Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

No surprises here — at our 11th D: All Things Digital technology conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook is still staying mum on the company’s plans for a proper TV set.

However! According to Cook, the company sure has seemed to learn from its initial foray into the living room.

“There is a very grand vision of this,” Cook said, speaking of television in general, in an onstage conversation with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg at the conference.

“When you look at the TV experience, it’s not an experience that I think very many people love,” Cook said. “It’s not one that has been brought up to date for this decade. It’s still an experience much like 10 years ago or 20 years ago.”

Apple’s answer to that, thus far, has been Apple TV. It’s the company’s modestly priced, fairly limited set-top device. Which, of course, Cook and Apple have maintained for some time is the company’s pet experimental project — a “hobby,” as Cook has said many times over the years.

“We answered some of those [problems] — clearly not all of those — through Apple TV,” he said.

While the company has seen modest success with Apple TV here — selling more than 13 million since the device debuted — it has been less a flagship product than a sort of learning experience for the company.

“It’s been great for customers,” Cook said. “But it’s also been good from a learning point of view for Apple.”

Does that mean we’ll see a TV set before the year is out?

“I’m going to leave that alone,” Cook said. “But it continues to be an area of great interest to us.”

Maybe we’ll know by D12.

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Full D11 Conference Coverage

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

Last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook spent a lot of time answering questions about how Apple would be different from what it was under Steve Jobs, and just how he would continue Jobs’s incredible legacy.

Cook’s appearance at D10 served as a chance for the executive to introduce himself and share his vision for where Apple was headed in terms of products as well as its plans to continue to be a good corporate citizen committed to the human rights of its workers and, if possible, to build some of its products in the U.S.

Fast-forward a year, and there are lots of new questions for Cook. The Apple CEO finds himself defending the company’s tax policy, fighting a declining stock price, dealing with a number of antitrust issues and facing questions about just how Apple will stay ahead of always-intense competition.

And, of course, one thing hasn’t changed. Tech watchers still hang on Cook’s every word, and scrounge for any tidbits that might indicate just what phone, computer, TV or watch might be coming next from Cupertino.

With that as backdrop, Cook is the opening speaker Tuesday night for the D11 conference, which runs through Thursday. An hour of Cook’s time is apparently worth several hundred thousand dollars, but we’ll serve him up here for free.

Check back around 6 pm PT for our live coverage of Cook’s interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.

6:07 pm: Things haven’t quite started. But you are in the right place.

6:11 pm: And #D11 is under way. News Corp. exec Raju Narisetti is doing the big welcome.

6:14 pm: Time to sit back and enjoy the show, Narisetti said. Or, for Sheryl Sandberg, lean in and enjoy the show.

Enter Walt and Kara, wearing D sunglasses. No marching band this year.

Walt jokes that Yahoo has just bought AllThingsD parent News Corp.

“That’s not a good thing for me,” Kara said.

Walt shows the revamped AllThingsD logo in Yahoo purple.

6:16 pm: Okay. Enough pleasantries. Tim Cook comes onstage.

6:17 pm: First question is from Walt. Samsung is gaining in phones. Various governments are asking questions. The stock is down a bunch. There’s a sense that you may have lost your cool.

Kara: Or we can start with taxes.

Walt: Is Apple in trouble?

Tim Cook: Absolutely not.

“We are a product company so we think about products,” Cook said, noting that the company sold 85 million iPhones last quarter; iPad, 42 million. More important, customers love them.

Customer satisfaction numbers are off the chart, and the usage numbers, based on Web traffic, far outpace its market share.

6:20 pm: I look at that and say, I feel pretty good.

6:20 pm: Cook: From my point of view, over my long tenure at Apple, not as CEO, we’ve always had competent rivals. We fought against Microsoft — still fight against Microsoft, particularly in the PC space.

We fought against hardware companies thought to be really tough, like Dell.

We’ve always suited up and fought.

Apple has always had competition to focus on, but our North Star is always on making the best products. We always come back to that. We want to do the best phone, the best tablet, the best PC. I think we’re doing that.

6:22 pm: If you look at the stock, which is a lot of what people focus on, the stock price has been frustrating. It’s been frustrating for investors and for all of us. This, too, is not unprecedented.

The beauty of being around for a while is you see a lot of cycles. At the end of 2007, Apple’s stock price was $200. It was $75 a couple years later.

What we have to do is focus on products — making the best products, and if we do that right … then the other things will happen.

6:24 pm: Walt: Apple is a company capable of changing the game. It has been a while.

Cook: We’re still the company that is going to do that. We have some incredible plans that we have been working on for a while.

The culture is all still there, and many of the people are still there. We have several more game changers in us.

Kara: Let’s go through them. You talked last year about television.

Cook: We’re still playing in TV through Apple TV. For several years we were selling a few hundred thousand. We’ve now sold 13 million — about half of those in the last year.

It’s been good for customers, but also for learning for Apple. Customers would agree there are things about television that aren’t so great.

We answered some of those — clearly not all of those through Apple TV.

6:28 pm: Kara: Some people in Hollywood are feeling more confident against Apple.

Walt: Are they holding up your TV project?

Cook: I don’t want to go into detail, as you might have guessed. But it continues to be an area of great interest.

He’s going on about how Apple TV is providing a lot more feedback than when Apple sold fewer of them, but he’s dodging the question of when/if Apple might go beyond its current approach.

He does keep reiterating that TV is outdated.

It’s not an experience that has been brought up to this decade, Cook said.

I don’t want to go any further on this because I don’t want to give anybody any ideas. There is a very grand vision.

Walt tries to summarize, and perhaps get Cook to say more. No dice.

Cook: It’s an area of incredible interest.

Walt: Is it so interesting that you will have a product this year?

6:31 pm: On to wearables.

As for Google Glass, it’s probably not likely to be a mass-market item, Cook said. “It’s probably more likely to appeal to certain markets,” Cook said.

But wearables as a broader market, Cook said, could be a profoundly interesting area of technology.

Cook notes that he wears a Nike FuelBand.

“I think Nike did a great job with this.”

Most of the good ones on the market do only one thing. The ones that do more than one thing don’t do anything particularly well.

“There’s lots of things to solve in this space,” he said, adding it is an area that is “ripe for exploration.”

Lots of companies will be doing things in this space.

Walt: Will Apple be one of them?

Cook: I don’t want to answer that one.

6:35 pm: Walt and Kara are trying to get Cook to pick an area of the body most ripe for wearables.

He’s down on glasses.

I’m interested in a great product. I wear glasses because I have to. I can’t see without them. “I don’t know a lot of people that wear them that don’t have to.”

“The wrist is interesting,” Cook said, noting that it is more natural. “You still have to convince people it is worth wearing.” Most young people don’t wear a watch or anything else.

It’s not just about the wrist, Cook said.

“The whole sensor field is going to explode,” he said. “It’s a little all over the place right now. With the arc of time, it will become clearer.”

6:38 pm: Walt: We are going to ask about taxes. But first, Android.

Android has clearly gained in an area that Apple innovated in, Walt said.

Cook: “Do I look at it? Of course. I don’t have my head stuck in the sand.”

Winning at Apple, though, isn’t about making the most. Arguably, we make the best PC. We don’t make the most.

They do make the most music players and tablets, but not the most phones, he said.

Cook rattles off more usage stats showing that usage of Apple products outpaces even Apple’s large market share. “What the numbers suggest over and over again is that people are using our products more. That’s what we are all about. We want to enrich people’s lives.”

Globally, there are a lot of phones that are labeled as smartphones but are used more like feature phones, Cook said.

Some tablets are being bought and not used because the experience is not great.

Cook said his iPad now handles a significant amount of his computing work.

“It’s changed the game. I don’t hear that from people that have Android tablets.”

6:43 pm: Now more customer service stats and awards.

It’s about enriching lives, not making the most, he said.

(Of course, investors probably like it when Apple makes the most and the best.)

Cook: Do I worry about the demographics? No. Our customers are all ages, and I love that. We try to appeal to everyone.

As for what’s coming and what’s next, Cook, as expected, is not saying much.

He does say that Apple will be rolling out the future of iOS and OS X at its WWDC in June.

6:46 pm: Kara: Talk to us about the new iOS.

Cook: “I think I will wait and let you see it,” Cook said. He brings up the wait-for-Christmas analogy.

Kara said she never waits to open her presents, and Walt points out he is Jewish.

Kara: So is this a big update to iOS?

Cook: I think I will let you be the judge. Jony Ive has been key to this, Cook does say. He also notes that there needs to be a blend of hardware, software and services. Having Ive do software and hardware rather than just hardware is part of this, even if Apple always married those.

“What this did is just amp it up,” Cook said.

6:48 pm: Kara asking about Scott Forstall’s exit. What happened there? Was he not collaborative?

Cook: I don’t want to talk about anybody in particular. The whole concept was to tighten the groups even more, so we could spend more time finding the magic at the intersections. “I think it has been an incredibly great change.”

Craig (Federighi) is doing both iOS and Mac software. Eddy Cue is doing all services.

6:50 pm: Kara asks Tim Cook about his leadership style. I would say I am a bossy pain in the ass. How would you describe yourself?

Cook: I’ll leave that to others.

Kara: How are you different from Steve Jobs?

Cook says he is different in a ton of ways, “but the most important things are the same.”

6:52 pm: Walt, on product strategy. With the iPod, Apple had a range of products, each designed to hit different markets and use cases. In one case, Apple killed off its best-selling iPod mini and introduced the nano. You haven’t done that with the iPhone.

Instead, Apple has covered price points by keeping around older models at lower prices.

Why not do what Apple did with the iPod, and have a range of new products each year?

Cook: We haven’t so far. That doesn’t shut off the future.

As to why not so far, “It takes a lot of really detailed work to do a phone right.”

Cook said doing so might take off focus. The iPod, Cook said, evolved over time. But, take the iPod shuffle, it had really different features and played a different role. When we brought out iPod mini, people thought it wouldn’t sell because it had less storage. But it proved the market was there for lighter, thinner and smaller.

My only point is these products all served a different person, a different type. On the phone, that is the question. Are we now at a point to serve enough people that we need to do that?

6:56 pm: Walt: Let me help you. There seem to be people that like much larger screens. There are people that like “phablets” that are between phones and tablets.

Cook: A large screen today comes with a lot of trade-offs. People do look at the size. They also look at things like do the photos show the proper color. Battery life, brightness, etc.

What our customers want is for us to weigh those and come out with a decision. At this point, we’ve felt the Retina display that we are shipping is overwhelmingly the best.

6:58 pm: Kara: Let’s move to taxes. So, what happened at Congress?

Cook: Here’s how I felt on this. The subcommittee was coming to certain conclusions, and we felt strongly that we looked at those very differently. I thought it was very important to go tell our story and to view that as an opportunity instead of a pain in the ass.

He said he wanted to be a catalyst for a discussion. We came in with a proposal, he said, arguing for Apple’s call for revenue-neutral but major overhaul of corporate taxes. “This is what we think should be done.”

Simplicity is good. “It’s how we approach everything.”

Apple’s tax return is two feet high, he said.

“I would suggest we gut it.”

7:01 pm: We don’t use tax gimmicks, Cook said.

But you take advantage of the system, Kara said.

Walt: To the average person, these look like gimmicks.

Cook: It’s a Band-Aid-and-paper-clip kind of thing. Over the years, Congress has kept Band-Aiding it.

At the urging of corporate lobbyists, Walt notes.

Probably true, Cook said.

He also notes that Apple pays $6 billion in U.S. taxes — more than anyone else. He suggests a plan that might even have Apple pay a bit more. But in exchange, it could repatriate all that cash it has offshore.

7:03 pm: So why all this Ireland stuff?

Cook: We have no special deal with the Irish government.

I believe, based on the hearing that, simplistically, the thing that’s being debated is for a company like Apple or any other company that sells things across the world and develops them in the United States, some people believe that all of the profits all around the world should accrue to the U.S. and be taxed here.

The IRS has no problem with a system that allows profits for money overseas to be taxed in other jurisdictions.

Cook notes that if everything developed here was taxed here, it might encourage a shift in development overseas.

“I’m worried,” Cook said. Cook said he wants to make sure everyone has thought through the next logical steps.

As for the lovefest Apple enjoyed, Cook said it didn’t necessarily feel that way to him while sitting in the witness chair. “It was great to be part of the process,” he said, adding he hopes it will aid the reform process.

Walt asks about increased oversight and attention on Apple and its business practices.

Cook: When you get a little larger, you get more attention. It comes with the territory.

As for the environment, Cook notes that the company owns the largest solar farm and largest fuel cells of any non-energy company.

Former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson is joining Apple. “She’s going to be coordinating a lot of this activity across the company.”

Walt: You don’t feel you are a target of governments?

Cook: When you are large, if somebody is looking at something, you are going to be caught up in some way.

Cook said he doesn’t even mind being held to a higher standard.

“We all hold ourselves to high standards,” Cook said.

As for the e-book case, Cook said that Apple rejected a settlement because it was asked to sign a document that it did something wrong. Cook said he doesn’t think Apple did anything wrong in that case.

“We’re not going to sign something that says we did something that we didn’t do, so we’re going to fight.”

7:13 pm: Kara: As for Apple’s piles and piles of money. Why doesn’t Apple buy things with its money?

Cook: We do acquire. The previous year, we were probably on a pace of acquiring a company every 60-75 days. Maybe six a year.

Apple already acquired nine companies this fiscal year.

Walt: Did you announce those?

Cook: Of course not. Only the ones we have to. Some of them were announced.

We’re always looking. If anything, we will do more of that in the future.

Walt: Big acquisitions?

Cook: We’re not actively looking at any, but I wouldn’t rule it out. We’re not opposed to that if it makes sense.

7:15 pm: What about an acquisition of social? Kara asks.

Cook says iMessage and Game Center are social products that Apple does. Plus it has “elegant” integration with Facebook and Twitter.

“I’ve never felt we had to own a social network.” We have looked at large acquisitions. It’s not something we are afraid of.

7:17 pm: Walt on whether Apple might allow others to make changes to the home screen or keyboard. On Android, third parties can give you a choice. Have you given any thought to a little less control?

Cook: As for opening up more programming hooks, “I think you will see us open up more in the future,” he said. “But not to the degree that we put the customer at risk of having a bad experience.”

We think the customer pays us to make certain choices on our behalf. Some want full control, but not the masses.

“But will we open up more,” Cook said. “Yes.”

Kara: Would you allow the Facebook bobbleheads?

Cook: Right now we’re focused on the integration between Facebook and iOS.

“That doesn’t mean that’s an end point. There’s always more the companies can do. I’m not sure that’s one.”

7:20 pm: On to Q&A.

How important is the mobile advertising business for Apple?

Cook: We got into mobile advertising to help developers make money.

“That was our sole motivation. It wasn’t about Apple making money. It’s still important.”

Apple developers tend to make more money than Android ones, he said.

To the degree we can contribute by doing things in advertising, I’m very interested. But if Apple ever decided it couldn’t do that, it would be less interesting.

7:22 pm: Next question. Should Apple be addressing more than the Apple market with iCloud?

Cook aims to take it up a level, and tries to talk more generically about whether Apple would port one of its own apps to Android.

“We have no religious issue with doing that. If we thought it made sense to do that, we would do it.”

It doesn’t make sense today to move iCloud, Cook said.

7:23 pm: What about concerns about the overuse of technology, especially when it comes to children? When is the right time to buy a kid their first iPhone?

Cook: “I’ve seen kids do incredible things with an iPhone and an iPad from a learning point of view. Parenting is key. I like kids very young learning and having a very curated experience by their parent.”

You have to monitor time, etc.

7:25 pm: What kind of services may be coming from Apple to convince people to buy their next phone from Apple?

Cook points, of course, to existing services such as iMessage and iTunes and FaceTime.

“However, we are making tons of investments in services,” he said. “I don’t want to announce something today, but it is an area that we are very focused on.”

Kara: Did you make a bid for Waze?

Cook: We did not.

7:27 pm: Clearly, the crowd is not happy with Cook not offering more of a crystal ball.

Why not give a glimpse of the future as Apple sees it? an audience member asks.

Cook: We release products when they are ready. We believe very much in the element of surprise. We think customers love surprises. I have no plan on changing that.

Next up, a question on maps.

Mapping is complex, Cook said. “We have an enormous investment going on maps,” he said, noting many improvements in the last several months. “We think location is very important.”

7:29 pm: Walt: Is Apple Maps fixed to your satisfaction?

“We screwed up,” Cook said. It’s greatly improved, but not there yet. We have more to do.

7:30 pm: Does Apple need to own content like Amazon, Netflix, etc., do with exclusive deals?

“I’ve never felt like we needed to own content. We need to have access to great content.”

“We don’t have the skill to produce and direct.”

The other half of the question is whether customers need to own or rent their content.

iTunes is still growing, but there are some other services that are also growing (cough Spotify cough).

You have customers that want both (rental and purchase).

Walt: Are you going to give them both?

Cook: That I won’t answer.

7:33 pm: Question on patents. What is the end game for the Apple-Samsung spat?

One benefit of the battle — not just for Apple, but for the industry — is that companies haven’t been able to use standards-essential patents to get injunctions on other products.

“I think we’ve run the standards-essential question largely to ground,” Cook said.

What would it take to settle with Samsung?

“I’m not negotiating this evening. I don’t like them any more than I did last year. I don’t want copying. It’s a values thing. This is about values at the end of the day.”

7:35 pm: Last question. On the Mac, Apple had iLife to show how Mac was different from the PC. Does Apple need something similar for iOS?

Cook: iLife is actually on iOS. On the iPad, Apple did more work on apps to show people serious work and play could be done on a tablet. So Apple brought apps like Pages and Garage Band.

“We wanted to prove to people it could be a content-creation device,” Cook said. “At the beginning, we were very worried people would only see that tablet as a consumption device.”

Do we need to do more? Cook asks rhetorically. “Yes. Always.”

And with that, the Tim Cook interview wraps up.

D11 continues tomorrow at 8 am PT with Mary Meeker and her million slides, followed by Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook.

RELATED POSTS:

• Liveblog: Apple Has More Game-Changing Tech in the Works, Says CEO Tim Cook
• Apple’s Tim Cook Has a “Grand Vision” for Television — And Still Won’t Talk About It
• Tim Cook on Wearables: “I Think The Wrist is Interesting”
• Apple Has Bought Nine Companies Since October, and Is Going to Pick Up the Pace, Says Tim Cook
• Former EPA Chief Lisa Jackson to Join Apple
• Why Tim Cook Isn’t Freaked Out About Market Share (Video)
• Why Apple Makes Only One iPhone, and Doesn’t Want to Make a Phablet (Video)
• Could Apple Be Getting Just a Bit More Open? (Video)
• Tim Cook Talks Taxes (Video)

Full D11 Conference Coverage

The problem with that plan: The cable guy already controls your living room. He’s not leaving anytime soon.

So, despite what you may have read yesterday, the new Xbox One isn’t TV’s future, today.

If you squint at it, you can imagine that Xbox One can help Microsoft dislodge the cable guy one day. But, for now, Microsoft is simply trying to take up a little more space. More precisely: Its box won’t let you watch live TV unless you have a pay TV subscription.

This shouldn’t be a surprise, as Microsoft has already signaled for some time that it wants to work with the pay TV guys, not boot them out.

Its previous forays into moving TV to the Xbox, via deals with programmers like ESPN and HBO, have only worked for customers who already had pay TV. And while Microsoft has previously mulled creating its own TV service, it has shelved the idea, and insists that it doesn’t want to build a pay TV competitor.

Related: With the exception of Intel, every big outsider that has approached the TV Industrial Complex has reached the same conclusion. Which is why Google Fiber TV looks just like regular cable TV, and why Apple TV has yet to do much more than play Netflix and iTunes.

And Microsoft will be literally tied to cable. In order to get the TV part of Xbox One to work, you’ll end up plugging it into your existing cable box, and performing what the industry calls an “HDMI pass-through.”

[CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that Xbox One owners would need an additional piece of hardware to connect their machines with their set-top boxes.]

In essence, Xbox One is acting as a sort of custom remote for your cable box, which will let you change the channel; it is also creating its own programming guide so you can see what’s on TV.

But note that Xbox One won’t give you full control of the set-top box — you won’t have access to the DVR your cable company provides, or any video-on-demand features they offer. If you want to do any of that, you’ll have to switch inputs, and go back to the cable guy’s system.

[UPDATE: As All Things D reader "Taz" notes, Comcast, the country's biggest pay TV company, already provides Xbox 360 users to their video on demand service via an app, and suggests that the company could do the same with the Xbox One. That's true, but so far the two companies don't have an agreement in place.]

And beyond the technical arrangements, Microsoft is being as explicit as it can about the goodwill it has toward the cable guys. While the company’s marketing says its box can do everything, Microsoft’s official communications and fine print make it clear that it can’t do squat — TV-wise — without the TV Industrial Complex.

Here, for instance, is a response I got from a Microsoft PR rep when I asked about the Xbox One’s program guide, and whether they needed permission from the cable guys to build it:

“Information that appears in the OneGuide has been created and licensed by Xbox, and works in conjunction with video services that consumers subscribe to from cable and satellite companies. We value our partnerships with MVPDs (pay TV operators), and our vision is for Xbox One to work in tandem with MVPDs’ services and offer a unique and interactive experience on top of your favorite entertainment.”

Got that? “In conjunction” … “in tandem” … “on top of.” Pretty clear.

What is interesting is that, as far as I can tell, Microsoft hasn’t gotten the explicit blessing from all of the pay TV services to launch the Xbox One. It seems to have told some, but not all, of the TV guys about it in advance, but in any case doesn’t think it needs their permission.

In an interview with my colleague Eric Johnson on Tuesday, Microsoft entertainment boss Yusuf Mehdi said Microsoft would be reaching out to the TV guys to get additional features, like DVR recording and playback. And if Microsoft continues with that kind of tight partnership, then the cable guys won’t be leaving your house for a long time.

That said, if Xbox One really does become the primary way you watch video programming — not just live TV but video, period — then it’s possible to imagine a scenario where Microsoft, with an improved bargaining position, starts trying to push the cable guys closer to the door.

Don’t count on it happening any time soon, though. Those dudes are hard to move.

So what does Microsoft plan to do when it replaces its own gaming console? We asked Xbox head Yusuf Mehdi when he stopped by the D: Dive Into Media conference last week, along with Nancy Tellem, the former CBS executive hired to build up Xbox’s video business.

You can see what they had to say below, in the full-length version of their interview. Warning: Neither Mehdi or Tellem wanted to spill much (then again, they didn’t promise a “launch” event, so you can’t blame them).

But you can read between the lines and get a sense of where they’re headed: While lots of people are interested in lightweight casual games and low-cost machines that can play them, Microsoft seems committed to the idea of a heavy-duty machine with lots of proprietary bells and whistles. So you shouldn’t expect an Apple TV-sized box, for instance.

Tellem, who is building a full-fledged studio in L.A. to create shows, series and events for Xbox, is noncommittal as well (likely because she is still figuring it out). But she is talking about the same kinds of ideas: Video that isn’t just proprietary to Xbox, but that takes advantage of the device’s hardware and processing power. Assume that once she gets going, for instance, she’ll create stuff that takes advantage of Microsoft’s Kinect motion sensors.

One big difference between Sony and Microsoft is the way the two companies are positioning their machines: While Sony’s customers spend plenty of time streaming video on the PS3 (they log more Netflix hours than Xbox users), Microsoft is much more explicit about using the Xbox as an entertainment device, period.

Which is why it’s interesting that Microsoft has decided, at least for now, not to go ahead and simply become a pay-TV provider, like Intel says it will do this year.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130221/ok-microsoft-whats-your-next-game-machine-going-to-look-like/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130212/for-hbo-a-la-carte-programming-is-still-a-ways-off-says-eric-kessler/ http://allthingsd.com/20130212/for-hbo-a-la-carte-programming-is-still-a-ways-off-says-eric-kessler/#comments Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:34:31 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=294076 Eric Kessler has worked at HBO for more than two decades in various capacities, overseeing everything from program licensing to digital strategy and marketing. He’s been in the business a long time, seen the pay-TV programming evolution firsthand, and played a role in it, as well.

Put it this way, he’s the guy who came up with the slogan “It’s Not TV. It’s HBO.” — after a decade, it remains part of the cable TV vernacular. Today, he’s got his hands full mapping out a viable digital strategy while remaining tethered to the cable-TV cash cow and fending off new rivals like Netflix and Amazon that are mounting assaults on its business.

As the first order of business at today’s D: Dive Into Media interview, Kessler confirmed that HBO’s HBO Go App is now compatible with Apple’s AirPlay, and HBO subscribers who have been pining to stream HBO shows from their iOS devices to Apple TV can now do so. “Our long-term plan for Go is to be across all devices, and effective today, we will be enabling AirPlay,” Kessler said, adding that Apple TV support will follow “at some point.”

At some point.

And when that day comes, might it be accompanied by a la carte programming? At some point. But Kessler argued that the time for that is still quite a ways off. The economics simply aren’t there.

“In marketing HBO, we are targeting the people who most love TV,” Kessler said. “There are 70 million households that love television. And the average HBO household watches far more TV than the average TV household. So we are targeting the people who are most likely to buy our product.”

Makes sense, but why not also target the fast-growing audience that wants HBO untethered from the TV? Simple. It’s too expensive.

“Is there a broadband segment that wants HBO?” said Kessler. “Yes, of course. But when you look at penetration rates, at disconnect rates, at infrastructure and marketing costs, the economics are just not particularly compelling … That doesn’t mean that’s not going to change at some point, though.”

So, for now, HBO Go will remain largely as it is today: You’ve got to be a subscriber to use it. That might seem unnecessarily limiting, but Kessler said HBO still gets a lot out of it, even if it’s not bringing in money as a cord-cutter subscription service. It serves an important marketing function. People who watch HBO programs on HBO Go are generally more apt to talk about it online (obviously). “HBO Go usage seems to engage people in social conversation about these shows,” Kessler said. “‘Girls’ viewership increases as more people talk about it on Twitter and Facebook.”

What about other emerging schemes for building viewership? Netflix has recently been in the news quite a bit for its “House of Cards” series, which the company released as a 13-episode bundle. That’s a strategy HBO has embraced for its archival programming, as well, and with a great deal of success. Viewers can use it to catch up on old seasons of their favorite series — obviously, there’s a great deal of value for some in binge-viewing five seasons of “The Wire” back to back.

“When we launched the browser version of HBO Go, we only had about 400 hours of content,” Kessler said. “When we launched the app, we decided to put every episode of every season up there. And what we have seen over the last two years is that the people who use the app will binge-view. They’ll watch stuff to catch up. But that’s the edge case.”

So, is it wise to give a brand-new series like “House of Cards” that stuff-yourself-silly treatment? Kessler seemed dubious. Serializing shows in the old-school TV way plays a big role in building buzz, he explained. If you offer a series in its entirety when it debuts, you forfeit that “Who Shot J.R.?” anticipation. Just think about that final, infamous episode of “The Sopranos.”

“The finale of ‘The Sopranos’ was one of the most talked-about finales in the history of television,” Kessler said. “That show was on the cover of newspapers the next day. It was being talked about on morning radio and TV. If we had distributed the season all at once, we would have lost that.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130212/for-hbo-a-la-carte-programming-is-still-a-ways-off-says-eric-kessler/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130212/now-at-your-service-winston-the-personal-newsreader-app/ http://allthingsd.com/20130212/now-at-your-service-winston-the-personal-newsreader-app/#comments Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:48:25 +0000 Bonnie Cha http://allthingsd.com/?p=294223 We get our news from a lot of places these days — TV, newspapers, the Web, mobile apps, social networks. Having these multiple resources is certainly nice, but it can also be time-consuming trying to check them all in order to get the news that’s most important to you.

To help simplify the process, a Boulder, Colo.-based startup called Reactor Labs today released its free Winston app, which narrates the news to you in short two- to three-minute briefs. It’s currently available for iOS devices, and can stream to Apple TV and AirPlay devices. An Android version and support for more languages (it only supports English at the moment) are in the works.

I’ve been testing a prerelease version of Winston for the past few days, and it has been an interesting way to get news every day. The app allows you to choose the topics that most interest you, such as world news, politics and sports, and pulls information from various news sources around the Web. It can also incorporate information from your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

You tap on a specific channel to hear a rolling summary of articles, dictated to you in a male British voice (what else would you expect from something called Winston?), complete with any related images, and classical background music, if you so choose. If a story grabs your attention, you can tap the headline to read the full article.

I found Winston useful for getting my news fix in the mornings while getting ready for work. Winston’s voice sounded surprisingly human, though it certainly had its fair share of mispronunciations, particularly with names. There are some other kinks, as well. For example, it didn’t always do a good job of summarizing Facebook statuses, and I could never get my Twitter account to sync with Winston.

Still, I came away impressed by the app overall. The news summaries were relevant and well done. The interface is also attractive and easy to use.

Reactor Labs CEO and co-founder Aaron Ting said the company will continue to refine the intelligence technology for summarizing news, and will add new features, including an in-car mode and voice commands.

Reactor Labs has raised $750,000 from Windforce Ventures, Comcast Ventures and ENIAC Ventures, among others.

Here’s a video of Winston in news-reading action:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130212/now-at-your-service-winston-the-personal-newsreader-app/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20130202/blackberry-hacking-vine-porn-and-more-the-allthingsd-week-in-review-12713-20213/ http://allthingsd.com/20130202/blackberry-hacking-vine-porn-and-more-the-allthingsd-week-in-review-12713-20213/#comments Sun, 03 Feb 2013 00:49:53 +0000 Eric Johnson http://allthingsd.com/?p=290984

Happy Super Bowl weekend! In case you missed them and are bored waiting for the kickoff, here are the top 10 stories on AllThingsD from the week of 1/28:

1.) Twitter Hacked; 250,000 User Accounts Potentially Compromised

2.) BlackBerry Reinvents Itself to Compete With All-Touch Smartphones

3.) HBO Go Is Coming to Apple TV. Why Isn’t Everything Coming to Apple TV?

4.) PSA: Unlocking Phones Without Carrier Permission Becomes Illegal on Saturday

5.) Time Inc. Braces for Layoffs This Week [Update: They happened -- here's the memo too]

6.) Twitter’s Vine App Doesn’t Have a Porn Problem. It Has a Porn Discovery Problem.

7.) iPhone Users Rack Up the Highest Carrier Bills

8.) Sales Talks Fell Through, So Ad Exchange AdBrite Shuts Down

9.) The Next Step for Computing: The Storage Fabric

10.) Apple Announces iPad Maxi

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130202/blackberry-hacking-vine-porn-and-more-the-allthingsd-week-in-review-12713-20213/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20130131/hbo-go-is-coming-to-apple-tv-why-isnt-everything-coming-to-apple-tv/ http://allthingsd.com/20130131/hbo-go-is-coming-to-apple-tv-why-isnt-everything-coming-to-apple-tv/#comments Fri, 01 Feb 2013 01:23:22 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=290674 As Bloomberg reports, sometime this year, Apple TV users will be able to watch HBO shows — if they’re already subscribing to HBO via a pay-cable provider.

In other words, HBO will port its popular HBO Go app to Apple TV, just like it has already done with Roku and Microsoft’s Xbox.

For the record, no comment from Apple. And here’s a non-comment comment from HBO: “We’ve said we would like HBO GO accessible on all preferred platforms so we are always having discussions with a variety of companies.”

Anyway, when it does come, it will be a nice extra for HBO subscribers. Because HBO Go has a much deeper catalog than you can get from the HBO on-demand service you get via cable and satellite.

But that’s about it.*

And if you want to start imagining that this is a precursor to HBO actually selling itself over the Web on an a la carte basis, well, I can’t stop you. But you’re wrong: HBO isn’t ditching the pay-TV bundle anytime soon, because it thinks that bundle works really well. And so does HBO’s owner, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes.

You can have a lot of fun arguing with the HBO guys about why they think that, when so many of us Internet geniuses are convinced they’re wrong. And that’s certainly going to come up when we talk to HBO president Eric Kessler next month at our Dive Into Media conference.

But here’s another question:  Why isn’t everyone on Apple TV right now? Or more precisely, why doesn’t Apple open its box to outside developers, the same way Roku has?

Opening up the platform to the rest of the world sure seemed to work well for the iPhone (recall that the App Store didn’t show up until the iPhone had been in the market for a year). But, right now, Apple TV has a grand total of nine outside apps (one of which comes from The Wall Street Journal, which, like this site, is owned by News Corp.).

Why hasn’t Apple let a thousand TV apps bloom? Dunno. I get the sense that Tim Cook and company are very particular about the way Apple TV apps look and work, down to the pixel. But you can be very serious about quality control and still manage to get more than nine apps on your box, if you want to.

So there has to be another reason. But maybe not a permanent one. If I had to bet, I’d say we’ll see Apple open up its TV box a whole lot sooner than HBO goes a la carte.

*Apple TV is pretty portable, so, depending on the way that HBO and the pay-TV guys handle their login/passwords, I can imagine a scenario where you bring your box to someone’s house who doesn’t have HBO, and set it up so you can watch “Girls” on their big screen. That would be nice, too.**

**It will be interesting to compare and contrast the video quality that HBO Go/Apple TV/broadband delivers versus an HD cable picture. On the cheapo set + Time Warner Cable set-up that I’ve got at home, I’ve noticed that “The Daily Show” on Hulu/Apple TV is good, but notably a bit more “computery” than the picture I get via Comedy Central’s HD feed.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130131/hbo-go-is-coming-to-apple-tv-why-isnt-everything-coming-to-apple-tv/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130128/apples-tv-hobby-gets-an-update/ http://allthingsd.com/20130128/apples-tv-hobby-gets-an-update/#comments Mon, 28 Jan 2013 22:26:40 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=289378 iOS 6.1 wasn’t Apple’s only software release on Monday. Issued alongside it was some new software for the company’s beloved hobby, Apple TV. A relatively minor update to the Apple TV system software, 5.2 does add a couple new features to the device: Support for Bluetooth keyboards and AirPlay audio for videos, and the “Up Next” content queuing feature that debuted in iTunes 11.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130128/apples-tv-hobby-gets-an-update/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130115/nhl-aims-to-win-back-disgruntled-hockey-fans-by-cutting-price-for-all-access-app/ http://allthingsd.com/20130115/nhl-aims-to-win-back-disgruntled-hockey-fans-by-cutting-price-for-all-access-app/#comments Tue, 15 Jan 2013 17:43:11 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=285627 Trying to make the most of a strike-shortened NHL season? Yep, there’s an app for that.

After a months-long lockout, the professional hockey teams are due to start a 48-game season this weekend. And, in an effort to gain some goodwill, the NHL is cutting the price of its all-access GameCenter Live app, which also includes video access via PC and televisions (via a connected device such as a PlayStation 3).

A season-long subscription, which allows live access to out-of-market games, will cost $49.99. Last year, which wasn’t marred by a work stoppage, the league charged $169, with a mid-season discount price of $119 for those who signed up after January.

Supported mobile devices include iPhones, iPads and Android devices — as well as BlackBerry 10 devices later this year. This year also marks the first time that games will be available on the Xbox 360, in addition to Roku and PS3.

For those who don’t want to pay the $50, there is a $4.99 app that includes radio feeds and in-game highlights, as well as a free version with scores and post-game highlights. Verizon Wireless LTE subscribers get the mid-level service for free.

The apps should be available for download by Wednesday, well ahead of the first puck drop. Now if only there were an app to get back that missing half season.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130115/nhl-aims-to-win-back-disgruntled-hockey-fans-by-cutting-price-for-all-access-app/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130114/why-youre-going-to-buy-a-tv-this-year-and-what-that-means-for-apple-samsung-and-everyone-else/ http://allthingsd.com/20130114/why-youre-going-to-buy-a-tv-this-year-and-what-that-means-for-apple-samsung-and-everyone-else/#comments Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:11:56 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=285162 All of those fancy TV sets you saw on display last week at CES? The ones with Internet bells and whistles, and resolutions so amazing you can’t actually use them?

Maybe some of you will buy them, after all.

And, if not those, there’s a very good chance you may be buying some kind of TV in the near future, says Frank N. Magid Associates. The research shop polled consumers in November, and found them more likely to buy a new set than any time since 2002. It also found that TV purchases have been ticking up in the past couple years. (Click to enlarge.)

So what does that mean? The safest conclusion to draw here is that as the economy has crawled out of the Lehman Brothers hole of 2008, people have gotten more interested in dropping cash on a flat screen.

The more interesting takeaway, though, if you believe the data, is that the replacement cycle for TVs is actually decreasing. And that people are more interested in new TVs as they add new features.

If that’s the case, then some of us should rethink our assumptions about the TV of the Future. Lots of folks (including myself), assume that we’re headed to a world of dumb, cheap TVs, with lots of inputs so that we can smarten them up with Apple TVs, Google TVs, Rokus, whatever.

The basic theory: Technology moves fast, and there’s no reason to spend a lot on TV features that will be outmoded soon, because you’re going to hold on to your set for a long time. Better to spend much less on an Internet-connected box, and upgrade that one periodically.

But if we start upgrading our sets as often as we swap out our PCs, then it’s a different ball game.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130114/why-youre-going-to-buy-a-tv-this-year-and-what-that-means-for-apple-samsung-and-everyone-else/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130101/2013-talk-gets-cheaper-tv-gets-smarter/ http://allthingsd.com/20130101/2013-talk-gets-cheaper-tv-gets-smarter/#comments Wed, 02 Jan 2013 02:32:01 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=281606

Personal technology never stops changing. Some new products and services are game changers, like Apple’s iPhone and iPad. Others are clever twists or refinements, like each successive version of Google’s Android platform, which gets better and better. Others are bold gambles, like Microsoft’s new Windows 8, which hopes to combine both a tablet experience and a traditional PC environment in one operating system. But there’s always something new, from large companies and small ones.

So here are a few things consumers will likely see in technology in 2013. Many of these began to take shape in the past year, but will be stronger trends in the new year.

Tablets vs. PCs

While the iPad line, including the new Mini, continues to dominate the tablet market, Android-based tablets are finally gaining traction. But the bigger story is that tablets will continue to erode the role of laptop PCs.

Consumers are using tablets for more and more tasks formerly performed by laptops. Traditional computers aren’t going away—they still do certain tasks, like heavy content creation, better than tablets. But consumers seem, at the very least, to be replacing their laptops less often and spending discretionary funds on tablets, which are gradually replacing another device: the dedicated e-reader. Many analysts had expected Windows 8 to halt or reverse this trend, and it may yet do so. But early indications aren’t encouraging for that outcome.

Integrating Hardware and Software

Meanwhile, another big trend is emerging: Apple’s model of one company making the entire device—hardware, operating system, core apps and an online ecosystem—is beginning to take hold elsewhere. In October, Microsoft unveiled its first computer, the Surface tablet. The company will follow it up as soon as this month with a second, more powerful version. I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft also made its own smartphone this year.

Google is also moving in Apple’s direction. It now sells three devices—a smartphone and two tablets—under its Nexus brand. These products are built by partner companies, but designed by Google. Now that Google owns its own hardware company, Motorola Mobility, I expect it to get deeper into the integrated model. Motorola, freshly stocked with former Google executives, is reported to be building advanced new hardware devices tightly integrated with Android.

What to Watch: In addition to its Apple TV interface, left, Apple is expected to try to further simplify television viewing.

Rethinking Television

Samsung and others already make TVs that can connect to the Internet, and stream Internet video and run tablet-type apps, without any special set-top box. But I find them clumsy, and their “smart TV” functions haven’t taken off with consumers yet. This may be the year they do.

The biggest expectation is that Apple, which has been working hard on the problem, will finally unveil its long-rumored TV this year, with the goal of greatly simplifying the TV and smoothly melding Internet and cable content. Many, including me, thought it might appear in 2012, but the company reportedly ran into difficulties in negotiating with media companies for content rights. Meanwhile, Apple’s tiny, $99 Apple TV box, while still a relatively small seller, is gaining popularity, partly because the company has built into its laptops, tablets and phones a feature called AirPlay which can use an Apple TV box to wirelessly stream audio and video to a TV.

Republic Wireless offers the Defy XT with a $19 unlimited plan.

Cheaper Smartphones and Plans

Smartphones are everywhere in the developed world, but most are still expensive—around $200 after a carrier subsidy that requires a two-year contract. And the monthly service fees can easily approach or exceed $100, especially if you use a lot of data, which is the very essence of a smartphone’s purpose.

There are already some smartphones, usually older, less capable or less popular models, available for $99 or $49 or even free with a contract. But I expect to see better smartphones at lower prices in 2013, especially those running the dominant Android platform, and the handsome, but low-selling Windows Phone platform from Microsoft.

In addition, some companies are beginning to offer really cheap monthly plans. One example: Republic Wireless, which offers unlimited voice, text and data for $19 a month on a small, Android phone, the Motorola Defy XT, using older software that has been modified to make voice calls where possible over Wi-Fi instead of a costlier carrier network.

The $700 Astell & Kern AK100 plays much higher fidelity digital music.

Costlier, Better Music Players

Audiophiles and recording artists have never much liked the compressed music files that now fill every iPod and smartphone. They complain that the richness of the original recording is lost because the song files are optimized for minimum space and download time, and because they are often made from CDs, not from the master studio tapes.

So in 2013, there will be a push to sell a new kind of portable music player that can handle high quality music. The Korean electronics company, iRiver, has introduced the Astell & Kern AK100, a $700 player that can play much higher fidelity digital music. The legendary rocker Neil Young is backing a second venture, Pono, which is doing something similar. In addition to the price, there’s another downside: The files can be 10 to 20 times as large as standard digital songs, so many fewer tracks fit in a given amount of memory.

The Basis, part of the crop of new wristband monitors, measures resting heart rate.

Fitness and Health Monitors

In 2012, sensor-packed wristbands like the Nike+ FuelBand and the Jawbone Up were introduced to measure how many steps people take in a day, how well they sleep, and other indicators of health and fitness. I expect this trend to continue in 2013, in different forms and with more sophisticated sensors. One new product, the Basis, is a watch with sensors on the back that measures resting heart rate. All of these devices tie into mobile apps or Web-based dashboards to track progress and offer advice.

Internet-Controlled Everything

Another trend I expect to see in 2013 is an expansion of apps and devices that let people wirelessly control many everyday objects, from light bulbs to appliances, using low-powered networks and smartphones or tablets. And we’ll likely see more smart devices with such intelligence built in, similar to the Nest intelligent thermostat, which is Wi-Fi powered.

These are just a few of the trends likely to mark the consumer tech landscape in 2013. Others will also be prominent, most notably the continued reliance on the cloud, or remote servers, to store content and work collaboratively. One thing is sure: There are certain to be developments that will surprise us all, and can’t be forecast here.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130101/2013-talk-gets-cheaper-tv-gets-smarter/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121217/all-i-want-for-xmas-is-my-apple-tv/ http://allthingsd.com/20121217/all-i-want-for-xmas-is-my-apple-tv/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2012 14:00:40 +0000 Jeremy Allaire http://allthingsd.com/?p=278310 Coming into 2012, with rumors and theories running wild, we all hoped for a new Apple TV in time for Christmas. While we did get spades of new tablets from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Samsung and others, all Apple had for us was an upgraded iPhone and a handful of new iPad updates and sizes. The contents of our pockets may have changed, but Apple has left our living rooms largely untouched.

Myriad issues have held back the new Apple TV, from complex dealings and integration with established broadcast cable providers, to hardware design and supply issues, to the necessary evolution of iOS SDKs — but we won’t be kept waiting forever. There’s every reason to expect the new product to launch in 2013. When it does, we’re likely to see massive disruption of the broadcast and gaming industries, the rise of an age of TV apps, and an even stronger leadership role for Apple in software, media, communications and consumer devices.

What will the coming Apple TV look like, and what will it mean for our industry? There’s plenty of information available to guide our speculation. Let’s imagine Christmas 2013, and the new line of Apple TV products I hope to find under my tree.

Apple TV under the Christmas tree

What will the new Apple TV be?
The new Apple TV will be defined by three key values for consumers:

1. The best way to consume broadcast TV and any online video. A seamless touch- and TV-based interface makes it simple to consume your existing cable and broadcast content, including video-on-demand (VOD) libraries and DVR features. Via iTunes, you also get instant access to mega-libraries and subscriptions from iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, not to mention YouTube. Naturally, you can also access any AirPlay-enabled videos on the Web, as well as TV apps updated with the new iOS 7 SDK.
2. The ultimate game console. The new Apple TV will be a direct assault on the game console industry, with a living-room platform that should leave Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony running scared. With a single launch, Apple will extend the iOS gaming distribution ecosystem into the living room, and invent new categories of gaming through the interaction of iOS devices with Apple TV.
3. The best way to experience all of your apps. Crucially, the new Apple TV will extend nearly every existing iOS app into being a TV app that brings the power and richness of large display surfaces to consumer computing — a task that nearly every industry titan has attempted and failed. The combination of touch and TV will ignite a new era in dual-screen software application design and development, in which it will become hard to believe that Internet software was once based solely on PCs, phones and tablets.

Fulfilling the Apple product design fetish
Everyone wants to know what the new Apple TV will look like, what it will include inside, and how it will connect all of Apple’s existing consumer and developer offerings. As usual, product packaging and design are fundamental components of Apple’s go-to-market strategy, complemented by their unique ability to leverage their existing app, content and device ecosystem.

Apple already has an ecosystem of nearly one million apps, the world’s best library of a la carte media, and hundreds of millions of device customers. In an ideal world, Apple would like to sell the majority of these customers a new device for TV. The company also needs to find new $30 billion+/year businesses to keep up its pace of growth and value creation. The key is to introduce a product franchise that defines the consumer experience, owns the extension of the app platform into the TV, and captures as many users as possible, as quickly as possible — while taking enormous share from an established, multi-hundred-billion dollar/year industry.

To do this, Apple needs a two-pronged strategy:

1. A new companion device for TV that starts at $149, attaches to nearly any existing TV, and does not require customers to buy an expensive new monitor. This is crucial for quickly establishing and maintaining platform dominance quickly, and even standalone could be a $5 billion to $10 billion opportunity.
2. A new family of ultra-thin TV monitors that bundles all of the capabilities of the companion device and includes beefed up computing power. These large-screen monitors will be a direct assault on the global TV monitor industry, a market worth hundreds of billions annually, albeit with slightly slower replacement cycles of four years versus two years for smartphones and tablets. This gives Apple that additional $30 billion+ revenue stream it needs.

Combined, these new products will radically transform the computing, media and electronics industry, and more deeply cement Apple’s role as the de facto platform for content and apps.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these products:

The new Apple TV companion
Designed with a new A7 quad-core CPU, the device will provide enough horsepower to deliver 1080p HD video and the most demanding gaming graphics; built-in front-facing sensors and camera; and enough storage for loads of games, apps, content, and recorded live TV.

The device will offer HDMI and digital audio output, a gigabit Ethernet port and built-in WiFi, as well as two Lightning ports — one for power, another for the included “co-ax dongle,” which will connect directly to most existing cable TV hookups to replace your existing cable set-top box. More on that later.

As we’ve come to expect from Apple, the product will be offered in a sleek and slim form factor that sits easily on top of or under any existing TV. I suspect a thin horizontal bar, such as we’ve rendered here:

Apple TV Companion

Apple TV companion device specs

This design will put the device truly at the center of the living room, a compact porthole into the entire digital economy. Developers will be able to leverage the front-facing sensors and camera in the same way they build on existing iOS APIs; in fact, the new platform launch will likely include iOS 7 with support for new TV apps and Apple TV SDKs.

For existing iPhone and iPad users who already own a flat-screen TV, this new TV companion device will be a great bargain that also radically expands the value of their existing devices. This will also be a highly popular form factor for multi-monitor households, offices and even retail establishments.

The new ultra-thin Apple TV monitor
Likely coming in 46″ and 60″ models with a solid glass front and aluminum back, and stand and rear-mounting options, this ultra-thin monitor will mirror the design aesthetic of the latest iPhone and iPad.

Apple TV basic form factor

Apple TV specs

Apple TV stand options

The full capabilities of the companion device will be complemented with additional audio, video and lightning ports, storage of up to three terabytes, and, of course, gorgeous display quality (probably 4K resolution) and exceptional design for a modern environment.

How TV works on Apple TV
While Apple TV will support voice- and motion-based input for global menus and navigation, the preferred control method for basic everyday use will be either the bundled simple remote — or, more likely — new iOS 7 apps from Apple that let you control Apple TV with your iPhone and iPad.

Apple TV app and Apple TV

Apple TV app closeup

Channel surfing with the Apple TV app

Apple TV app detail and TV

With the iPhone, Apple created a simple “phone” application on top of existing telephony carrier infrastructure, improving the consumer’s user experience and creating an additional product sales opportunity for carriers. The company will take a similar approach to existing broadcast cable TV and, in so doing, put one or two major U.S. cable operators in the same privileged position that AT&T enjoyed following the iPhone launch. Around the world, cable TV distributors will battle for national sales and marketing rights for the Apple TV.

To accomplish this, Apple has likely created a new API for interacting with the IP-based cable broadcast infrastructure that providers such as Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner Cable have been moving to for a number of years. This will enable Apple to present a consistent user experience worldwide for accessing live broadcast channels and recording content for later consumption. With program guide data, VOD metadata, and the ability to use network or local DVR APIs, the new TV app for iOS will become the simplest form we’ve ever had for watching broadcast television.

Cable companies may initially resist supporting this offering, viewing their ability to cross-promote offerings in their guide and VOD menus, and the customer relationship in general, as their provenance. This would be as misguided as the mobile carriers were who thought they could control and customize the home screens, operating systems and bundled apps of mobile phones as a strategic advantage. Smart operators will understand their role as broadband and infrastructure providers, and will continue — for now — to be the primary packagers of broadcast content with its lucrative tolls for subscription programming. For all of the hope that Apple would help to blow up existing cable packaging, for now, the company’s priority is to navigate and establish global partnerships with multi-system operators (MSOs) and multi-channel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to sell their new TV and TV companion devices.

With natural hooks into the iTunes a la carte content library, Apple will be able to combine premium cable subscription content with their on-demand library to offer users the broadest choice for video content.

Apple’s TV app in iOS 7 is also likely to take ownership of the core second-screen category for companion content to broadcast shows. Apple can easily provide rich, contextual meta-data about shows, characters and social chatter, while providing new APIs that broadcasters can use as a launching point into show- and channel-specific iOS apps. These apps will give broadcasters the greater brand control and direct consumer relationships they’ve wanted, with the added benefit of cross-promotion from within Apple’s own TV app. Because Apple TV users will be linked to a cable provider just as your iPhone is linked to a mobile operator, broadcasters will also gain a simple and seamless way to authenticate consumers into apps that offer their full slate of catch-up TV programming.

It also seems likely that AirPlay updates will include streaming from an Apple TV to your iPhone and iPad (e.g. the inverse of current AirPlay use-cases), allowing you to access and stream content from your Apple TV via your iPhone and iPad, including live television and DVR content — like the original innovation from Sling. This is presuming Apple’s deals with MSOs will include wireless streaming rights, which seems to be increasingly becoming the market standard.

Viacom Nick/Nickelodeon dual screen TV App

Nick app close-up

As with iPhones and iPads, the new devices will come with many preinstalled Apple and third-party apps; in this case likely including leading online video services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon VoD, and YouTube, as well as TV Everywhere apps such as HBO Go. More importantly, any developer will be able to build content and apps for Apple TV. Just as nearly every app you download for your iPhone is also available in a version that fits the iPad display, new iOS 7 Universal Apps will include code for deployment on Apple TV.

Apple continues its disruption of the gaming industry
Putting all of this together — the new hardware, the new APIs, the new input capabilities — adds up to nothing less than a full-frontal assault on the game console market, as Apple and iTunes become the distributor of choice for everything from casual to hardcore 3-D gaming.

While the large installed bases of industry incumbents provide some advantage, it pales in comparison to Apple’s hundreds of millions of touch-device users, millions of apps, and unparalleled catalog of a la carte media. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo can win.

Apple’s iOS is already the world’s most important gaming platform in terms of new game content creation and the velocity and scale of consumer usage. With new gaming-friendly APIs for controllers and user input, complemented with local CPU, graphics and storage horsepower on the device itself, the new Apple TV is a deeply significant threat to Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft in the console market. The same is true for the multibillion dollar businesses built by Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, Toys “R” Us, and GameStop around selling game CDs; Apple TV will be a download-only install medium, as we reach the tipping point in storage and bandwidth where it no longer makes sense to distribute games on physical media.

Some have argued that Apple and iOS aren’t for hardcore gamers — but tell that to the teenage boys playing Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty on their iPhones and iPads. By owning the TV run-time, Apple TV will provide amazing development opportunities for the technical and creative elite and will bring a flood of innovative content creation from major game studios. For the launch of the first iPod with video, Apple brought Disney on stage to announce the availability of “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” for download, heralding the age of a la carte television. For the Apple TV launch, Apple will stand alongside the world’s top game developers to showcase the ultimate gaming platform.

To achieve this, iOS 7 will likely support APIs for interacting with and connecting to third-party game controllers via Bluetooth and possibly RF — as well classic gaming handhelds, steering wheels, guns and any other devices that suit the needs of gameplay.

Multi-user gameplay scenario (Call of Duty) with iPads and a traditional handheld controller

The use cases for gaming are mind-boggling, especially when you bring together geographically dispersed users for collaborative games like massive multiplayer online games. Imagine playing Call of Duty Massive with a gorgeous 60-inch display: &ou’re using a standard controller for first-person shooter play, a friend next to you manages ops from the iPad controller, and a few more friends watch along from their iPhones while they’re riding the bus. Another friend receives a push notification alerting them to a crisis that could use their help — they look away from what they’re watching on TV and jump into the game from their tablet. If killing games aren’t your cup of tea, other options span “edutainment” games, basic single-user games, and even the mundane but always enjoyable family game of Monopoly, with the board rendered with real-time updates on the TV rather than the coffee table.

Which leads us to the third and key value proposition of the new Apple TV:

It’s all about the apps
While Apple TV makes a strong case with its broadcast TV and gaming capabilities, its ultimate killer app will be, appropriately, the app ecosystem it will offer, as millions of iOS apps extend onto the television display surface. I’ve written about this more extensively elsewhere, but the basic idea is that we’re moving into a software world where more and more applications combine a touch device with a TV display surface. That’s a huge reason why consumers will cheer for Apple TV — they’re already embedded in the Apple ecosystem, and so are all of their favorite apps and content. Bringing the familiarity and integration of these platforms together will give Apple a red carpet into the living room, and again revolutionize the world of software to offer value far beyond the consumer experiences of today.

Consider an important (and often expensive) task that we all face many times in our lives — buying a car. How can the Apple TV platform and its broader platforms help make buying a car a better experience? Let’s use BMW — always an innovator in the customer experience — as an example. You find and download the BMW app from the App Store to your iPad (while in the background, the same app is installed on your iPhone). When you open the app, it detects that you have an Apple TV, and asks your permission to display views onto your TV.

BMW dual-screen TV app experience

BMW dual-screen TV app experience

You begin with a quick view of models, and narrow down to the latest midsize sedans, watch the marketing video on your TV, then decide to take the car configurator for a spin. As you’re taken through each area of customization, your TV updates with visual displays of your choices in that section; if you want to learn more about a feature, a quick touch invokes an HD video on your TV. As you make choices on your iPad, the car you’re building takes shape in a picture-perfect rendition on the TV screen in front of you. Once you’re done, you can have the app geolocate your nearest dealer and schedule a test drive. On arrival at the dealership, your geolocation triggers a push notification to a sales associate who greets you by name before handing you the keys to the car.

Every app in our lives will benefit from the connection of phone, tablet and TV, and for this reason Apple TV will become an essential consumer platform. The critical point to understand is that Apple TV is not just about television and games — it’s about us all figuring out how to make the best use of the large displays in our lives.

Technically, there are still a number of key problems Apple needs to solve in iOS 7 regarding how apps discover and get user permission to AirPlay on Apple TV, but these are the kinds of user experience problems that Apple is renowned for addressing. Expect an overhaul of AirPlay protocols and user experience in iOS 7, not to mention many of the new APIs and capabilities that I’ve described above.

The new Apple TV offer for consumers and developers
We look forward to the day that Apple’s new product and developer pages look something like these:

Apple.com product marketing pages

Apple.com developer SDK pages

This is already the direction in which things seem to be moving. For brands, media publishers and app developers, it’s never too early to reenvision their apps and consumer user experiences for Apple’s latest revolution in the way we live.

You can watch and explore all of the images and more in this New Apple TV image gallery.

Jeremy Allaire is the founder, chairman and CEO of Brightcove, a leading provider of cloud platforms for distributing media and apps, with a suite of platform APIs, SDKs and Web services aimed at Web and app developers and the businesses they help to drive.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121217/all-i-want-for-xmas-is-my-apple-tv/feed/ 56 http://allthingsd.com/20121212/apple-tests-designs-for-tv/ http://allthingsd.com/20121212/apple-tests-designs-for-tv/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:30:58 +0000 Lorraine Luk and Jessica E. Lessin http://allthingsd.com/?p=277193 Apple Inc. is working with component suppliers in Asia to test several TV-set designs, people familiar with the situation said, suggesting the U.S. company is moving closer to expanding its offerings for the living room.

Officials at some of Apple’s suppliers, who declined to be named, said the Cupertino, Calif.-based company has been working on testing a few designs for a large-screen high-resolution TV.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121212/apple-tests-designs-for-tv/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121207/excited-about-apple-tv-dont-watch-this-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20121207/excited-about-apple-tv-dont-watch-this-video/#comments Fri, 07 Dec 2012 14:13:30 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=276039

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

Lots of Apple watchers listened to Tim Cook’s NBC interview last night and concluded that the company has big plans for the fabled Apple TV.

After all, Cook said TV was an area of “intense interest.”

But that would be bigger news if Cook hadn’t said the same thing back in May, speaking to Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at our D10 conference.

See for yourself, courtesy of Rich Greenfield and Walt Piecyk, the smart guys at BTIG who mashed up the two interviews:

So what does last night’s interview really mean? Well, it means that Tim Cook is very good at staying on message. But we already knew that. What’s more relevant is what Tim Cook is actually doing.

We know Apple has tried out various permutations of an “Apple TV” product with the Television Industrial Complex in the past — sometimes it’s a programming offering, sometimes it’s a cable box alternative.

But so far, there haven’t been any signs that the company has made any real headway on the content/services side. Until we hear otherwise, hard to get too excited about a couple words.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121207/excited-about-apple-tv-dont-watch-this-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121206/you-know-what-else-started-out-like-apple-tv-the-ipod/ http://allthingsd.com/20121206/you-know-what-else-started-out-like-apple-tv-the-ipod/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2012 19:24:51 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=275809 Apple TV isn’t just a hobby any more.

For years, Apple defined the device that way, resisting suggestions that television was the next market it planned to disrupt. But as company co-founder Steve Jobs said at our D5 conference in 2007, another Apple creation had similar humble beginnings and went on to become one of the company’s most transformative products.

“I use the word hobby because it’s provocative,” Jobs told AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg in 2007. “But the iPod started this way. The iPod started off feeling a lot like this.”

And to hear Apple CEO Tim Cook tell it today, Apple TV might be poised for a similar transition. In an interview with NBC, Cook said that Apple’s view of the television market is changing, and hinted that Apple TV may no longer be the hobby it began as.

“When I go into my living room and turn on the TV, I feel like I have gone backwards in time by 20 to 30 years,” Cook said. “It’s an area of intense interest. I can’t say more than that.”

That comment marks a clear departure from Apple’s long-running narrative about its plans for the TV market and the unique challenge it presents, one that Jobs once said would likely be met and overcome by someone else.

“The problem with innovation in the TV industry is the go-to-market strategy,” Jobs said in 2010 at our D8 conference. “The TV industry has a subsidized model that gives everyone a set-top box for free. So no one wants to buy a box. Ask TiVo, ask Roku, ask us … ask Google in a few months. The television industry fundamentally has a subsidized business model that gives everyone a set-top box, and that pretty much undermines innovation in the sector. The only way this is going to change is if you start from scratch, tear up the box, redesign and get it to the consumer in a way that they want to buy it. But right now, there’s no way to do that. … The TV is going to lose until there’s a viable go-to-market strategy. That’s the fundamental problem with the industry. It’s not a problem with the technology, it’s a problem with the go-to-market strategy. …. I’m sure smarter people than us will figure this out.”

Two and a half years later, no one has. But some very smart people are doing some very intense thinking.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121206/you-know-what-else-started-out-like-apple-tv-the-ipod/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20121130/when-rumors-turn-fowl-comic/ http://allthingsd.com/20121130/when-rumors-turn-fowl-comic/#comments Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:14:20 +0000 Nitrozac and Snaggy http://allthingsd.com/?p=274206

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121130/when-rumors-turn-fowl-comic/feed/ 7 http://allthingsd.com/20121121/a-peek-at-tvs-future-via-google-fiber/ http://allthingsd.com/20121121/a-peek-at-tvs-future-via-google-fiber/#comments Wed, 21 Nov 2012 15:48:17 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=271649 The Google Fiber experiment/maybe-not-an-experiment in Kansas City is important because it shows Google’s ability to compete directly with broadband providers for control of the Internet pipe itself.

If Google doesn’t need to rely on the Comcasts/Time Warner Cables of the world to connect with your computer, then all kinds of interesting stuff could happen — if Google really does want to get into the business of becoming a broadband provider.

Google says that’s the case, but it’s hard to imagine the company really following through. So, we’ll see.

Meantime, Google Fiber, which started rolling out to homes last week, also gives you a glimpse at what The TV Of The Future is supposed to look like. You turn on your set and can watch whatever you want, no matter who is sending out the signal: Broadcast TV, cable TV, Netflix, etc. (You’re probably going to pay for it the same way you do now, though.)

BTIG analysts Rich Greenfield and Walt Piecyk trekked out from New York City last week to get a hands-on demo of the TV service (registration required), and you can see a demo clip here.

It’s not a thrilling video, because it relies on still shots, but it does give you a sense of what the product actually looks like.

The big idea here is one we’ve also seen from other next-gen TV experiments, including Google TV, Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo’s new console: One screen, many inputs, and a guide that simply lets you find whatever you want to watch, without having to worry about the source. If a mythical Apple TV ever shows up, it should do the same thing:

One other point: Note that the one thing you’d expect to see from Google in a TV product — YouTube — isn’t actually available yet. It’s supposed to show up next year, and the fact that it hasn’t yet is sort of astonishing, given YouTube’s stated ambition to compete directly with TV for eyeballs and ad dollars.

But bear in mind that for whatever reason, the Google org structure puts YouTube and Google TV in a completely different silo than Google Fiber. Internally, that must make sense in some Googley way. But it’s hard to fathom from the outside.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121121/a-peek-at-tvs-future-via-google-fiber/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121116/a-fresh-season-of-apple-television-rumors/ http://allthingsd.com/20121116/a-fresh-season-of-apple-television-rumors/#comments Fri, 16 Nov 2012 12:08:57 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=270194 Now that the iPad mini has successfully transitioned from rumor to reality, Apple-watchers are turning their attention back to another of the company’s mythical products — the Apple Television. According to a new report out of Jefferies, Apple’s much-rumored breakthrough TV is not only in the company’s product pipeline, it’s nearly out of it.

Jefferies & Co.’s James Kisner says at least one major cable operator is conducting tests to determine if it could handle the sort of bandwidth demands that a full-fledged, connected Apple HDTV might generate.

“Our discussions with industry contacts suggest that at least one major North American multiple system operator is working to estimate how much additional capacity may be needed for a new Apple device on their broadband data network,” Kisner wrote in a note to clients. “We believe this potentially suggests an imminent launch of the Apple TV.”

At least part of that sentence makes sense. Back in August, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple was “in talks with some of the biggest U.S. cable operators” about partnerships.

More recently, Time Warner Cable COO Rob Marcus told attendees of the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference that the company would consider selling TV subscriptions using third-party technology, even if “in some of those cases that may mean giving up control of the interface.”

Marcus didn’t name Apple outright, but it’s pretty clear to whom he was referring.

The idea, then, that a big cable company might be investigating what sort of impact an Apple HDTV — or Apple set-top box — might have on its network is perfectly reasonable.

Sources tell AllThingsD that Apple has indeed had talks with a few large cable operators about some new TV product. It makes sense that one of them might be doing its due diligence on capacity issues and whatnot.

But the idea that a “potentially … imminent” launch is in the works seems harder to take seriously.

For starters, Apple has already steered analysts away from the notion that it will have something to say about a TV solution soon. More important: If Apple were close to launching a new service, it would almost certainly be in touch with TV programmers about new arrangements, and we haven’t heard anything along those lines.

In other words, there are still a lot of missing pieces here, and while a major cable provider running what-if scenarios on a rumored Apple product is certainly interesting, it’s not necessarily a trumpet fanfare announcing its imminent arrival.

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