14 DAY TRIAL // An insider says Apple’s high-def TV set is happening. Not only that, this person claims to have seen the device in action, and that it looks much like the company’s current line of standalone monitors called Thunderbolt Display (previously named Cinema Display).
The Apple-centric blog Cultofmac has been reliable on multiple occasions, which means their source may well be accurate as well.
This person claims to have seen a prototype HDTV in action at Apple, indicating that the Cupertino giant is readying the product for launch.
The source asked to remain anonymous, but they told the site that “the Apple HDTV looks like Apple’s current lineup of LED-backlit Cinema Displays but is ‘much bigger.’ It has a built-in iSight camera for making free FaceTime video conference calls. And it has Siri, the iPhone 4S’s voice-activated virtual assistant.”
“It resembled an Apple monitor, only much larger,” the source specifically added.
After seeing a prototype in action, this person noticed that it was “the exact device Steve Jobs was talking about when he said he had ‘cracked TV’,” according to the report.
There’s more. Apparently Apple wants to make a splash with this product by making it a communications device enabled by the Siri personal assistant. It will have a “sophisticated” camera and facial recognition software, this person said, as well as “the ability to zoom into the user’s face and follow them as they walk around the room.”
“[Apple] used Siri to make a FaceTime call,” the source specifically said, though it could not confirm whether the underlying software was, indeed, iOS.
The Cult pledges that its source is well-placed and that it has provided the publication with great tips in the past, though it admits “not all of them have panned out, ostensibly due to the fact that our source tends to see products in the prototype or early development stage and Apple doesn’t always ultimately choose to release them.”
The mockup they used to depict the product was created by designer Dan Draper.