April 15, 2021 at 7:27 p.m.
- Bloomberg recently reported rumors of a possible upcoming Apple product designed for the home.
- The alleged product combines the HomePod with Apple TV and a camera, essentially adding high-quality audio and home automation to the Apple TV experience.
- Both the HomePod and Apple TV suffer from a lack of demand and poor sales.
- Sources informing Appledystopia claim Apple will release a new, flat-screen Apple TV set, not the alleged HomePod/Apple TV mashup.
Apple TV and HomePod Mashup Rumor a Hoax
If the Apple Car isn’t enough clickbait for you, here comes a new one. Recently, Bloomberg reported on an upcoming Apple device designed for the home. To catch up with Google and Amazon, Apple intends to merge Apple TV, the HomePod, and a camera all into one device. Mark Gurman aims to consolidate three sentences into one to explain:
“The company is working on a product that would combine an Apple TV set-top box with a HomePod speaker and include a camera for video conferencing through a connected TV and other smart-home functions, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.”
The supposed gadget aims to increase Apple’s foothold in the home, particularly with household automation systems. As it stands, Google and Amazon support hundreds of thousands of domestic smart devices, to Apple’s thousands.
While some may find such a device feasible, it doesn’t make sense to anyone familiar with Apple products. It offers everything but the TV screen. Consumers can get flat-screen smart TVs with all of these components in place, but they don’t fully operate with the Apple ecosystem.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman appears to have some of the facts but not the complete picture. Apple is taking a renewed interest in television, but it’s serious this time. Partnering with a reputable South Korean TV manufacturer, the Cupertino tech giant will finally deliver a flat-screen television.
Of course, Gurman didn’t paint himself into a corner. A clever tech-pundit, he’s already punched a hole in the reality distortion field he created for Apple:
“Development of both Apple products is still in the early stages, and the company could decide to launch neither or change key features. The company often works on new concepts and devices without ultimately shipping them. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.”
These are all true statements. An Apple spokeswoman also declined to comment to Appledystopia about its upcoming flat-screen television. The company is notoriously tight-lipped about product development, leaving tech writers outside of the Silicon Valley, like Gurman, to infer based on scant information.
If you’ve never worked at a tech company, an Apple TV and HomePod mashup with a camera might seem feasible and realistic. To a seasoned developer and technologist, it smells more like something you’d read in comments than an actual article.
A Real, Flat Screen Apple TV Set in Development
Appledystopia’s sources in the San Francisco Bay Area reveal that the Apple TV and HomePod mashup is a fabrication. Instead, Apple is developing an all-in-one flat-screen TV with premium sound, 120 Hz refresh rate, and top-of-the-line 4K UHD OLED panels.
Apple’s new flat-screen TV will be available in 55″ and 65″ models. As with all Apple products, it won’t be cheap. The 65″ model will likely debut at $2499, with the smaller 55″ unit going for $1999.
HomeKit and home automation are critical to Apple’s efforts. The company wants to make the new Apple TV flat-screen television a central part of domiciles worldwide. The upcoming television will serve as a home automation hub, even with the display turned off. The Apple Watch, iPhone, and other devices will be able to leverage Apple’s television to control virtually any device in a modern smart home.
Picture quality is Apple TV’s secret sauce. Teaming up with one of the leading flat-screen TV manufacturers, Apple is ordering displays with specs that go above and beyond the competition. After losing out to Samsung and others with smartphone displays, Apple is taking television seriously. The company intends to offer a TV rivaling anything else on the market.
Apple’s upcoming TV will run on a newer version of tvOS, designed to interface with motion sensors and cameras. This technology is nothing new; however, Apple seeks to refine and perfect it. We expect to see a fair amount of defects upon launch, which Apple will remedy. Since the controls are backward compatible with the Siri remote’s parameters, most tvOS developers won’t need to re-write any code.
New Flat-Screen Apple TV Set Motion Controlled
Those of us who follow Apple closely remember its acquisition of Israeli-based PrimeSense back in 2013. We also wonder why Apple never did anything with its innovative motion-sensing technology until now.
Our Silicon Valley sources reveal that Apple will incorporate PrimeSense technology into its upcoming flat-screen television. The new Apple TV set will use PrimeSense technology in conjunction with Siri to control the unit and provide interactive gaming capabilities. The device will not ship with a remote, as users can operate the TV solely by voice and gesture.
Appropriately branded “Apple TV”, analysts have expected this to come for years. Famous investor Carl Icahn spirited the idea of a flat-screen Apple TV, claiming that it’s an incredible opportunity for the Cupertino tech giant:
“Citing “many years of rumors,” Mr. Icahn said he expects Apple to start selling 55-inch and 65-inch ultra-high-definition sets next year, generating revenue of $15 billion in fiscal year 2016 on sales of 10 million units.”
Although Icahn was wrong about the date, his vision of an Apple television seems to be coming to fruition. Our sources claim that the ultra-high-definition flat-screen TVs won’t be on the market until late 2022. The fact that Icahn’s prediction, down to specific sizes, matches that of our sources makes us inclined to believe this rumor is true. Unfortunately, this also means that Bloomberg’s rumored Frankenstein’s monster appears to be either click-bait or misinterpretation of facts.
Apple Flat-Screen Television Runs on New V1 Chip
With a new product comes a new processor. Apple’s momentum with in-house chip-making continues with the new V1 processor. The new chip is necessary as the A-series chip powering Apple TV isn’t suited for high-powered image processing.
The current Apple TV, a set-top box, chugs along nicely with an A-series processor. After all, your television is doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to moving pixels on the screen. The Apple TV unit itself pipes data to your flat-screen TV through the HDMI cable. Your TV has to render it — a much more processor-intensive task.
Most people are unaware that their existing flat-screen TV is a computer, typically running a variant of GNU/Linux. Designing a flat-screen TV tasks Apple with delivering pixel-pushing power that will dazzle consumers. To this end, the company is developing a V1 chip to power its upcoming line of flat-screen TVs.
Details remain unclear as to the processor’s overall design. As with all Apple-made silicon, it will employ ARM-based cores. It will likely include system-on-chip capabilities to power and enhance the television display.
Why All the Clickbait?
Newsrooms are desperate to keep eyeballs on screens. The Derek Chauvin trial is captivating the nation. Every website is facing a decline in traffic. Some of them handle it better than others.
With the trial in full swing, the corporate media is up to its old misinformation campaigns for the sake of profit. Clickbait, in and of itself, helps the parent corporation. When it pertains to Apple, it also serves investors. By conjuring up rumors of new, exciting Apple products, media outlets gain readers and boost stock value.
The corporate media also employs clickbait because it works. Juicy titles, promising “the scoop” on Apple’s latest self-driving car, autonomous space ship, or whatever cockamamie techno-mythology, drive readers to web pages. Most of these rumors aren’t true.
The notion of a flat-screen Apple TV is not click-bait. Analysts have been talking about it for years. The recent rumors of an Apple TV and HomePod mashup seem to affirm it, but Bloomberg’s sources were incomplete and misleading. Typically, news organizations should let such tales lie dormant, but they ran with it.
Not one editor considered a hybrid speaker and TV device to be odd. Apple doesn’t do odd. They don’t make platypuses anymore. They either create a product (iPhone, iPad) or improve an existing one (Apple Watch).
Apple TV has been elusive for years. Once Steve Jobs’ dream, it’s now a lost vision. Our sources claim that Apple waited for TV technology to stabilize before offering a TV. They couldn’t expect consumers to fork over $3000 or more every time the technology changed. They also needed all of the pieces in play, particularly Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and HomeKit.
TV technology is reaching a plateau. When Apple delivers its new, groundbreaking flat-screen TV, it will be the center of homes for years. Much like a classic Macintosh, Apple designed its new TV to endure for a decade.
Apple isn’t looking for an aggressive upgrade cycle and plans on supporting the device with software updates for up to a decade. After all, once in the home, Apple’s television will be a vending machine for a la carte content and subscription services. Apple will control the entire experience, increasing revenues by leaps and bounds.