Hey Apple - TV is Different

There have been rumours, rustling and swirlings about Apple's move into TV for some time.  It's the 'next big frontier for them' has been some of the hype, and they'll do to TV what they did to mobile telephony.  I'd like to go out onto a limb and predict the pending arrival of the next "Newton".  Apple will uncharacteristically fail in their TV effort and here's why.

TV is different.

Than what you say ?  Than just about every other vertical they've entered before, and some of the barriers to success are not competitive but rather behavioral on the consumer's part.   These tend to be the toughest to change.

For a start, the long, slow approach to TV that they've done has left Apple without some of the more obvious quick wins it could have 'pioneered', such as web connectivity to your set - been done already.  What they've got left that's easily available to them is messing with the user interface - think TV remote morphing into an app on your various iDevices and Jetsons-era talk of the connected household.  Cool, yeah, but worth an Apple-style premium over a Sony or LG TV set ... don't think so.

TV like the original iPod, or now the latest mobile device universe is a consumption device.  And TV isn't about music, or books (hello Amazon), it's about video content that has to be fresh.  As is today's shows - that fresh.  Apple's got music, Apple's got video rentals.  Apple doesn't have TV content, and the Complete Season 2 of Friends doesn't count by the way.  They have excelled in other markets as they offered content to match the device. iPod+iTunes, iPad+Apps etc.  But without TV content that is in some way interesting, where are they ...  well, they're in the same spot as a few other TV makers...fighting a price and screen-size war.

Even if we put that aside for a moment, and assume they find TV content, the second big chalenge I see is that the business model behind TV is different than music and movies, both areas they've seen some success in.  Those are paid content models, and so buying content through another media (device) wasn't really that tough to understand.  TV however is a free subscription model, whereby we've access to the fresh content, and in return we watch certain commercial messages that are associated with it.  Apple's captive market is zero, so they aren't in a position to get a share of that revenue.  Frankly, they made such an impact on the music and movie business that was negative for most content creators, that I can't imagine any TV content creator  will want to play with them.  If the content was free on the Sony TV why would you pay Apple for it ? The answer is you won't and that's the behaviour they won't be able to change.

The last big challenge for them sprung up in December of last year, and they've perhaps not yet put two and two together about it yet.  Apple's recent hardware push has been in screen clarity, more pixels, better visuals etc.  Nice if I'm looking at photos or something.  They call it retina display, and you really can see a difference.  Imagine a TV with that...  no seriously, imagine a TV throwing incredibly high definition visuals in 30 frames per second (or more) at you.  It's overwhelming as your brain struggles to deal with it all.  Peter Jackson found this out the hard way, as he released his Hobbit movie in a variety of formats, including one in what I'll call "Super-definition".  People got lost in the story due to the visual impact. They were overwhelmed, they got headaches.  Mr. Jackson gave us a movie version of retina display, and showed us the upper end of tolerance for more visual detail.  What works fine in a photograph doesn't always translate to live action.  Again, I'm not sure Apple understands that yet, as they've not hit this barrier themselves with iDevices.

So, will they proceed anyway and release an iTV ?  I think they will, as Tim Cook, Apple's CEO needs to be seen to have a rabbit or two up his sleeve. Let's wait to see what happens..