I haven't read the Steve Jobs biography yet. I'm waiting for this month's Audible selection to become available on my account. The big buzz from those who've read it is Jobs talk of getting into the TV business.
Jobs had talked about television and the difficulty in entering that market in the past. The company did create Apple TV, but prognosticators have always wondered why Apple would get into TV manufacturing. It's not as if any of the current manufacturers are raking in the dollars with the razor thin profit margins.
Still, in the book, Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson says this:
"He very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant."
And Jobs is quoted as saying this:
"I'd like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,' he told me. 'It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.' No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. 'It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it."
So the question is what exactly does he means by "I finally cracked it". The tech community is of the consensus that it's Siri, the voice recognation assistant on the new iPhone 4s (which incidentally was down most of the day yesterday). Imagine simply telling your TV what show to turn to or record.
Most predict that we won't be seeing this iTV or whatever it's to be called until 2013. In the meantime let the rumor mill run wild.
Here's a Q & A with tech blogger Darrell Etherington conducted by The Washington Post, Will Apple's iTV transform home entertainment?
Steve Jobs left us with something possibly even more revelatory than this talk of iTV. In a eulogy by his sister Mona Simpson she revealed that his final words were, "Oh wow...oh wow...oh wow". There's some interesting interpretations of what was meant by that statement.
