14 DAY TRIAL // Remaining a hobby of Apple’s for half a decade, the Apple TV product may soon undergo a radical change, one that late Apple-co founder Steve Jobs had finally envisioned as the simplest form to deliver television content to every living room.
In Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, available as of today in multiple formats, Jobs is quoted as saying “I finally cracked it” referring to the Apple TV business at Apple.
“He very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant,” Isaacson wrote.
Jobs died earlier this month from pancreatic cancer.
The book sheds light on how Jobs wanted to “create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use”, he told the biographer.
“It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud. No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.” Jobs said, according to Isaacson.
A few years ago, Steve Jobs was interviewed on this very topic by Walt Mossberg on stage at one of the Wall Street Journal’s ‘D’ conferences.
Asked whether he had anything in mind to change how the television industry operates, Jobs said:
“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. Ask TiVo, ask Roku, ask Google in a few months. 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. That’s the fundamental problem with the industry. It’s not a problem with the technology, it’s a problem with the go-to-market strategy….I’m sure smarter people than us will figure this out, but that’s why we say Apple TV is a hobby.”