DÉJÀ VU
iPhone Keynote, 2007
As with so-called “Smart TVs” today… pre-iPhone efforts had clunky interfaces & fragmented software platforms with “crippled apps,” as Steve Jobs referred to them. It took an extraordinary product with an all new user interface to finally usher in the true smartphone revolution.
We took part of the transcript from the iPhone Keynote from 2007 and replaced the words "phone" and "mobile device" with the word "TV," and found the similarities, specifically in hardware and software solutions, between the two platforms were uncanny.
We hope to revolutionize the TV platform in the same manner as the iPhone did with the smartphone market by providing the respective catalyst - the "revolutionary" user interface.
Today, Apple reinvents the TV...
The most advanced TVs are called smartTVs
...so they say.
The problem is that they're not so smart, and they're not so easy to use...
Smart TVs are definitely a little smarter, but they actually are harder to use. They're really complicated. Just for the basic stuff people have a hard time figuring out how to use them.
We want to make a leap frog product that is way smarter than any TV has ever been and super easy to use.
We're going to start with a revolutionary user interface... an interplay of hardware and software.
Why do we need a revolutionary UI? What's the problem with [the existing user interfaces]?
They all have these keyboards whether you need them or not to be there. And they all have these control buttons that are fixed and plastic and are the same for every application. Well every application wants a slightly different user interface - a slightly optimized set of buttons just for it. It doesn't work because the buttons and controls can't change.
Well how do you solve this?
...It turns out we have solved it. we solved it in computers 20 years ago.
We solved it with a bitmap screen that can display anything we want - put any user interface up.
And a pointing device. We solved it with the mouse, right. We solved this problem.
So how are we going to take this to a TV.
So we've been very lucky to have brought a few revolutionary user interfaces to the market in our time.
First was the mouse; the second was the clickwheel; now we're going to bring multi-touch to the market.
And each revolutionary user interface has made possible a revolutionary product.
The Mac. The iPod. And now the TV.
So, a revolutionary user interface.
We're going to build on top of that with software.
Now, software on TVs is like baby software. It's not so powerful.
Today, we're going to show you a software breakthrough. How do we do this? We start with a strong foundation.
Smart TV runs OSX.
Now, why would we want to run such a sophisticated operating system on a TV.
Well, because it has everything we need.
It's got multi-tasking. It's got the best networking. It already knows how to power manage. It's got aweome security. And the right apps!
It's got all the stuff we want. And it's built right into TV/set-top box.
And that has led us to create desktop class applications and networking, right? Not the crippled stuff you find on most TVs. This is real desktop class applications.
You know, if you've ever used what's called a 'web browser' on a TV, you'll know how incredible this is.
I hope you never really know cause it's bad out there today
This is what the web looks like.
And we tried to make it look as good as we could on these. It usually looks worse. And this is what you get.
And this is a revolution of the first order, to really bring the real internet to your TV.
So after today, I don't think anyone's going to look at these TVs quite the same way again.
