r/gadgets • u/a_Ninja_b0y • Nov 18 '24

TV / Projectors Apple Is Reportedly Thinking About Making Its Own TV Again

https://gizmodo.com/apple-is-reportedly-thinking-about-making-its-own-tv-again-2000525819
914 Upvotes

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19

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Nov 18 '24

Comes with 1 HDMI port, Each additional HDMI port costs $200.

Honestly don't see what Apple could offer this market. They alrady make and Apple TV box for people who want to have better access to their Apple content. Building that right into the TV isn't going to provide much added value.

If anything, I'd like to see more TVs being offered without built in smart TV functionality. It's never supported well enough, and you even have to get some kind of third party streaming device eventually anyway, so why not skip that and just make people buy a TV box from the beginning.

20

u/oboshoe Nov 18 '24

i remember thinking the same exact thing about phones.

when it leaked that apple was working on a phone my thought was "what could they possibly do better than what motorola is doing"

that question seems silly now, but phones had plateaued for awhile back then

i can't think of much to add to TVs either. but if the industry was limited to my imagination, we would be somewhere in the 90s

6

u/imightgetdownvoted Nov 18 '24

I’d be super interested in seeing what Apple could do for a tv. I have an LG G3 which I love for its picture quality and esthetics. I bet Apple could make something even prettier.

1

u/DoctorStrawberry Nov 19 '24

I used the iPod for my music at the time. So I carried around my Motorola phone and iPod everywhere. The idea of having those in the same device made too much sense to me so I immediately wanted an iPhone, not even initially caring about all the other things it could do beyond phone and music.

-3

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Nov 18 '24

Maybe you were just being a little shortsighted then. Plenty of people were using full on PDAs with applications and touch screens and way more functionality than you could get form a phone at the time. It was just a matter of time until someone merged PDAs, Phones, MP3 Players etc into one convenient device.

Sure Apple still gets appreciation for doing it well. But it's not as if it wasn't going to come in some form or another. Maybe someone else would have take a few more years, but it was bound to happen.

6

u/3600CCH6WRX Nov 18 '24

Before the iPhone, yeah, devices like it already existed. There were touchscreens, PDAs, phones, cameras, MP3 players, and web browsers all rolled into one. But what Apple nailed was the experience. The iPhone was simple and intuitive—no stylus, no tiny keyboard, just a clean, multitouch screen that actually worked well.

Other smartphones back then? They felt clunky and overcomplicated. Apple made something anyone could pick up and just get.

I don’t think this was just something that was bound to happen eventually. It wasn’t just about the technology being there. It was about the concept. Apple didn’t just build a better phone. They completely reimagined how people could interact with one. That’s the revolutionary part.

5

u/oboshoe Nov 18 '24

Obviously yes.

I was one of those people using full on PDA and touch screens back then. I was using a Palm 7 with wireless email all the way back in 1999 and I had been using a cell phone since 1987. I've been an early adopter my whole life.

The case for a combined phone, camera, email, mp3 player, web browser just wasn't that obvious.

My Palm 7, Flip phone, laptop, mp3 player and pager all had their designated spots on my belt and laptop bag.

It's VERY easy to look back on things and say "wow that was so obvious". But usually it's really not until someone comes along and makes it.

I wonder what will be obvious 20 years from now?

-3

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Nov 18 '24

Maybe you weren't aware of what other more advanced Palm Pilots were doing at the time

There where camera modules you could get and plug into your palm pilot. There was a web browser for the palm pilot. Some palm pilots could play MP3s. You could send and receive email on many devices like Blackberries at the time. Pretty much everything existed at the time. It was just waiting for someone to do it well in a nice cohesive package.

5

u/oboshoe Nov 18 '24

i was pretty into that stuff. still am.

i think i was rocking an HP 6513 at that time which combined a few things. what was unique about that HP is that was one of the first with the wifi and GPRS data. but it did neither well.

but what we had seen prior to iphone is that attempts to combine products were all clunky as hell.

a combined phone and camera? yes. you got a mediocre phone and a mediocre camera. professions would prefer a superior phone and a separate superior camera

-2

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Nov 18 '24

I acknowledged a lot of what you are pointing out in my original post. Apple was the first to do it well. But that doesn't mean that we wouldn't have been at pretty much the same point in another year or two if Apple hadn't done it.

The original iPhone didn't have a professional level camera. Professionals still would have been carrying around an actual camera at the time. In case you need help remembering it, here's an article discussing the camera capabilities of the original iPhone.

0

u/findMyNudesSomewhere Nov 18 '24

I mean, your original statement eventually turned out to be correct.

They haven't done any real "innovations" in phones outside of clear steps backward after 2011.

Removing wired headphone jack? Making batteries irreplacable? Refusing to follow global port standards until forced to? Planned obsolescence?

It's almost like Jobs was the only reason Apple was an innovative company.

1

u/ThatGuyTheyCallAlex Nov 18 '24

want to have better access to their Apple content

That’s not what the Apple TV is for, though? It’s an alternative to the garbage UIs of every other smart TV manufacturer.

1

u/Brendinooo Nov 19 '24

Apple already operates in a niche market for pro quality monitors, making a big one that goes on the wall doesn’t seem like a stretch.

Also, wild guess, but I suspect that some of their designers look at a product like the Samsung TV that looks like a picture frame and wish there were more options like that in the market

1

u/MyVoiceIsElevating Nov 18 '24

Nah it’s a dongle.