Could Apple Make a TV?

One of the bigger questions about Apple right now is "could Apple make a TV?"

My answer: Yes and no.

"Huh?"

Allow me to explain.

Yes because what they could make would be called a TV, because it would have that kind of functionality built in, much in the same way that an iPhone is called a phone because it has phone functionality built in.

No because, just like the iPhone, a TV made by Apple wouldn't be a TV as we know it so much as it would be a computer that happens to have specialized functionality.

Apple being Apple, any new integrated device they introduce, such as a TV, would run some version of iOS. Not the iOS of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod, but the iOS of the current AppleTV with some modifications for use as a full television instead of an addition to a television.

"How would that work?"

It would be similar to how Apple put the phone functionality of the iPhone in an app, the TV functionality of an Apple-branded TV would be delegated to an app.

How do you fit an app like that into the current AppleTV interface? As I see it, you can just add another column in the main interface, labelled "Apps", with "TV" being one of the built-in apps. I'll get back to the app's function later in the post.

However, people don't want to pay for ever single show they watch. Especially not couch potatoes.

Therefore it would probably be in Apple's best interest to set up some content deals with Hollywood to get access to all of the best networks' TV shows and movies. They already have deals to sell and rent video content but not to stream it all at a fixed monthly cost, à-la Netflix. Not yet, so far that we know, anyway.

For sports, Apple's already shown the direction it's planning to go in with its latest MLB and NBA deals.

As for TV show, if Season Passes were made to be cheaper, since customers would only be renting or streaming the shows instead of buying them, customers would be more than willing to pay by the TV show for new content. $9.99 for a season of House, being able to watch the episode as it airs, or any time after? Sold.

As for older content, Apple could work out the same kind of deal as Netflix and get cheap access to the older content. Either that or they can simply continue to give access to Netflix's ever-expanding library. Anything that's not available on Netflix, or an Apple version of a Netflix-like service, Apple could just offer as a $0.99 rental on the iTunes side of things.

News, weather, and other types of live broadcasts? You have iOS devices for that. If you really need them on your TV, though, there will likely be apps for that.

That takes care of most of the software and content.

"What about hardware?"

In the consumer world, choice is bad. Choice leads to bad decisions, and frustrated customers. That means that, much like with its current lineup, Apple's going to be making most of the decisions for its customers, starting with screen size.

Apple's handheld devices currently have 2 sizes: 3.5" and 10". Portables come in at 11", 13", 15", and 17". Desktops at 21" and 27".

TVs currently exist at just about every size between 10" and 100", which means Apple will have to choose a handful from the over-abundance of current options.

I won't try to guess which sizes Apple will choose but I'll go so far as to say that if/when they come out with their handful of screen sizes, those sizes will be what Apple considers to be the best sizes.

If I did have to guess, however, I'd say that Apple would chose 40", 50", and 60". 3 sizes, each 10" apart. Simple enough.

In terms of looks, I have a strong feeling it would look like a giant Apple LED display: a big, glass-covered screen and a 1" black border on the glass around the screen. No matte option.

"What about ports?"

Simple.

Look at the AppleTV: HDMI, ethernet, optical audio out, and power. There's also WiFi, to help save from having another cable. I'd be willing to bet there'd be something similar on an Apple-branded TV: A single HDMI input, an audio out port, and power. HDMI can do ethernet now, so I think Apple might try to push that capability to be able to have less ports on its TV.

Except there won't be ports on the TV.

"What?"

Well, at least not anything other than the single port for power. Just like with Apple's displays, there will only be only one port, one cable that you can hook up to a small set of ports and plugs at the other end of the cable.

"How do you get multiple inputs?"

You don't.

Not physical inputs, anyway. If you want to load external content on to the TV, use AirPlay. Using external speakers? AirPlay.

"What about all my old home videos? and my DVD collection? and my game console? and X, Y, Z?"

Well, there's two options: Convert them into a format that can play on Apple's TV, or use the single HDMI input.

Most people wouldn't be ready to make a complete switch to an Apple-branded TV right away, similar to how people weren't ready to ditch SCSI, or the floppy disk, or optical media. But that's the direction Apple's headed, and it won't stop just so you can feel nostalgic.

Want to use that old VCR to play you bootleg copy of that Van Halen concert your friend went to while the audio plays through your kick-ass speaker system? You can still do that. With adapters. Most HiFi receivers include at least one RCA audio/video in/out and at least 1 HDMI in/out, so almost any recent HiFi system could serve as your temporary adapter until you digitize your collection for use on Apple's TV.

Apple doesn't do legacy support. It doesn't support computers more than a few years old. It doesn't support handhelds more than a couple of years old. It definitely won't support your legacy TV appliances.

"But the market's already saturated, the margins are razor slim, blah blah blah."

That's nice. That's the old TV market, before Apple entered the game. There was a computer market before Apple, but then Apple defined the personal computer market. There was a music player market long before the iPod, but Apple redefined that market, too. There was a phone market for decades before the iPhone, but then Apple reinvented the phone. There were tablets long before the iPad came along, but then Apple created something magical.

Apple could do the same thing with TV.

They can make the hardware, they've already got the software, and they've more than likely already got the deals with content providers. They've got an end-to-end solution, just like every other market they're in. It's just a matter of putting on the final touches and shipping the finished product, which I would guess isn't too far away.

Some time in September, along with updated versions of other iOS devices, sounds like as good a time as any to bring an Apple-style revolution to the living room.

Reality is Subjective

I've been meaning to make this post for a while now, but it's a bit of a tough subject to talk about. Not that it's controversial, it's just a bit much for some people, myself included at times.

Before we get started, I wanted to clarify the direction I'll be taking this blog in. And by that I mean what I'll be writing about on this blog. For the most part it'll try to make it technology-oriented, but I'll also be making the occasional post about things like today's post (and I don't mean that as in meta-posts), about people, about social interactions, about life.

After reading the post title you're probably wondering what I mean by reality being subjective. Well, not what I mean, but how I mean to explain it. That's where things get interesting (or complicated, depending how you look at it).

To understand what I mean one must understand the many-worlds theory, which is the idea that there are an infinite number of universes. One must also understand the concept of predeterminism, which is the idea that every event has been determined not only by the previous event but every event before that all the way back to the beginning of the universe. One must also be able to understand the idea that time is multi-dimensional.

To better understand these ideas (except predeterminism) it's helpful to watch the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkxieS-6WuA

(Don't forget to watch part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySBaYMESb8o)

This is where things become weird: All those realities, all those infinities, all are yours. And they're all mine. In this universe, where I consider myself conscious, where I'm writing this post while listening to some music and casually chatting with some friends online, this is my universe. But, this universe, with all of it's events, is only happening to me. Everyone has their own universe, each one different, each one with its own set of unique events, each one "belonging" to a single consciousness. Every moment, every decision, every event from a keystroke to the spin of a sub-atomic particle, each one creating a different universe, but none of those belonging to what I, as an individual, perceive as my universe, what I perceive as reality, as my reality.

However, this view conflicts with the idea of predeterminism, which I also believe to be true. With predeterminism, all of the events in my universe have been determined right from the big bang all the way to the end of the universe. But, time being limited to the universe itself, and understanding that a line in time viewed from a higher dimension (or even from outside the universe) can simply be viewed as a single event. Taking that idea to the extreme, the entire universe, with every predetermined event within it, can be viewed as a single event from beginning to end. But it makes sense, because there's a universe for every possible eventuality, so it's only logical that each of those universes was branched off from some sort of "seed" universe, at the beginning of "time", each branch being created when there's more than once possible outcome to a certain event (the spin of a subatomic particle, for example).

But there's a big problem with all this. A problem with all of these events. A problem with this sequence of events leading up to the universe you call your reality:

Death.

What happens to my universe when I die? What happens to your universe when you die? It's not like it can be handed off to someone else. It also can't just suddenly end because you die, the laws of the universe as we know them (at least in this universe, my universe) don't really allow for the entirety of reality to just vanish.

So then what happens? What happens is this:

We don't die in our own reality. We can't. Of course, others can die in our reality. We can die in others' realities (or at least the version of us that appears in others' realities can). But not in ours.

Now, this may sound like wishful thinking (oh, not to worry, you won't ever die, you'll live forever!), but as far as I can tell the logic behind it is solid.

There's already an infinite number of universes, with every possible beginning, every possible end, and every possible event from every possible beginning to every possible end. Every single one of them has already been determined from the moment they began. Not only that, but they all exist, simultaneously.

But they've already happened.

What I mean by that is that none of what you do, none of what I do, is going to change the way your reality, my reality, is. You can't change what's already happened, and given that all events are predetermined, that means every single one of them has already happened.

In a way, it's like a film: The movie, in its entirety, already exists from beginning to end. You can't change the movie. Whether you want the main character to take a left turn or a right turn, he turns right. Whether or not you want her to open the door for the killer, she'll open it (out of sheer stupidity, no less). All of it, from beginning to end, already exists. Every last part of it. But there's different cuts of the movie. There might also be remakes of it. There's different movies altogether where none of the story is the same.

It's the same thing with this universe, with every universe. They've already been made. They've already happened. And you can't change them.

So where does that leave us?

In a sense, we observe. What do we observe? How do we observe? Why do we observe from a human body? If everything is predetermined, then what is consciousness? How is it that we're observing things in what we perceive to be our lives if our lives aren't actually "life" in the traditional sense of the word because of predeterminism?

I have one possible answer: We are not humans. There is no such thing as being human. Humans are not individuals. Humans are part of each universe (or at least the ones where humans exist which, statistically speaking, are vastly outnumbered by the ones where humans DON'T exist).

But then, if we're not human, what are we?

We are the universe. Our own universe, anyway. And we've decided to press "play" on one of the humans in our universe.

There's more like this I can get into, but I think I'll leave it at that for now.

Back To The Mac

Anyone reading this has no doubt heard about Apple's Back To The Mac event from last fall. If you haven't heard of it, here's the basics: Apple wants to make the Mac OS more like iOS. They want to bring the "magic" of iOS to the Mac. They want to bring multitouch gestures. They want the apps. They want all that's good about the iOS experience to come "back to the Mac".

Listening to podcasts and reading articles about it all, it seems to me that not enough people seem to grasp the whole situation, that not everyone sees the big picture when Apple talks about bringing bringing stuff back to the Mac. They seem to be forgetting that Apple is Apple, and that they care less about all the skin-deep changes that people have been talking about and more about the big picture, which is that Mac OS X, as a desktop operating system, is, as Steve Jobs might say, going the way of the truck, and that iOS is where the future of Apple lies.

Now, when I say that, I'm looking back to when the iPhone was first announced back in 2007 (has it really only been 4 years?). When the iPhone was first introduced it was touted as being at least 5 years ahead of what was on any other phone at the time, because iPhone ran OS X. Now, Apple never really called it "OS X for iPhone". Instead they called it "iPhone OS", and eventually iOS.

Looking back on it now, it's pretty clear that Apple was carving out two entirely different markets with two versions of what is essentially OS X. The one version running on the Mac, the other on their mobile devices. It becomes almost painfully obvious when looking at the current progression of both versions: The Mac version running on what Apple will soon consider the trucks of the computer industry, and the mobile version running on all the mainstream devices Apple hopes, nay, knows most of its customers will be using soon (soon being as early as this year).

If you look a little closer, you can also see where Apple wants to go but knows it can't yet. The iPad and the MacBook Air, for example. Looking at the gestures in the iOS 4.3 developer preview and the Lion preview, you can see that they're using the same (or at least strikingly similar) gestures for the same thing on both platforms: pinch with 4-5 fingers to get to the Homescreen/Launchpad, 3-finger swipe to switch between apps, 3-4 finger swipe up for Multitasking/Mission Control, even double-tapping to zoom in on web content.

Also, look at the recent benchmarks for both the iPad 2 and the MacBook Air. The lower-end MacBook air, which never really feels slow when you use it, gets about 500 ms on the SunSpider benchmark. The iPad 2, which feels even less slow, gets about 2000 ms. Apple being Apple, I'm pretty sure there's a MacBook Air somewhere in the Cupertino labs that's running on an A5 chip. And I'm pretty sure it's no slouch. I'm also pretty certain there's a similar MacBook Air, if not the same one, running iOS.

Part of the problem with that is that, when you look at the big picture, and you know (or at least hope you know) the way Apple works, you know they're wishing that the MacBook Air really was running iOS. Looking at the Lion preview, you know that's where they want things to go, but they can't. They can't just shove most of their user base onto iOS. Instead they have to settle for some sort of transitional period.

The other part of the problem is with the hardware. And I don't mean that in a "ARM is too slow" kind of way, I mean it in a "but how do you bring a touch-oriented OS (or OS variant) to a non-touch device?" kind of way. The answer, however, is "you don't". More than "you don't", but "you can't". It doesn't work like that. Apple's trying to shoe-horn it in, like they wanted to try with the old G5 chips in the PowerBooks, by bringing large multitouch trackpads into the picture but it's just not the same. It's not the same and, for lack of better phrasing, as a port of a touch OS to a non-touch device, it just won't work. Not properly, anyway, and not with the same appeal or sense of proverbial magic.

Anyone who's thought about this for more than a few minutes is aware of this problem. I'm aware of it. Most people who read Daring Fireball, listen to 5by5, etc are aware of it. I'm sure Apple's not only aware of it, but painfully slow. There are people at Apple right now losing sleep because they're aware of it, it's they're job to "fix it", so to speak, and they have no idea how. Their patent filings show you the ideas they've already tried and looked at (like the convertible iMac that flips down to become a flat touch surface), but nothing's materialized out of those ideas because even though they would work they just wouldn't work well, or they wouldn't work in an elegant, Apple-like way. It's just not ergonomic.

People often joke about Apple bringing out a larger (15" or so) iPad and calling it the Max-iPad (haha, get it?), but to be honest I think that Apple's not only looked at it (the product, not the name), they've considered it. But they ran into the same problem as with the iMac. There's no way of doing it that still feels ergonomically correct. People already complain about the iPad's weight, and it's only a little over a pound. Imagine if they were to try to do the same thing with a 13", or even 15" iPad (MacPad?). It'd be monstrous when compared to the current iPad. It just wouldn't work.

I'm sure they've thought of hinges, kickstands, even bigger Smart Covers. But none would work on a device that big. At least not well. But they want it to work. They know when they find a way to make it work (and I'm sure when they do, they'll say it in almost those exact words when presenting it) that it'll be the next big thing. It'll be where the iPad was meant to take us.

The new apps released in time with the iPad 2 show us, in software at least, where Apple wants to bring computers. Garageband and iMovie for iPad show us just how much better suited touch is, not only for apps, but for us. We want to touch things. It's how we're wired. It's how we work. When you add a translational layer, like a keyboard and mouse, you take away from the experience of doing what it is you're trying to do. Playing with musical instruments, for example. Sure, you can play with a drum machine in Flash on your browser, but it just feels so much more... right when you do it on the iPad. When you don't have access to a real drum set, it's the next best thing.

Apple doesn't want to just bring some UI elements and concepts back to the Mac. They want to bring the "magic". That's what they want to do.

But they can't. At least, not yet. But they're trying.

New Directions

I've decided to take this blog in a different direction. I don't know if I'll be keeping the old posts or not. We'll see.