Get more from your shiny box of joy
Tim Cook took the stage at the D10 conference this year to discuss Apple Inc., iOS, Samsung, lawsuits, patents, Steve Jobs, and the almighty Apple TV. The new head of Apple made one thing abundantly clear; the Apple TV is no longer a “hobby” project: ”This is an area of intense interest for us,” Cook said, referring to the TV business. We’re going to keep pulling this string and see where it takes us.”
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber speculates on his blog that an unusually high number of “To Be Announced” sessions on the WWDC schedule this year (particularly in Presidio, the biggest room for sessions in the building) implies that Apple will be announcing something big and his guess is a new developer platform and apps for Apple TV:
According to BGR, Apple is planning to unveil a brand new version of the Apple TV operating system next week at WWDC. A “trusted source” has told BGR that the new OS will be much more feature-complete than the current Apple TV OS and that it’s apparently the one that the long rumored Apple TV set will run.
The new Apple TV operating system is supposed to make use of the new “control out” API:
Apple’s long-rumored television set may soon become a reality, as China Business News reports that Foxconn, Apple’s Chinese manufacturing partner, has already started a pilot production of the new Apple HDTV:
Insider sources told China Business News that a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen has received orders for an Apple “smart TV” and is producing them on a trial basis.
Apple TV set featuring Siri, FaceTime, Airplay, and a build in iSight camera is more of a reality today than ever before. Though we have had many reports from anonymous insiders, today marks the first public admission of the project by someone within Apple’s product release chain. More than simply admitting the products existence, Foxconn CEO Terry Gou discussed some of the production details. According to China Daily:
Is Apple’s newest HDTV creation set to have Siri, FaceTime or AirPlay? Is Apple’s new TV set going to be slick, smooth, and as beautiful as its other products? According to an anonymous source, the answer is yes to all. The team of at Cult Of Mac has released some information given to them by one of their sources. It is important to note that they said:
Our source is well-placed and has provided us with great tips in the past. However, not all of them have panned out, ostensibly due to the fact that our source tends to see products in the prototype or early development stage and Apple doesn’t always ultimately choose to release them. We hope this is one of our source’s tips about an upcoming Apple product that actually sees market.
