as apps rather than web sites or RSS feeds: lack of standardization and feature lists driven by publisher goals rather than user needs.
If some new way of sharing / discussing shows comes out, and we have to wait for each channel to add it to their app, it won't happen. Similarly, there will be less incentive to build innovative solutions for watching video if the content stream are trapped within a million different apps.
Imagine if you had to download a different app for each web site you wanted to view a video on. Bleah.
Apple could gather all the content streams from all the TV apps into the main iTV app. You can go their for all your listings and channels. But when you play an individual show, it would launch the show on your TV and then launch the app on your iOS device so you can interact and participate within the app. If you don't have a TV hooked up, you watch it within the launched app and interact there as well.
Reuse of widgets doesn't constitute useful standardization. And content producers don't tend to want to standardize their interfaces - they want to differentiate from their competitors, not resemble them.
Will these apps publish their metadata in a way that third party apps can access and manage the content? Imagine if we had "reader apps" instead of web sites that you could scrape or grab RSS feeds from... it would be like the old AOL / CDROM days.
Um, yeah, I don't think we're going from broadcast/cable we have now to something like the web sites with RSS feeds. If by standardization, you mean open standard, that's not happening.
I ask for this disruption everyday, but the resistance from cable companies is so strong 'cause they make so much money leasing boxes and locking people into 2 year contract bundles along with exclusive sports packages.
There's something more important here than just controlling a TV with a fancy box. With modern digital TV's literally being about as good as a big monitor, and decent computers being small and cheap, it's just moving computing to the more comfortable chairs in the living room. Google and Apple have both realized this, and in the last few years a few TV manufacturers have made halting attempts at the same.
Except the software we can run on these has access to (theoretically) a vast streaming library of content with a robust, mature distribution channel and gigantic data pipes.
But I think it's only a little bit of time before these devices simply become part of game consoles. The Wii probably has the best nascent take on this (even calling apps, "channels").
Of course, but as you should know by know, nothing is ever innovative, revolutionary or even noteworthy if it doesn't come from Apple. At least as far as DF and "tech" sites like it are concerned.
I find this particularly ironic, given that Google TV with the Market (and apps like Al Jazeera that do exactly what the article describes) came out today. There isn't even a mention of this anywhere on his site.
I think the gist of DF et al isn't that no one ever does it until Apple does it, but that no one ever does it right until Apple does it. Which I find myself agreeing with about ~70% of the time. Apple is rarely first or on the cutting edge, spec-wise, but they're almost always 2-10 years ahead of everyone else in terms of UX.
Well of course you are right about that, but I don't think that's the gist of it. Not entirely. There's also the insistence that where Apple was first or on the cutting edge, it is a mortal sin for others to copy. That's the ugly part. That's the dissonance I see when reading these sites.
Here is a riddle: Why is that the case? Could it be because no one cares about Google TV? Hm? Maybe that’s the reason?
Ability means nothing. Apple is where it is because its products actually work with consumers. That’s the nut Apple (and Google) has to crack. The big picture matters (Maybe apps on the TV is the right answer?) and details matter (What kind of content can you get?).
All your talk about ideas and ability won’t help there.
I would rather skip the "app per channel" and have Apple develop the base app with each content provider providing a plug-in. This would allow navigation and search consistency while allowing content providers a chance to do their branding.
You can have both. Each TV channel has it's own app, but also links in to Apple's TV server through APIs to publish it's channels shows. Apple aggregates all the content into one app that becomes that main interface for the TV.
Remember that a key part of the TV experience for much/most of the audience is the brain-dead-simple "turn on, zone out" experience. Pick a channel and see what it feeds you. Background noise. "Here we are now, entertain us." When a show ends, just roll right on to the next one.
Apps are great for a smart interactive experience when you want it. TV per se isn't.
I use to be like that. But I found that once I cancelled cable, my habits changed, and now I prefer to watch exactly what I've been looking forward to. Although not everyone will accept that change.
Three years into no cable here. However I probably watch more TV now, it's just only EXACTLY what I want to watch. With my MythTV dvr and Ted, I don't miss a thing.
HGTV and Food network were my time sucks, hours ago by before you notice.
Not quite. DVRs enhance the brain-dead viewing experience by queueing up what someone wants to watch, more than they can in a sitting. Now that constant video stream is what they want, not just a tolerable channel.
So far I have yet to see an app (or equivalent) which will run a constant stream of what someone wants to see with a broad mix and minimal setup. If we can get the DVR equivalent on a mobile or set top box, there's the win.
I saw a stat (it was cited but I can't find it) that 30% of all TV watching is not live and that was across _all_ age groups, I couldn't imagine how high that number is for 20, and 30 something's.
I think this is underselling what Apple's TV is likely to be. Cable TV is not an industry going down the tubes, it's raking in the dough.
I doubt Jobs was aiming to disrupt the cablecos or content producers so he needs to add value to the chain. A better remote/navigation ui isn't enough.
Sigh. And this is why when I actually need a piece of software that serves an actual purpose from the App Store, all I can get is brands and not pieces of software with actual functionality.
Have I explained how much I hate the world any time in the last hour?
I'm so glad that the goofy RPN calculator on my iPad is now considered in the same general class of things as CNN and BBC. This won't make future analysis of the software business at all shallow or ridiculous.
I was hoping the Wii would go in this direction. The Wii has one of the best 20-foot interfaces, imho - channels are distinct, recognizable, and dynamically updatable; you can quickly scan several at once; selection is intuitive; you're not limited by a directional pad for input.
It would be great if Wii channels included broadcast/cable channels (either streaming or on demand or both).
Gruber is writing this article in the same day Google TV 2.0 with channels-as-apps is unveiled, and he doesn't even mention it? In the mean time he makes us believe that he just came up with the idea about this from Apple. Right, Gruber.
