Even 6 months ago, Apple TV was the large snoozer in Apple's consumer hardware line-up. The device is a elementary set-top media puck - not ample more than a pacifist passage for piping iTunes, Netflix and iPad calm to one's TV.
But, oh, how times have changed.
On the night before of WWDC 2012, conjecture swirls around Apple's positioning as a radio manufacturer, and how Apple TV might fool around in to a larger radio hardware strategy. Indeed, an Apple TV reboot could be a diversion changer. And it would moreover be the WWDC prominence for users of the set-top puck, for app developers, and even is to TV entertainment attention at large.
Now, granted, Apple only revamped the Apple TV user interface with the launch of the third-generation iPad . So in a few respects, it seems doubtful that Apple would underline the product in other media eventuality only a few months later.
But the streaming TV confidante still offers immeasurable untapped potential. And with the assemblage of thousands of staunch developers, WWDC is the best venue to publicize a new Apple TV stage that exposes API support. And you can't dont think about how Tim Cook not long ago mentioned the TV space is "an area of heated interest" for Apple.
Apple TV is one of the best set-top gadgets in a consumer wiring difficulty that, really frankly, doesn't suffer pile consumer report. Think about it: How many of your non-techie friends own possibly a Roku, Boxee Box, Google TV or Apple TV? Nonetheless, Apple TV sales are picking up momentum: The device is on follow to sell twice as many units as were sole in 2011.
The upshot: Apple doesn't must be publicize its own radio set at WWDC to make waves in the living room space. If it can reinvent Apple TV in to a indeed compelling, mass-market consumer product, it can noticed that Steve Jobs' mental condition of at last enormous the radio code.
Apple only needs to residence a few key areas before Apple TV becomes a really large deal.
"What you might see at WWDC is Apple gap up the app manage to buy draw close they've had with the iPhone and iPad to the Apple TV," Gartner researcher Michael McGuire told Wired. Apple has well over 600,000 apps in the iOS App Store, but only 8 third-party calm choices (e.g., Netflix, MLB.com, Flickr, etc.) on Apple TV. So WWDC offers the best chance to deliver developers to how they could beginning expanding Apple TV's repertoire of calm choices. Indeed, BGR reported that Apple would be introducing an wholly new OS and API for developers to take value of.
There are two probable ways Apple could open up the Apple TV stage to third-party app developers: It could enable devs to emanate dedicated TV apps, or it could more heavily precedence (and open up) the AirPlay underline already oven baked in to Apple TV to dock existing iPad apps to the large screen.
"We've been focused on perplexing to comprehend how the app model evolves with the foreword of the TV platform," Jeremy Allaire, CEO of online video stage Brightcove told Wired. Indeed, Allaire minute his thoughts on what could be next for Apple TV in an op-ed Monday morning. Allaire believes that instead of requiring developers to ethics for a third focus stage (the TV), AirPlay Mirroring could be used with existing iPad apps.
AirPlay Mirroring "essentially turns your iPad in to a absolute TV Apps stage that can describe any focus on the TV whilst enabling the user to use their touch-based device to browse, select, navigate, etc.," Allaire wrote in his piece. It creates sense. iPad apps are already built for a shade with a lot of actual estate, and it wouldn't be assumed to, say, crack by Wired's iPad app with your finger whilst obviously getting more information the calm on the large screen.
"AirPlay functionality is a bit dark from users and not super easy for developers to implement," Allaire mentioned of the underline in its stream state, so there's ample room for improvement.
NPD leading researcher Ross Rubin moreover believes "a multiscreen part that builds off AirPlay" could be in the stars.
"To obtain people over the hardcore Mac fans, you need a lot of content," McGuire said. For example, median consumers wish to see sports - live sports. So, is to Apple TV to break out of its "hobby" tag (a tag Tim Cook might wish he had never used), its calm offerings will must be drastically expand. But live calm is hard to advance by without a line or heavenly body subscription, and that might sojourn so.
"History has shown that Apple hasn't shown the same type of change with the studios that they had with the [music] labels in the early days of the iPod," Rubin said. However, in light of new announcements on the Xbox platform, McGuire thinks Apple could be inking deals with the same calm providers who've partnered with Microsoft: ESPN, NBA, Univision, and Nickelodeon.
To go mainstream and turn a loyal cable/satellite deputy for connective tissue cutters, Apple TV would must be supply the "equivalent experience of hundreds of programming options at any indicate in time," McGuire said. Expanded app offerings could of course help with this, but live streaming calm would really sign the deal.
"The other area that's getting a lot of gossip traction is gap up the Siri interface, which for both the existing apps on Apple TV, together with new apps, could be very interesting," McGuire said.
This could be skilled by a marginal extras to Apple TV, as Allaire draft for a forward-looking Apple TV experience. And, of course, Siri could handshake with the stream Apple TV via coordination with the iPhone 4S (and may be even the third-generation iPad, if it too receives Siri encouragement as rumored .)
Apple could moreover take an Xbox Kinect-like approach, rising camera gadgets in its TV products for 3-D gesticulate recognition. As for aptitude to WWDC, this would meant a new gesture-based suit API for developers to manage user communication and face detection, with an actual hardware trapping to arrive in the more remote future.
But, heck, Apple already has patents on 3-D gesticulate approval using the iPad, so perhaps an extra trapping isn't even necessary. "Apple can do a lot with the box they have in conditions of disrupting and varying people's expectations of what TV is," McGuire said.
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