Full-Fledged Apple TV Coming this Fall, Says former Apple Exec

A former Apple executive has reportedly spilled the beans on a new product from Cupertino, one that will leave the company without a ‘hobby’.

According to DailyTech, this former Apple employee said that Apple plans to "blow Netflix and all those other guys away" by bundling Apple TV and iTunes inside a physical television set.

To do this, Apple is allegedly in talks with a major supplier that will be tasked with making the hardware.

The end product would be rebranded as an Apple television set.

This person added: "You'll go into an Apple retail store and be able to walk out with a TV.  It's perfect."

Apple has long billed its Apple TV as a ‘hobby’. The set-top box runs a special version of iOS, but its interface is mostly borrowed from Front Row, a Mac OS X application.

It’s a neat product in itself, but customers don’t actually devour content through it. The reason why that’s happening is because, as Steve Jobs once famously said, there currently isn’t a “go-to-market strategy”.

During an interview with All Things D last year, Jobs commented:

"The television industry fundamentally has a subsidized business model that gives everyone a set-top box, and that pretty much undermines innovation in the sector.
[...]
The only way this is going to change is if you start from scratch, tear up the box, redesign and get it to the consumer in a way that they want to buy it. But right now, there’s no way to do that….The TV is going to lose until there’s a viable go-to-market strategy.
[...]
However, Apple has since leveraged AirPlay to get iTunes content into their living rooms. The technology may well allow Apple to bypass the cable companies. It remains to be seen whether it actually plans to do that."