There is new speculation that Apple’s entry into the competitive TV market may include a 50-inch model.
USA Today quoted an unnamed ex-Apple employee as saying there will be both a 42-inch version and a 50-inch version. The 42-inch model had been previously reported.
In the best-selling Steve Jobs biography, the late Apple CEO was quoted as saying, “I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use. It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud. It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.”
This has sparked a myriad of speculation about an Apple-branded TV set and what the magic formula that Jobs “cracked” actually was.
There’s a lot of scuttlebutt that the iTV will be powered by Siri, the voice-activated platform that has captured the imaginations of iPhone 4S owners.
The idea of “smart TV” has not caught on like wildfire in the same vein of smartphones. Google’s platform, Google TV, has failed to draw a lot of attention though the company did just release a sweeping firmware update and expects to unveil big things at CES in January.
Meanwhile, Apple’s attempts in living room dominance before, from its bungled video game system to the first iteration of the Apple TV set-top box, have been commercial failures as well.
But Jobs seemed to be convinced that he knew what would work, and it is that vision that we’ll see in 2012, if the reports are to be believed.
Keep your eyes peeled in the coming months – it may be something other than an iPhone or an iPad that causes your mind to explode this time.
