Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Gratuitous Apple TV speculation

At times it’s almost irresistible to speculate on what Apple’s going to do. At the moment, future TV plans are in question.

Several of the main points of discussion:

Will it have a screen?

I think: yes and no.

I think Apple doesn’t need to sell you a giant screen to go in your living room; and even if they did, they would have a difficult time producing the variety of different sizes for everyone’s needs. This is unlike computer screens, which also come in different sizes, but for different reasons: everyone generally sits1 about the same distance from their computer. If they want a different size computer screen, it’s because they need to be doing different things with the computer. On the other hand, TVs, more than anything else, need to fit the physical space where they will be located. Proper viewing distance and comfort can require vastly different sizes. It’s impractical to change the space in your home to fit a wrongly-sized TV - what are you going to do, renovate? Move? For a TV? Some people, maybe. Not many.

So you need a fair number of different TV sizes, and the sheer bother of carrying all of that inventory seems… un-Apple-like. And then there are all of the problems Marco mentions once you get into the really big sizes, like delivery and repair. Ugh.

I think the current ‘Apple TV’–that is, the tiny black box which is not actually a TV, but plugs into your existing TV–will continue to exist, for all of the people who need weirdly-sized TVs, or just aren’t going to ever feel like they need to upgrade their TV. Apple can still make money on these people, so why not do so?

But at the same time, if Apple does bring compelling content to the Apple TV–so compelling that you don’t ever need to watch ‘normal’ TV ever again–and you’re in the market to buy a new TV anyway… why not buy one from Apple, if they happen to have one of the most common sizes that happens to fit your needs?

I think they will sell both: a completely integrated TV with Apple software built-in (only available in a very small number of sizes/models), as well as the tiny black box they currently sell that plugs into any TV. I think both will have identical software and content.

What’s the hook?

But clearly, for Apple to make a real TV, and for the tiny black box to be something more than a hobby, there has to be some compelling reason for people to not only want it, but to feel that they don’t need to watch anything else–that it could realistically be their only source of TV.

I think: it needs to have cable.

Cable is what the mass market seems to want. Cable is the reason everyone gives for not switching to Apple TV or Hulu or Netflix or some other such thing full-time: there’s something on cable that still isn’t available anywhere else, and might never be. Cable is like Microsoft Word: it has a million things going on, 90% of which you will never use, but the 10% that you do use is different for every person. Cable is ubiquity in video content, and that is what Apple currently lacks.

So let’s say Apple TV gets cable. But not cable like you’ve ever seen it before. Imagine: for the same price you currently pay for cable now, you get all of the same content–every single show, no exceptions–but all of it is on demand, and with no commercials. There is no more concept of watching something ‘live’2; shows are ‘released’ on Apple Cable at the same time that they ‘air’ on stone-age cable. They remain on Apple Cable for some short period of time (perhaps a week or two) for you to watch at your convenience. (If you miss a show, you can still buy it on iTunes, same as you can now–that’s kept as a separate service.)

Apple Cable is a bit of a misnomer; Apple wouldn’t be providing this to you directly. Instead, you just subscribe to cable service through your local cable provider, the same as you would if you didn’t have an Apple TV. This is the carrot that keeps the content providers happy. Pricing doesn’t change; the ‘basic’ package, all of the premium packages, etc. are all the same. If you already have cable TV, you don’t even have to pay anything extra for this new service. The difference is that now, the cable provider is providing the same content in several different formats, just like they already transmit both analog and digitally-formatted signals over the wire: there’s now a third format, Apple-compatible cable, but it’s the same service.

For people who don’t always want on-demand shows, and enjoy the experience of ‘watching whatever is on’, there could be some kind of ‘live TV simulator’ where you press a button and it will just scoop up all of the shows that ABC released this week and play them on a loop, back-to-back. Even better, it could make Genius Playlists for you based on what it thinks you’ll like, across all of the channels. Or based on different genres.

There’s no box rental. You buy either an Apple Television Set or an Apple Tiny Black Box. You buy that from Apple, and then you own it. There’s no CableCard or special dongle; it works over Wi-Fi or ethernet. If you already have internet, then there’s no extra installation needed. You subscribe to (1) some tier of cable TV service, and (2) internet service–if this is too confusing, your cable company will happily bundle them for you, and throw in a stupid phone you don’t need–and then you can use it with as many Apple devices as you own. If you don’t already pay for cable TV or if you’ve cancelled, well, perhaps this will convince you to come back. If not, you can still use Apple’s products with iTunes and Netflix, if that’s really all you want.

The big unknown here is whether Apple can make the content deals for this to happen. The reason I see it taking this sort of shape is that the content providers don’t have to give up their core business model that they so desperately cling to. Just two concessions: no more ad sales, and no more extra fees for on-demand. True, these are two big concessions, so I don’t know if Apple can pull it off. On the other hand, they stand to regain a lot of cable TV customers they’ve been losing lately. Also, look at iTunes Match–who could have thought that would be possible? iTunes Match still seems impossible!

Why these two concessions? I believe Apple will never allow ads in the user experience, and that that they see on-demand as the only possible way for video to work in the future.3 Take existing cable, change only those two things about it, add a great user interface, and you essentially have the idea that I’m suggesting here. It seems simple and obvious–almost too simple and obvious. In retrospect, many Apple products do seem that way; the only reason we found it so hard to think of them was because we were so limited by our existing ways of thinking, and assuming that huge, fundamental things could not be changed. That important people’s minds could not be changed.4 There’s no technical reason this couldn’t happen today, or five years ago–the only thing holding us back is us.

Clearly, Apple is about changing the world through better user experiences. They are not, despite the never-dying hopes and dreams of their fans, about changing the world through lower prices or different business models; just look at how they’ve helped to prop up the monstrous 2-year contract oligarchy in the phone business. That’s why I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that the cable TV business model will go away any time soon, either. Certainly, the content owners will fight tooth and nail against anything that seeks to disrupt their gravy train, as they have been doing. And Apple have shown that they have no problem with the status quo as long as they get a piece of the pie, consumer-hostile pricing or not.5

For example: one thing people have wanted for ages is ‘à-la-carte pricing’, or being able to pick and choose which channels you want, instead of paying a huge flat fee for a huge bundle of many channels, most of which you don’t care about. As long as the concept of a ‘channel’ exists, I don’t think we will ever see this. And the twin concepts of ‘channels’ and ‘bundles’ are what gets you paying a minimum of $60 (for many, more like $100) per month. And that’s the toll that the content trolls have set on their bridge, and they don’t seem to be budging.

I could see it work this way. I could see a lot of people buying it. I wouldn’t, because it wouldn’t be worth the price to me, but I believe I’m in the minority here; I won’t pay that much for a cell phone, either.

I could also see, and would be tempted to hope for, a more radical, consumer-friendly change than the one I’ve described. Certainly, Apple can conceive of something much greater, and would have no problem building it; it all depends on the content they can get. Content is the constraint everyone has to work within. That’s why I don’t dare hope for more radical change, at least not now. But I’d love to be proven wrong.

What will it be called?

I’m not even going to speculate on this, because I have no model for how Apple chooses these things. Their name choices usually baffle me at first; I thought ‘iPad’ sounded silly, but it’s grown on me.

It does seem, though, that they’ve painted themselves into a corner with their existing ‘Apple TV’ that isn’t a TV. Assuming that they keep the tiny black box while at the same time introducing an actual TV, something is going to have to change with regards to naming. I have no idea what.

Bonus round: OMG inputs and cables and junk!

If/when Apple does make a TV, it will probably have at least one HDMI input, if for no other reason than that you could plug your Mac into one. Mini DisplayPort is compatible with HDMI. Mac Minis still ship with both Mini DisplayPort and HDMI. Apple likes HDMI.

I don’t know if it will have one, two, or some other number of HDMI inputs, but probably not a lot. I don’t think it will have any other kind of input, just like the tiny black box right now has no other kind of output.

  1. Don’t even start on me with these standing desks, you hippies. ↩︎

  2. Edit : I guess there would have to be an exception for sports and certain kinds of news programs. The point is that the vast majority of video that is broadcast on TV is pre-recorded, so there’s no reason for it to have a start and stop time that is beyond the viewer’s control. ↩︎

  3. And let’s just take the idea of a DVR off the table right now. Everyone should know that the DVR is a bad hack. From a technical standpoint, it’s utterly ridiculous to conceive of taking a recording, broadcasting it to millions of people, and then having every single one of them individually re-record it for later playback–instead of simply distributing the original recording. It’s lunacy. It doesn’t work well. It will never work well. The only reason it exists is because of the content owners’ copyright, and because they won’t agree to anything reasonable, and because this kind of hack doesn’t require their agreement (thanks, Supreme Court). Apple will never make a DVR; you don’t make great products out of bad hacks. ↩︎

  4. Wouldn’t you just love to know how some of those negotiations went? I hope some people at Apple got RDF lessons. ↩︎

  5. I just wanted to note for the record, for anyone that believes I’m reliably a breathless evangelist, that I don’t actually agree with everything Apple does. But I do try to keep separate what I want them to do and what I expect them to do. ↩︎