Cloudy with a Chance of Apples
Engadget has rumors of a new Apple TV product refresh that seems to play into a few of the ideas I had for the device after the iPhone OS 4 announcement.
Possibly the most interesting thing is that the report indicates Apple is ditching the Apple TV-specific branch of OS X for the iPhone OS. This is indisputably a good move. Apple TV’s software is still built on 10.4 Tiger, while the Mac has advanced to 10.6 and the iPhone OS branch of OS X is nearly 4 revisions along now. It always struck me as odd that Apple would put so much effort into maintaining a major product on such a legacy platform (by Apple’s standards, anyway) when the newer releases of both OS X and the iPhone OS are so much more capable.
Also interesting (and a point of pride given that I freaking called it!
) is that the Apple TV is moving to Apple’s A4 processor, away from the tremendously underpowered mobile Pentium-era chipset in the current model. Again, this makes considerable sense, because it reduces development expenses and complexity across Apple’s product line. Apple’s done a good job at demonstrating the power and efficiency of their custom silicon through the iPad (and presumably the new iPhone), and leveraging that hardware in another product seems like a given. Apple TV’s form factor and performance needs are much more suited to an ARM chipset than anything from Intel. Hopefully this will also bring the device’s power consumption down to more “environmental checklist”-friendly levels.
Given the paucity of onboard storage space (only 16GB SSD), I think this rumor also dovetails nicely with the rumors of an upcoming cloud-based iTunes service that have been floating around since Apple started building their new North Carolina data center, and which intensified after they bought Lala earlier this year. It’ll be interesting to see how this service ends up working, and whether it will allow users to upload their existing non-iTunes content into the cloud for universal access.
The thing that interests me most about this rumor, though, is the possibility that Apple could open up the Apple TV as a new platform for applications. Depending on how they approach this, it could be as simple as allowing services like Netflix and Hulu to stream their content onto the device through custom apps, or it could be as advanced as a full-on gaming console-type device. I think the “standard” approach would be to limit the device to audio and video playback, with the basic Apple remote for navigation, since that’s what most people would likely be buying one for. However, provided it had a Bluetooth radio in it (and why not?), it wouldn’t be difficult to expand support to more complex inputs such as dedicated controllers – or even iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad inputs – for gaming.
As I mentioned in my iPhone OS 4 post-mortem, Apple has a significant amount of support on their mobile platform for gaming (and now with Steam on the Mac, growing support for gaming on their desktop platform as well, hooray!). Major companies like EA and UbiSoft are developing major titles for the iPhone and iPad. Why not build on that support by expanding from the mobile space into the living room? With additions to the iPhone OS like Game Center, a robust platform for development, high-powered and highly-efficient hardware drawn from the mobile space, and serious support from major publishers, I think Apple could easily leverage their success with the iPhone OS into a major play for the living room by providing a familiar and broadly-supported platform to the masses who have already bought into Apple’s media ecosystem through iTunes.
The one potential sticking point in the gaming arena is the paucity of onboard storage. 16GB isn’t a lot for games designed for the TV, presumably complete with major-platform price points and gameplay length. I sort of hope that Apple differentiates the line-up with larger-capacity devices (up to 64 or 128GB) and supports cloud storage of apps and app data so you can swap out titles as you play them without having to worry about losing your games or your progress.
Will all of this happen? Perhaps, perhaps not. Regardless, the potential is there for Apple to swing straight from their success in mobile computing into a play against Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and now Google for control of the living room, using their experience with the “hobby” of Apple TV as a springboard. If nothing else, ideally the promise of third-party streaming services like Netflix and Hulu will come to pass. Given the rumored $99 price point, that may not happen as Apple may seek to make money off of this device through services rather than the actual hardware, but one never knows. I kind of hope this ends up being the “One More Thing” for the WWDC keynote despite Engadget’s assertion that it won’t be mentioned, because with the next iPhone essentially being a known entity already, it’d be nice if there were something like this to announce and flesh out to retain a certain level of interest and surprise. Assuming Apple plans to open this platform up to developers, WWDC seems like as good a place as any to get the word out – even if it doesn’t ship the product until later this year – so that the device can hit the ground running with a broad range of applications already available for it. I don’t think the iPad approach of scaling existing apps up to fit TV screens is going to work at all for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that TVs aren’t multitouch-compatible. There’s going to need to be a longer lead time on 3rd-party development to build apps that are Apple TV-compatible; existing apps simply won’t translate despite the commonality of the underlying architecture.
Hey, this tech pundit stuff is easy! Why can’t I get paid for it?