All you want to know about the new Apple TV

by tomek • August 31, 2010 August 31, 2010 in News

[image: fastcompany.com]

It wasn’t too long ago when we heard from Steve that he had NO IDEA on how to succeed in the television market. Any chance it has just changed? Apple’s special event is set for September 1^st and what the world expects to be unveiled in San Francisco that day is an updated, upgraded, renamed, rebuilt, rethought, revamped, refreshed or completely new, long-romored, long-awaited, magic, revolutionary, shiny — Ladies and Gentleman — the new Apple TV. Well, maybe not the whole world, there are those skeptics who ask if Apple is really going to announce a TV gadget at an event with a guitar on the invitation. Pessimists aside, now, when everyone on this planet seems to have its own opinion on what is going to happen on Wednesday and when every little website in the cyberspace has its own rumor on the next Apple’s TV device, let’s sum up the most important ones. Here is a comprehensive list of what has been lately said about the new Apple TV.

General

Engadget: new Apple TV called iTV: $99, A4 CPU, iOS, 16GB of flash storage, cloud-based storage, new iTunes streaming services, AppStore, no 1080p, quite small device with a scarce amount of ports (only the power socket and video out), “an iPhone without a screen”
DigiTimes: “Apple is set to launch a new Apple TV using AMD’s Fusion solution and will not include a hard drive. The new device will adopt a user interface similar to the iPhone with support for social networking websites, network multimedia and the App Store.
Kevin Rose: “From what I hear we should expect to see the iTV launch in September”
Jason D. O’Grady on ZDNet: “iTV would no longer be a hard drive based setop box, but rather a live streaming device. Think of it as a combo iPad docking station and Airport Express with an HDMI port out the back.”
AppleInsider via Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros.: “The biggest potential change to the forthcoming Apple TV refresh is the move to an ARM architecture processor running the same iOS software that powers the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. (…) The new Apple TV will have access to the App Store.”
Gene Munster: Apple could offer an $1,800 to $2,000 “all-in-one Apple television solution that would replace the current amalgam of set-top boxes, Blu-ray players, PVRs, cables, game consoles and TVs in a typical home.
Bloomberg: “Steve Jobs will rather focus on the ability for customers to watch TV shows and movies on their iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches, says a person familiar with the plan. The company will announce that customers can rent many TV shows for 99 cents.”

Name

Engadget: Apple will be officially changing the name of the device to iTV (that was the name of the Apple TV when it was originally announced by the company)
AllNewsMac: Lawyers looking into Apple TV name change as ‘iTV’ is already taken

Hardware

Engadget: A4 CPU, no hard drive, 16GB of flash storage, only 720p support, only the power socket and video out ports
DigiTimes: AMD’s Fusion CPU, no hard drive

Storage

Engadget: cloud-based storage, Time Capsule as an external storage component
Rose: picture and video sharing feature powered by MobileMe

OS

Engadget: iOS
Business Insider: How will Apple’s touch based operating system work on a TV screen that will not be touch based?

Content

Engadget: new iTunes streaming services
Engadget: iTunes streaming video service coming soon? (“A new Apple iTunes customer survey lists “Titles are available to watch instantly” as a reason you might totally love watching video on the iPad. This could be a big hint that instant streaming is coming quite soon.”)
Bloomberg: Apple Said to Prepare 99-Cent TV Shows (“Apple is in advanced talks with News Corp. to let iTunes users rent TV shows for 99 cents. Viewers would be able to rent programs from Fox for 48 hours. CBS, NBC and Walt Disney also are in talks about joining the effort.”)
Rose: Expect to see an iPhone/Pad like marketplace for television applications. Video sharing/streaming/recording apps, interactive news apps, and of course games.
Rose: a la carte (app) stations “With Apple’s iAds, content producers (eg. ABC/NBC/etc.) can directly monetize and distribute their content. This will eventually destroy the television side of the cable and satellite industry.”
David Gewirtz on ZDNet: FaceTime could be Apple’s iTV killer app (“You no longer just have little tiny screens talking to little tiny screens — you can have grandma on the couch, talking to Baby Biff in his crib.”)
Hardmac: Apple working on a new video format (“The ultimate goal for Apple would be to promote this new format to support 4 K video – up to 4096×2160.”)
Macworld: Apple could let third-parties deliver the video content to the ATV (“So the next Apple TV becomes another iOS device that uses third-party apps. If Netflix or Hulu or ABC or NPR or whoever wants to get its content on the device, it simply makes a compatible app for it.”)
new media age: Cloud-based iTunes “Apple purchased cloud-based music service Lala last year only to close it, prompting speculation that it will incorporate the online music streaming service into iTunes.”
Apple Insider: Apple’s potential Web-based iTunes will be ‘social, not streaming’ (“Apple may reveal a “big overhaul” of its iTunes Music Store next week, likely to be a lightweight Web version, but the service will not be updated to allow users to stream their content from the cloud.”)

Controller

Rose: The iPad will turn into one big badass remote control (“Imagine watching monday night football on the TV while viewing/exploring other camera angles on the iPad.”)
Jason D. O’Grady on ZDNet: 7-inch iPad like touch device (iTV Pad)
Venomous Porridge: An iPhone without the screen (“It’s the love child of an iPod touch and a Magic Trackpad. It has the same inertial and gyroscopic motion sensors as the iPhone 4, and the same multitouch surface we’re familiar with. A home button. Bluetooth. No screen.”)
The Russians Used a Pencil: “Apple would never require a user to have an iPhone / iPad in order to use their Apple TV.” Other options: 1) Apple Remote, 2) Bluetooth Keyboard and Trackpad, 3) Game Controller

Games

Bloomberg via Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros.: “Apple TV could be a popular, low-cost game console for people who don’t care about running the most cutting-edge, graphics intensive games.
Macworld: an iOS Apple TV could take a chunk out of the huge game-console market (“I know more than a few people who’d be happy to spend $200 or so on a system that doesn’t require you to spend $30 to $50 a pop for “family” games that are matched, both in visuals and gameplay, by $1 to $5 games for iOS.”)
Macworld: “Provide an Apple TV that can play high-resolution games—with surround sound, an HDMI connection, and hardware controllers, yet—and you’ve got a fairly formidable hunk of hardware sitting next to your TV.”

Price

Engadget: $99
Jason D. O’Grady on ZDNet: By integrating the existing engineering from the Airport Express and scaling down the iPad technology (no need for Retina display, nor do you need 10 hours of battery life, or even 64 GB of storage) Apple could easily deliver a TV solution for $249.
Mark Sigal on his blog: The $99 price tag implies one of three paths for Apple TV: 1) Limited Storage, cloud dependency path, 2) getting to $99 via Subsidy, as is the case with iPhone, 3) running on top of the Mac Mini as a $99 software add-on, with the user being able to choose between a $69 Magic Trackpad, a $200 iPod touch, a $99 iPhone or $500 iPad as the controller

Release date

Rose: September
Bloomberg: September 1st
MacDailyNews: “Multiple” sources say that Apple’s busy prepping telesales employees for a new product that will be “huge” or “very big” and coming in “October”
DigiTimes: Mass production of the device will start in December.”

Other interesting thoughts on Apple TV and IPTV

NYT: In the Living Room, Hooked on Pay TV
CNET: Content kings control the future of IPTV
Associated Press: Apple’s 99-cent TV show idea is no game changer
ZDNet: Apple, Google TV: Does Pay as You Go Make Dollars and Sense?
LA Times: Murdoch may be key to Apple’s plan to offer 99-cent digital rentals of TV shows
Game Theory: How App TV Disrupts the Console Industry