Tim Cook may not have had a “One more thing…” at the unveiling of the iPhone 4S, but it looks like Steve Jobs did.
Though he resigned as CEO in August and is no longer with us (Rest In Peace), he had two big projects on the go.
Did the late Steve Jobs have some final tricks up his sleeve?
With the release of “Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography,” by Walter Isaacson, on Monday, October 24th (I got my iBooks copy on the day), you can find out what Steve’s final show-stopper is. In the weeks following his death, reports have been popping up that he was still working on a few new things, perhaps even right up to the day of his passing on October 5. One of these is said to be the next iPhone, which shall be a complete redesign of the current iPhone. If you believe the report by CNet’s Brooke Crothers, Jobs was not very involved in the 4S itself because he was focused on the 5.
Now this may not be much of a surprise, as most people were expecting this redesigned iPhone to be unveiled instead of (or at least alongside) the 4S this October. There was a great deal of speculation that the 4S was to be a cheaper cloud phone. Of course, the rumor mill leading up until the announcement of the iPhone 5 will continue to churn so questions such as, “Bigger screen? Teardrop design? Ultra-thin?” will be around and increase with intensity up until June 2012.
However, there is now more! In the biography, a BIGGER and BOLDER project is mentioned. Something that has been stirring in the background for the past two years, but which no one has been able to really confirm – until now. In Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, the Apple co-founder was quoted talking about TV! In itself again, not much of a surprise, as it made sense for Apple’s next product to be in the TV industry, yet I was still in awe as I read the Washington Post, which happened to be a MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT to the contents of Isaacson’s book.
In it, Hayley Tsukayama reports that Isaacson wrote:
“He very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant.”
Isaacson continued:
“‘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.’”
And there it is – “I finally cracked it.”
Four words that are bound to send Apple’s fanboys’ hearts into their mouths, their hands in the air, and possibly cause a little yelp to come from their mouths. (No this was not my reaction, but yes, I was over the moon when I read it.) If Steve Jobs said he had cracked it, then be pretty sure that the blueprints for the software, the design for the hardware and the wheels of motion are all in place – most likely in development stage with a few prototypes already in the making.
One person behind the idea of an Apple TV being more than just “a hobby,” as Tim Cook once mentioned, is PiperJaffray’s Gene Munster.
Munster said in a research note:
“Apple’s iCloud service for media storage makes it simpler to own multiple Apple devices and share content among them. iCloud stores TV shows and pictures, but we believe Apple may add movies. While a solution for live TV combined with previously aired shows ‘recorded’ in the cloud remains a significant hurdle, perhaps this code is precisely what Jobs believed he has ‘cracked.’ We also believe Apple could use Siri, its voice recognition, personal assistant technology to bolster its TV offering and simplify the chore of inputting information like show titles, or actor names, into a TV, typically with a remote.”
Now there is a thought – a Siri-powered Apple TV would be an order of magnitude easier to use than anything we currently know. I mean, imagine asking your television to “find the latest episode of True Blood; show the photos from our summer vacation; switch the channel to CNBC,” along with current tasks you can already do on your iPhone 4S, such as checking the weather, scheduling reminders and playing music from your iTunes.
The underlying task here, as is always the case with Apple, is to cut out the cable companies through their own software – in this case iCloud. Content is everything. However, can Apple do this without Jobs?
Of course! In Apple and in Jobs we trust. I mean, he didn’t just let anyone run the Apple ship – all of the exec team were handpicked and mentored by Steve Jobs himself. So for now, let us enjoy the lead-up to the announcement of Apple TV. When will this be? My best guess: Q4 2012.
Tags: Apple, Apple TV, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iTV, JG Silva, New Kid on the Blog, Siri, Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson
