With all the hoo-ha surrounding the launch of Apple’s new iPhones and Watch last week, another potentially massive bit of Apple news almost slipped under the radar. As reported by Forbes, Apple also apparently rolled out last week an update to its Apple TV boxes that enabled them to support the brand’s HomeKit app. And it seems to me this has the potential to be bigger news than any mere new phone generation..............
"However, to me it’s also the point where Apple TV feels like just a fairly basic starting point in what could evolve into a much wider Apple home product range that could – arguably even should – include a TV set."
Despite all this, prior to the revelation about HomeKit being sneaked into the Apple TV box the many rumours about Apple working on a TV have seldom if ever sounded convincing......
The arrival of HomeKit onto the Apple TV box, though, changes everything in an instant. It proves that Apple is no longer just about making conduits that simplify your access to the computer and online worlds. Rather than keeping the home at arm’s length, Apple now seems to want to get deeply involved in almost every corner of your house and almost every part of your domestic life.
There’s Apple. Right in the middle of everything going on in your home…
As soon as I read about HomeKit hitting the Apple TV box it struck me as supremely ironic that most TV brands have a concept of how active a role a TV could play in a smart home environment but little clue of how to make that concept a reality, whereas Apple is now well down the road to delivering a mass-market smart home environment but has no central screen to show it on.
Barriers to entry
Cynics will likely be hollering at this point that Apple doesn’t NEED its own screen to show it on, as the Apple TV box can make any screen the sort of hub device I’m talking about. Or else you could argue that the enormous rise in ‘second screening’, where we use our phones and tablets at the same time we’re watching TV, shows that we’ve moved beyond using the TV as anything other than a strictly passive device.
Plus there are substantial practical hurdles to be overcome before the possibility of finding an Apple-branded TV in our living rooms becomes a reality. Where might Apple source TV panels from, especially given that current key screen production partner Sharp is reportedly already aggrieved at how much of its production capacity it has to devote to Apple? Could Apple really make an Apple-branded TV either affordable or so desirable that people will pay far more for it than they would spend on a ‘normal’ TV? How comfortable would Apple be suddenly having to woerk in areas – tuners, AV picture quality, TV interfaces etc – that it’s relatively unfamiliar with?
Credit: AP Photo/Apple
None of these arguments or obstacles, though, alters the fact that if ever TV has suddenly regained the potential to become much more than just a screen you stare slack-jawed at, it’s now that HomeKit has started to make the Smart Home concept look like an irresistible force. Which means in turn that there’s also never been a better time for Apple to feel comfortable about being able to bring something genuinely new and unique to a TV marketplace which, to use Apple CEO Tim Cook’s own recent words, is currently ‘stuck back in the 70s’.
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