Okay Geek Farm
Apple TV Sets now have prototypes according to component supplier
Brandon Davenport
When Steve Jobs passed away early this month, we knew he had left unfinished work behind and sadly, we imagine the majority of that was still in his head. Ideas that will never be brought to life. Something that cought our eye though is some information that had popped up recently, a quote from Steve Jobs in his biography, outlining his plans for a television set.
Quote from Steve Jobs’ Biography
“He very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant,” Isaacson wrote.
Isaacson continued: “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.”
The key point here is, Steve Jobs definitely had plans for a Television set that would firmly place them as a serious competitor in the home theatre market. Maybe this is why they considered Apple TV a hobby. Maybe it was simply a vehicle to perfect the process of serving content to people in the living room, and make deals with content providers.
Prototypes in the works
According to Fortune - “Based on Jan-11 meetings in Asia (not with component suppliers), we believe Apple is investing in manufacturing facilities and securing supply for LCD displays. These displays could range from 3.5” mobile displays to 50” television displays.”
Fortune also states that - “More recently, in Sept-11 we met with a contact close to an Asian component supplier who indicated that prototypes of an Apple television are in the works.”
So it’s pretty clear that Apple is up to something, but there is no considerable amount of concrete evidence to show as to what exactly they’re working on. The TV market is obviously a very established area, and if Apple wants to break into it, they’ll have to create a compelling device that offers everything Apple TV has, but also be able to take set top boxes out of the equation and have a competitive price tag. There is no more information about the “Apple TV Set”, but if you have any more info, feel free to share it in the comments.
