Apple preps TV enabled iMac ahead of own-brand telly
Siri to control the UI
All the rage - well, among PC makers, if not consumers - in the early 1990s, the PC TV is set to make a comeback, courtesy of Apple.
Enter Brian Blair of US financial services company Wedge Partners, who told investors this week that Apple's next iMac will be a "slimmer all-in-one PC with TV capabilities", BGR reports.
Blair believes the iMac will also use Siri tech from the iPhone 4S to control the machine's TV functionality.
Quite what the iMac's TV capability will be remains unclear. Apple hasn't offered a Mac with a built-in tuner, IIRC, since the the Performa range of the early 1990s and 1993's short-lived Mac TV.
Apple has long been believed to want punters downloading TV shows from iTunes, and the company has never tried to alter that perception.
So the new iMac could see the addition of the Apple TV interface, and old version of which, called Front Row, was dropped from Mac OS X with the release of (toothless) Lion.
But, since Apple is also believed to be working on a TV of its own, perhaps the company sees the iMac as proving ground for the tuner tech, the UI and the software to tie them all together that it will need to get completely right before the telly ships. ®
COMMENTS
Analysts
When was the last time a baseless piece of analyst speculation was correct? I really can't see this happening.
AirPlay is already licensed out...
Airplay is on just about all of Denon's new AV receivers, and other manufacturers are using the technology too. It's not much different to DLNA, really, so it's an easy checkbox feature. That no TVs come with it is more down to TV makers than Apple.
I don't see where you get the idea that the TV manufacturers are standardising on Android. An embedded OS that costs them $10 a unit in patent licenses, plus the RAM and storage requirements to run it, is not such a hot proposition given the razor-thin margins in TVs.
And why do TVs need to run apps designed for touchscreen phones anyway?
Actually, come to think of it, why do TVs need to run any app that doesn't involve watching something? It's not a big monitor, it's a television. The technology might be similar, but the use-case is very different. TV is not interactive and personal - it's passive, and shared. That's its biggest attraction.
B&O are a company that develops some very good technology, puts it into some cutting-edge (if occasionally oddball) industrial design, builds it really well, and charges a lot of money for it.
Apple are a company that buys in good technology, puts it into some good (if shockingly unimaginative) industrial design, has it built really well for them, and charges a lot of money for it.
I don't have B&O equipment - they are too rich for my blood, and I'm willing to get the equivalent audio performance by sacrificing some simplicity and looks at a much lower price, but it doesn't make it tat: and anyone who can design a small Class-D amplifier that actually sounds as good as the ICEPower modules has enough engineering clout to justify their high prices.
If you want the inevitable car analogy, the Danes are BMW where Apple are Audi.
Not sure I buy the idea that they'd include a TV Tuner internally within the iMac - apple would want to limit the number of SKU's shipped worldwide so which type of tuner would they go for to get max coverage worldwide? Cable, Satellite, Terrestrial? It also feels like a technological step backwards. The logical move if they did want to go tuner-based would be to partner with someone like Elgato which has years of experience with add-on tuner cards for the Mac.
Personally though, I'd assume that the easiest thing would be IP based streaming TV but then you've got quality issues (iPlayer may be convenient, but the quality just isn't there for big-screens).
You've also got to consider that you sit a lot closer to an iMac than a TV so you've got a different set of things to think about - why would you bother using Siri to control it when you've got a keyboard / mouse / trackpad right in front of you?
I don't get the whole "Apple making a TV" thing - and I consider myself a bit of an apple fan. Why not just license-out Airplay video for TV manufacturers to implement? More and more AV receivers and hi-fi kit have Airplay audio which is the same principle?!?! Also, for the iMac, just enable iTunes to be an Airplay target as well as a source so you could stream to it as well as from it; although I'm struggling for use-cases there.
Just don't get it .................
Advert
I still remember the annoying Performa PCTV advert.
A chimp and an American woman, who would alternate between PC and TV, while saying 'PC', 'TV'.
I had a 'PCTV' as a student. A 2nd hand Sony Vaeiou with a Hauppage WinTV USB card and a cheap booster aerial hanging out the window. Handy for post-students-union 'Wickers Way'.
Will the Mac support Freesat? Freeview HD? PVR Recording?
