A Steve Job-less Apple won’t be inhibited from their innovative ways, they’re moving into integrating TV with their current line of products.
From Bloomberg,
Apple Inc. (AAPL) is turning to the software engineer who built iTunes to help lead its development of a television set, according to three people with knowledge of the project.
Jeff Robbin, who helped create the iPod in addition to the iTunes media store, is now guiding Apple’s internal development of the new TV effort, said the people, who declined to be identified because his role isn’t public.
Robbin’s involvement is a sign of Apple’s commitment to extending its leadership in smartphones and tablets into the living room. Before his Oct. 5 death, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson that he had “finally cracked” how to build an integrated TV with a simple user interface that would wirelessly synchronize content with Apple’s other devices.
“It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine,” Jobs told Isaacson in the biography “Steve Jobs,” released yesterday by CBS Corp. (CBS)’s Simon & Schuster.
Trudy Muller, a spokeswoman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, declined to comment. Outside of Jobs’s remarks in the book, Apple hasn’t acknowledged that it’s developing a TV set. And according to one person, it’s not guaranteed that Apple will release a television.
Until now, the company’s TV efforts have been limited to Apple TV, a small $99 gadget that plugs in to a television and gives users access to content from iTunes, Netflix Inc. (NFLX)’s streaming service and YouTube. Jobs had called it Apple’s “hobby,” rather than something designed to be a serious moneymaker.
The relentless pursuit of profits forces producers to earnestly work to satisfy the consumers, partly through innovation. If they fail, then they lose money. It’s a calculated risk for them that comes with no guarantees.
For consumers this means more choices and access to products at lower prices.
That’s the beauty of free markets.
