Apple gets Siri-ous about TV
Walter Isaacson, in his new biography of Steve Jobs, reveals that Apple is planning to introduce its own televisions, attempting to revolutionize that space in the same way it did mobile phones with the iPhone. He quotes Jobs as having said that he had finally cracked the technical issues of controlling such a TV, though giving no details. This has led to a lot of speculation, but it seems obvious to me that Jobs was referring to IOS 5’s new Siri personal assistance capability. We’ll control our Apple TVs by telling them what to do.
Apple has tried to do TVs before. A few years ago, inspired by the TV success of Gateway and then Dell, Apple had an OEM line of TV’s queued-up and ready to go only to be cancelled when Steve Jobs decided they weren’t good enough. The issue was always controlling the TVs, especially if they were part of a multi-vendor home theater system. We all know the nightmare of multiple remotes, which Apple back then tried and failed to cure.
But Siri is different since it requires no remote. That means in a house like ours filled with little boys no more losing remotes controls, too.
There are two key issues here that make Siri ideal for this control function. First is what I’m calling do what I mean, not what I say. As an intelligent process backed-up by a ton of knowledge on the net, Siri can learn all the devices attached to your system then easily tell them not just what to do, but what you mean. So instead of a big sequence of button pushes, Siri will respond to your command “Get me Dr. Phil” by finding you the latest (or any other) episode of the TV shrink.
The other advantage of Siri (at least for Apple) is what I’d call bait and switch, which is to say that Siri can offer you Dr. Phil from a variety of sources, but the first one will probably be from Apple.
Bait and switch will be Apple’s way of disintermediating TV networks, cable systems, and ISPs, grabbing their TV, movie, and advertising revenue for itself.
Not to mention Google. Apple is hardly going to give up search revenue, either, and Google TV will look pathetic compared to this.
Now that big data center in North Carolina is starting to make more sense.
A reader from Israel first suggested this idea to me. Neither of us know diddly whether it is true, of course, but it makes sense to me.
So Apple’s television would be an iPhone 4S minus the display and telephone parts velcro’d to a big 1080p screen. Figure an extra $100 or so for the Apple bits on a TV that will be marketed initially toward the top of the market but will eventually be aimed, like the iPod, at everyone. Between hardware, content, and advertising there’s another $100 billion market to be conquered there, just for the U.S. Then add extensive language support to Siri and conquer the TV world.
He cracked it alright.
Note — A reader asked why Apple would make expensieve HDTVs rather than cheaper set top boxes like the Apple TV? That’s a good question. And answering it further illuminates Apple’s probable strategy.
Apple may do both, but they’ll want to make high margins for the bits they actually make so it is better to be selling $2000 TVs than $100 set-top-boxes.
So who is the new Steve to broker the deal with all the content providers like he did with music in itunes so Siri can bring me my MTV or my football via ESPN or CBS or FOX or whoever? the technical issue is the least of the worries. True the ipod came along and itunes came later to bundle the music, but Steve got all those guys in the room an knocked heads – who’ll do that now? If we’re going to get the content buffet, we want a low price and Hulu and Netflix, and various boxes that already exist aren’t solving the problem. Call me when Apple gets icast for my tv and i can kiss cox and others high price providers good-bye.
Isn’t Apple late to the game for once?
You mention Google in the article, but I think in that space the biggest threat comes from Microsoft.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2011/oct11/10-05XBTVPR.mspx
Microsoft has a lot of assets in their pocket in this case
- Kinect for an efficient voice and motion recognition.
- Scenarios that you mention in the article have been demoed throught the “xbox bing…” (http://www.redmondpie.com/new-xbox-360-dashboard-update-brings-live-tv-youtube-bing-apps-marketplace-and-more-e3-2011-microsoft/) – offering data from several sources
- Search stack – as you mention Apple will need to go after search revenue but unlike Google or Microsoft does not have a search engine infrastructure.
What do you think?
I am no expert, but didn’t Microsoft also have great assets in multi-touch (Microsoft surface) and speech recognition (Tellme), but failed to integrate these earlier into a compelling windows phone project? Having great assets may be a necessary condition for success of this kind, but apparently not a sufficient one. My question is if Apple will be able to execute as well without Steve Jobs.
Apple is late to the game but they’re not competing directly with Microsoft or Sony. Both those companies would also like to control you TV experience through xbox and playstation respectively, but Apples product would be different in the sense that they make both hardware and software. That will kee them out of the commodity market much like with their computers. And also, much like with their computers, they don’t have to sell high volumes to make lots of money.
The big problem, as others have said, is getting content rights to stick it the cable/satellite companies and give consumers a more convenient and easier to use interface to get their TV content. Otherwise the new Apple iTV idea is just another expensive TV brand and not a “must have” game breaker. Personally, I’d buy a $2000 TV with voice recognition AND a combined service so I can ditch my cable subscription. Otherwise paying double for a fancy TV, even with Voice Recognition instead of remotes, isn’t worth the expense.
My problem with all the content over the internet sites is that I have grown attached to the control I get with my PVR. I never watch commercials. If I use Hulu, I do not have that control.
I’m with you regarding the commercials. I can avoid them with VCRs as long as I can live with a small screen and standard def. The problem with digital PVRs is the content is stuck in the recording device. So I would need a DVR with the ability to communicate 2-way with my cable provider, to decode the digital channels (all of which are scrambled by Time Warner Cable), and to record at least 3 shows simultaneously while I play back a 4th). I suppose I could do that with a kluge of boxes at each TV location (DVRs with cable cards plus Switched Digital Video boxes or just cable boxes) plus the box/card rental fees in addition to the content fees. Unfortunately, I don’t see Apple or anyone else trying to make it easy for people to skip commercials. Even if someone like Jobs managed to get agreemement on a “skip commercial” fee, it would diminish the audience for commercials, so it would wind up forcing everyone into the equivalent of paying for blu-ray disks of everything, only delivered digitally.
Siri – Record this weeks episode of Hawaii-5-0 tonight and edit out the commercials. Remind me to watch it tomorrow night.
I wonder if Seri would be smart enough to realize that it would be delayed about 25 minutes due to a delay caused by a football game earlier in the evening.
Let’s be clear, Jim: the Apple TV will tell you what you can and can’t do, not the other way around.
I remember reading an article (by Cringely?) talking about how the publishing and music industries painted themselves into a corner by becoming nothing more than the method of delivery. (e.g. How cheaply can a book be made and still be identifiable as a book?) Hasn’t television done the same by going to reality shows to save money?
Apple, Google and Microsoft could easly spend the money and replace ABC, CBS and NBC as the big three networks of the internet.
Very astute hypothesis, Tim. First the premium cable channels were doing this, then the lessor cable channels started – some with very good results. YouTube has begun the process. With the money these three have you could be on to something. It’s been said, Apple dosen’t do content, but they have a heck a lot on iTunes and not all that was negotiated with big labels.
Combining all of these ideas: Your iOS device is your remote. For those that don’t have an iOS device, they can get a special purpose remote that can interact with Siri.You can use Siri (speaking into the device rather than shouting across the room) or just use the device as a common remote. Your device connects via Air Play (built into the TV). Since most of us get our Internet and TV content via a “cable” provider, iOS selects TV content or Internet (Netflix, Vudu, YouTube, etc.) as directed since they come in on the same signal. Apple partners with the ISP/Cable provider, charging some amount between the cost of internet only and internet plus TV. Apple collects all search revenue since this is an added service. Apple serves up supplemental content (music, movies, purchased shows) via iTunes. This way Apple doesn’t have to work around the cable companies, which is too tall an order for this generation of device.
The cable companies consider any device, other than the display, as a “workaround”. “Tru-2-way” cable cards have supposedly been under development for decades…the keyword being “under”. That’s the only way to make cable TV more capable and flexible as that would allow true competition in the cable box market. It could even eliminate the boxes themselves by enabling TV manufactururers to build it all in the TV.
Typo in tags: hone theatre
I’m starting to think Apple’s biggest competitor is Amazon. Apple revolutionized music, Amazon has revolutionized a much bigger consumer market and they have the ecosystem that can go head to head with Apple. Apple was willing to make pennies on iTunes in order to sale the hardware at a premium price, Amazon is willing to give to subsidize the hardware in order to give you easy access to their whole world and make money on the products. Apple has a developer driven App store, Amazon has created the most popular ecommerce environment for products of any kind and has some very names taking advantage of it.
Kindle is clearly superior to Apple’s book offerings; Amazon’s music and video distribution is not as sexy as Apple’s, but it doesn’t require a proprietary iTune client either.
Maybe most important, Amazon still has Jeff Bezos whereas it remains to be seen how Apple does without Jobs. Bezos may not have Jobs aesthetic sensibilities, but he seems to be just as ruthless and brilliant about achieving a vision for his company. I would not be shocked if Amazon was bigger than Apple in 5 years.
The Kindle isn’t and will never be an iPad. There is more to the iOS ecosystem than Amazon can imitate and that difference is all of the difference Apple (or Amazon) needs. It can’t be bigger than Apple unless it can make computers and make them better.
The main face of the cards is young and trendy women. As long as you like the bag, as long as you worship trends.
Siri, although nothing original, is indeed a nice friendly technology, and probably easier than wrestling with remote control buttons (although really, how much of a hardship _is_ that?). It is especially well suited to tasks which have a limited vocabulary: Record x; play y at 8pm; A large but finite database of TV programs.
Where I think both Siri and Android’s attempts have gone awry is their reliance on an Internet connection. Processing of the stream should be local, and should not have to rely on an Internet connection. Perhaps a one time setup and calibration, but for reasons of convenience, bandwidth and privacy, local processing please.
“but for reasons of convenience, bandwidth and privacy, local processing please”. I agree with you 100%. But the trend has been moving away from local. Windows 98 had a very useful built-in feature called “Winpopup” that allowed comminication over the local network even when the internet was down. Ever since then, you would have to install a paid-per-user 3rd party program, which may not even work as reliably.
The problem with your hypothesis regarding a ‘localized’ Siri (speech to text and back again – with hooks for doing various things) is that the technology to do decode speech (and learn while it’s doing it – because to be most effective, like any AI, it has to learn through feedback) requires many racks of machines in a data center.
You nor I have the greenbacks to do that ‘locally’ given current technology (for instance, one 32 cpu system with 250 GB ram, FIOS connections and the like will run you upwards of $20,000 – and that system would be what I would call ‘entry level’ supporting a family of 4 – and I’m not sure that would be enough; the remote systems get the benefit of massive parallelization to crunch the inevitable beer slurred mumblings of the average Monday night football fan). Are you willing to pay the equivalent of a car payment to have this grafted onto your house?
Maybe in another 10 years when we all have 1000 core quantum computers in 1 square centimeter – then maybe this will be feasible at the local level.
Speech recognition has always been very limited. The user has to learn the computer’s quirky language, which is a real pain. I seriously doubt siri will catch on widely.
Apple won’t be able to keep up the magic without Steve. Five years from now they’ll be run by bean counters, like most tech firms. That means innovation slowly dies and turns into red tape. We will all look back and see apple peaked this year or next.
Machs Nix for me, since I still have a Scottish accent.
http://s.ytimg.com/yt/swfbin/watch_as3-vflqje1v-.swf
Or search utube for ‘Two Scots in an Elevator’
[...] lot of people are scratching their heads about what projects Steve Jobs left behind. Cringely offers the best guess I have yet seen. Apple TV that leverages Siri technology. [...]
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Interestingly, GoogleTV may be a more appropriate outlook. Through Android, you can get either a set top box, or a SmartTV with Android built-in.
So, while you mention that Apple may do both, Google has already done it. Now, Apple will have to have the AppleTV set top like they use to, plus offer some OEM the ability to build iOS directly into a TV. But then, how do they compete against Google/OHA with Android? Obviously cost will a consideration for that OEM, so Apple will have to either pay them or give iOS to them for free, which they don’t do; or become the OEM themselves and have a really high margin product that will have only a small market share.
Yes, AppleTV is certain, but like Mac vs. Windows, iOS will be a niche compared to Android – in TV, and mobile markets.
Whoever edits and publishes these arlitces really knows what they’re doing.
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[...]I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Apple gets Siri-ous about TV – Cringely on technology[...]…
My experience with Siri is that it does not do well with ambient noise; I have lots of trouble using Siri when my iPhone is connected via Bluetooth to my car stereo. I have to turn Bluetooth off to use Siri.
I can’t imagine trying to use Siri to control my TV in a household with kids.
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I think Tim Cook’s [and Apple's] one post-Jobs hurrah will be the new media tablet [or TVPad or iPad 3, depending on your source] that will integrate with cloud and Apple TV this March. It will incorporate Siri, HDTV clarity, compatibility w/ Verizon, speeding things up w/ its cloud services.