Apple and TV

Lis­tening to Engad­ged Pod­cast 47.5 and the dis­cus­sion about the stra­tegy Apple is fol­lo­wing with video on both the iPod and the iMac, I am slight­ly sur­pri­sed about some of the theo­ries not articulated. 

If you are a com­pa­ny that is high­ly iden­ti­fied with digi­tal media, that – even with a cer­tain under­state­ment – is con­stant­ly on the tech­ni­cal edge, would you real­ly want to inte­gra­te a dying tech­no­lo­gy like ana­log TV into whe­re you deve­lop your media hub? I see Apple as a com­pa­ny that rather takes its time and invests effort into doing things both right and in style. Ana­log TV would­n’t make the new iMacs dis­play look good.

To me, Front Row has HDTV writ­ten all over it. With Video in the iTu­nes Store, Apple even alre­a­dy is lay­ing the ground­work to have HDTV trans­port in their hands and put some pres­su­re on cable ope­ra­tors and broad­cas­ters. They have a dis­play more sui­ted to 16:9 mate­ri­al than 4:3 TV. And of cour­se, they can do all the won­derful things with the digi­tal media that the iTools and Front Row allow.

I’m not at all sur­pri­sed that there’s no TV in the mix … yet.