Apple Television (iTV)

Microsoft's Xbox One, unveiled Tuesday at a special event in Redmond, looks to blur the line between gaming and other forms of entertainment like watching TV. Watching Microsoft demonstrate the capabilities of the new system gave me a sense of déjà vu, because a lot of what Microsoft showed are features that pundits and bloggers would love to see from the heretofore mythical Apple television.

Randomly accurate site Digitimes is reporting the often repeated rumor that Apple is still working on a TV set. The latest rumor surrounds the actual specifications of the TV set which Digitimes sources claim will be 4K. For those that don’t know, 4K or Ultra HD offers two times the horizontal and vertical resolution of the curent 1080p standard giving it a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels; this would equal four times the resolution of 1080p.

Earlier this week, Nat Brown, one of the original Xbox team members at Microsoft, wrote a piece on the present and future of gaming, and Apple's potential to shape it. From iLike.code:

Absent fact, rumors run rampant. It's only natural. Secrecy breeds curiosity, and huge fall releases of almost every product in Apple's lineup leads to speculation about what, if anything, they have left for the new year. The broad strokes are probably obvious -- there'll be new phones and new tablets, but this year we're seeing renewed rumors of bigger and less expensive phones, and of watches and television projects as well. Like any year, we also have major newspapers publishing leaks, and financial analysts reporting nonsense. So what can be made of all of this?

Well, according to people who have provided accurate information to iMore in the past...

Earlier today a financial analyst "reported" that Apple would be holding an Apple TV SDK event sometime in March. We didn't link to it because financial analysts have a lousy track record when it comes to Apple predictions, and whomever they're writing for, it's not media and it's not customers, and I couldn't think of a timely enough way to poke fun at it. However, Jim Dalrymple of The Loop, who has an excellent track record on sorting accurate rumors from nonsensical rubbish, has weighed in.

No spoilers, tap/click on over.

During Apple's Q1 2013 conference call, the Apple Television Rumors That Will Not Die were once again raised with Tim Cook, who smacked them back down hard. However, Cook did announce that they sold 2 million of the current Apple TV, up 60% year-over-year. Cook also dropped all the talking points, including "area of intense interest", "a lot Apple can contribute", and "continue to pull the string".

Prototyping for an Apple television is once again rumored to be underway at Hon Hai (Foxconn). At this early stage, Apple is said to be testing both 46-inch and 55-inch models. Whatever the final product turns out to be, it is not expected to ship before the latter part of 2013, possibly not until 2014.

It seems you can’t read about Apple these days without someone saying that they’re about to make a big splash into the television market. Apple, of course, hasn't and won't pre-announced anything. But that hasn't stopped Wall Street analysts claiming that the company’s TV strategy is flawed. That's right, Apple's unannounced, unreleased, entirely presumed by someone not-Apple, strategy is flawed. But I digress.

For a long time now we've heard Apple has television prototypes in the lab, but nothing even approaching a final design or go-to-market plan for the product. According to the Wall Street Journal, nothing has changed in that regard.