Apple TV (Set)

I don't generally make product predictions, but today I'm going to.

The web these days is abuzz with rumors of an Apple TV set. Not the Apple TV set-top box we know today -- an honest-to-goodness 50-inch piece of glass. My thought on that idea so far has been No way. Every company should consistently ask itself "What can we be the best in the world at?" Apple is very good at answering that question and at following through with an implementation of exactly that thing and nothing else. Apple's model is to (1) control the integration of their products in order to (2) create a premium user experience, and as a result of these things to (3) drive margins. This model doesn't make sense when it comes to TVs as we know them today, because the user experience (picture quality during a movie) and component costs (huge frickin' LCD) are driven almost entirely by things Apple is not the best suited to control. Can they make a TV screen that is so much better than Samsung's that people will immediately see Avatar playing on that thing and say, "Wow, you got that from Apple!" No. And without that perception, they certainly can't charge a premium price -- LCD TVs are already extremely expensive. Can they do the opposite: source the components so much more cheaply than the incumbents that they can redefine the price points, as they did with the iPad? Not likely, and unless they also redefine the category, as they simultaneously did with iPad, a discount price would risk eroding their brand in any case.

There's the crux: redefining the category. That's where two things I've read or heard recently clicked for me.


1. The advent of Thunderbolt/Light Peak means that Apple no longer needs to provide spacious boxes that people can add cards and drives to. Think about a product line in which every model is the size and shape of a Mac Mini. (...Or an Apple TV, for that matter, or a Time Capsule -- all about the same size and shape. Ruminate on that.) The only difference is what comes inside the box from the factory; future upgrades always happen outside.

2. In a recent episode of The Talk Show, Adam Lisagor mentions that the TV is sort of un-Apple: the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and the new MacBook Air are all intensely personal. They follow us around. The TV, on the other hand, just sits there in your house, and you leave it behind for most of the day. My immediate thought was, "Just like your desktop computer."

The point is, you don't need something called a "TV". You need a big screen in your house to watch movies on. In the future, where will your movies live? On your computer. You also need a sort of command center: one box to rule them all, to sync all your other devices and to store all of your files, not just the ones you're taking with you at a given time. That would also be your computer.

So what you really need is one of two things:

1. If you want a stationary computer in your house, you will want to connect that directly to a large screen. See the iMac. See a future Mac with Pro power in a pint-sized package. Watch your movies on that. What's a TV?

2. If you're completely mobile, you will want a large detached screen that can access the media that's on your laptop, wherever your laptop happens to be at the moment. That bridge between the mobile computer and the stationary screen had better be cheap, because you already laid out cash for the gadgets on either side of it. See Apple TV. As Lisagor says, "That's why it's called 'Apple TV' -- because that is your TV."

It's not about whether Apple will or will not release a TV set. Apple doesn't have to, because the TV set will be irrelevant.