Since we know the iPod Video is now the defacto "MUST HAVE" from Apple for Christmas 2005, time to start the predictions for ‘06. I got one, and one only….the Apple flatscreen TV. They’ve basically already got one, remote control and all–it just doesn’t have a tuner built-in yet, and you’d have to remove stand to wall-mount it. And more importantly, Apple isn’t marketing hard as a TV replacement….yet.
But why not? Crank up a 42" screen, with a G5 in it, pop a TV tuner, and toss it up on the wall. Say Apple charged $5,000-20,000 (for ranges between a 27" and a 60") — they’d have a line of people 10 miles long waiting to buy them. Spend a year or two building the high-end cachet, so that all of us plebians would be
yearning for one as availability went up and costs came down
And best of all for Apple, they could start extending OSX (which was BORN ready for its TV closeup, unlike ugly-ass Windows) onto the TV, encroaching on yet another Microsoft position.
I know it’s an oversimplification, but with their retail positions and the legions of iPod fanatics at the high-end of the disposable income food pyramid, it has to be something Apple starts moving on, soon.
Otherwise, I fear TV may become yet another platform overtaken by the cursed Redmond blue screen of (innovation/inspiration) death.