Steve Jobs at D8 video: on Apple TV, Google TV, and TV in general

By Rene Ritchie
last updated

Steve Jobs, spe thinks TV is a hard go-to-market strategy since they give everyone a heavily subsidized set-top box, which makes it hard to sell them another one -- ask Apple TV, ask Roku, as Google in a few months.

Adding boxes and UIs doesn't work. To change that you need to go back to square one, tear up the box, and redesign it with a consistent UI across functions, and get it to consumer in a way they'll pay for. No way to do that yet.

Apple chose to prioritize phone over TV, tablet over TV, but it didn't matter since they couldn't get TV to market. Not a problem with vision or technology, just going to market.

Also, cable companies are regional, and there's no global standard like GSM is for phones. It's vulcanized.

Rene Ritchie
Rene Ritchie
Contributor

Rene Ritchie is one of the most respected Apple analysts in the business, reaching a combined audience of over 40 million readers a month. His YouTube channel, Vector, has over 90 thousand subscribers and 14 million views and his podcasts, including Debug, have been downloaded over 20 million times. He also regularly co-hosts MacBreak Weekly for the TWiT network and co-hosted CES Live! and Talk Mobile. Based in Montreal, Rene is a former director of product marketing, web developer, and graphic designer. He's authored several books and appeared on numerous television and radio segments to discuss Apple and the technology industry. When not working, he likes to cook, grapple, and spend time with his friends and family.

10 Comments
  • re: set top box comment "redesign it with a consistent UI across functions"
    What about Windows Media Centre. Consistent UI across all functions - one box - extensible, flexible, consistent.
    Why don't Apple do something similar for Mac? A Mac Mini running OSX with a real TV / DVR / Music / Photos 10 foot interface would be marketable. I'd buy one for sure. Especially with a choice of TV tuners (at least 2).
    Well Steve? We're waiting...
  • Interestingly, in the UK, the BBC's Project Canvas is attempting to do exactly this — establish a common standard between broadcasters for all sorts of IPTV and rich broadcast systems. A previous attempt was blocked by the BBC Trust, as it was more like a system for syndicating content, whereas the Canvas is a proposed standard rather than a system. It'll be interesting to see where this goes.
  • @Whealsie:
    I think you didn't get his point. He's not talking about a 'cool second device', but a standard that gives you ONE remote to ONE device (name it TV 2.0) with a designed from scratch functionality that dos what any other 'attached device' would do, as in this 'TV 2.0' it maks sense that we have a lot of capabilities enabled by default.
    It is almos like re-doing 'NTSC', re-thinking the whole 'TV Standard' thing, from what do we do to deliver the signal to what can we do wih the signal in the 'Playback Device' (read Television = TV 2.0 Player) so we could enter a completelly new standard, this time, taking into account all new factors that came in since 1950 wich, approx., was the last time these decisions were taken.
    So that's more like it.
    Maybe then, that's impractical, and someone else has to build a big 'HUB' to add all those existing 'devices' and distribute this new 'signal' into a new 'TV 2.0 Device' that, for example, could be a Windows Media Center, or whatever. But then, that device, would be, in fact, 'Your TV'.
  • Maybe that's what his new 'Data Center' is in the end: A big 'HUB', given that he gets everyone to agree in the when and how to re-distribute to... Apple TV 2.0!
  • "Also, cable companies are regional, and there’s no global standard like GSM is for phones. It’s vulcanized."
    Sorry, but I couldn't let this pass. The word you wanted was Balkanized, not vulcanized.
  • Thanks Teacher Mike. I was just going to ask for an urban definition of vulcanized; it doesn't mean what Steve implied.
  • he said Balkanized....
  • Interesting comments
    Ryanrichypoor_uk123@yahoo.co.uk
  • Rene can't get enough of Jobs face so he did 200 screen grabs and flooded the blog with them. Hahaha.
  • "...and get it to consumer in a way they’ll pay for. No way to do that yet."
    That's where GoogleTV may have an advantage over previous iterations. Remember, nobody thought Android would go anywhere because Google wasn't charging for it. They were wrong. Wall Street analysts didn't understand Google's business model when it IPL'd. And they too were wrong.
    My point is that everyone's looking at this from a traditional viewpoint as opposed to Google's; or at the very least trying to make Google's model fit into the traditional.
    It will be interesting to see how this shakes out. Android worked. Selling Nexus-One independent of carriers and only over the internet didn't. So we shall see.