On Apple's unannounced TV

I happen to think that at some point in the next few years, Apple will unveil a television set as a new product category. Or more likely, they'll upgrade their Apple TV product by integrating it into a full-size television.

John Gruber comments on a post by Marco Arment about whether Apple will in fact get into the TV-making business. John doesn't think it will happen:

"The fundamental question Apple always wants an answer for before entering a new market is “Why would someone buy this instead of what’s already out there?” I don’t think there’s a good answer for that if an Apple-branded HDTV is just a big screen with built-in Apple TV functionality."

If an Apple branded TV could replace your Apple TV, DVR, cable set top box, Blu-ray player, and gaming console, I think that's pretty compelling.

Clearly an Apple-branded television could replace my Apple TV; that one's a no-brainer. Check.

So what about my Blu-ray player? Certainly Apple could integrate a Blu-Ray drive into their set. But perhaps they don't need to do that since they have iTunes? But iTunes doesn't have a wide enough selection, nor do they get movies the same time they're out on Blu-Ray, nor do they have the same quality (720p streaming vs. 1080p on Blu-Ray), nor do they have the extra features that most Blu-Ray discs come with. Yes, all of those are problems that could be solved, but they aren't solved yet. Plus there's the fact that a lot of people own Blu-Ray discs and probably don't want to be told they can just rent a movie on iTunes that they've already purchased—iTunes' aforementioned limitations notwithstanding. And finally, unlike compact discs which do not contain any sort of copy protection, security measures on Blu-Ray discs have to be circumvented to rip a movie to your computer, and then you have to store those files somewhere. So people are still likely to own Blu-Ray players. Which means either Apple could consider this an issue they want to solve and include a Blu-Ray player, or they might contend that people would rather just buy a Blu-Ray player on their own and those who don't can rent or buy from iTunes. Or they announce new features to iTunes which bring the experience on-par with what you can get through Blu-Ray. Either way this becomes a non-issue. Check.

So what about a DVR and the cable set top box? TiVo already makes a box that supplants a cable set-top box. You can use the CableCARD standard to receive your cable programming right on your DVR. Apple could write their own DVR software and allow people to pop in a CableCARD. TiVo is great, but Apple could write a much much better DVR application. I love my TiVo, but it's only in comparison to the other crap that's out there from the cable companies. Check.

And finally, what about your gaming console? Apple TV is not a platform that you can officially develop for yet, but it seems inevitable that this will change (or at least it certainly could change). And with it, you've got a gaming console built into your television. You've got a huge iOS developer base and I think it would not take long for that market to explode on this new platform. Check.

Remember when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone and billed it as 3 products?

"An iPod. A phone. And an internet communicator. Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device!"

The same could be true for an Apple-branded television.

But that's not all, either. Apple could also integrate a camera for FaceTime into the television. They could integrate Time Capsule and Airport functionality as well. They could allow you to use your other iOS devices as remote controls. And that's only given what we have today. It's possible and not unlikely that there could be other great affordances which we can't even imagine to legitimize Apple's foray into digital televisions. Before the iPhone was announced, though many speculated Apple was working on a phone, I think very few expected it to be as groundbreaking as it was.

All of this isn't to say that doing these things is completely trivial for Apple, but neither is that the point. Maybe Apple would love to do all this but can't for some reasons I don't know about. Perhaps Apple would rather stick with their $99 Apple TV box, but I don't think that's likely.¹ So something at some point has to change with the Apple TV in its current state, and building a television is one direction Apple could go. Maybe they won't choose that route, but I don't think it will be because they can't answer the question of how to provide enough value in their product.²

¹Steve Jobs has called the Apple TV a hobby by which we're supposed to infer that they're not putting as much at stake with its success as with their iPhone, iPad, and Mac businesses. But it can't stay that way. Either Apple decides that their hobby is over, and at some point kills the Apple TV altogether, or they turn it into a full-sized business. I think the latter is far more likely, but just how that pans out is anyone's (and everyone's) guess. ←

²It might be that there aren't any technological barriers for Apple, but rather some economical ones. If that's the case, it's only a matter of time before those barriers are gone. ←