I merely tolerate my living room TV set (I’m a Sony man the way I was a Nokia man before June 29, 2007) but I love my Apple TV—I love that I can unplug it in 1.5 seconds from my hunk of shit and bring it to my grandma’s house and plug it into her hunk of shit and we can watch movies.
There's talk of an Apple TV (not just the "cable box," but the actual TV set) in the works. At least one analyst said he's seen some data points in China suggesting a late-2011 release of such a product.
What would it look like? Maybe a clean pane of touch screen glass, with no border? What size will it be? How much will it cost? There's certainly no dearth of questions. But the real question: Is it real?
Of course, nobody knows. There's a good deal of naysayers who believe that the product would be too far out of the bounds of what Apple is good at -- it would require a lot more storage space; it's a highly commoditized market; Apple's price point would relegate it to selling to only true fanboys; etc.
That's all true. However, I think Apple will release a TV set, and do it the way it entered the smartphone market -- acting as though it was the first on the scene.
There certainly is plenty of room for innovation for Apple to build a product that blows away the entire crowd. Imagine a TV that is built to work with any cable/satellite provider, with no additional hardware. Imagine a TV that can control the cable service, the TV and the audio all from one integrated remote that has fewer than 20 buttons. Imagine a TV preloaded with all of the awesomeness of the current Apple TV, and that would allow the instant download of content and games that could be played from the integrated controller.
These are just the innovations that I can think of. Lord knows Apple can do a lot better than even that. And I believe they will -- soon.
