FROM BACK SEAT TO FRONT ROW
What was the Apple TV? No, seriously, we still can’t work it out
THE FIRST APPLE TV HAD NO TV TUNER — YOU DIDNT GET A STAND–ALONE PRODUCT, YOU GOT AN ACCESSORY
APPLE’S INVOLVEMENT IN the TV game had been a long time coming. The company had dabbled with TV–adjacent devices in the past, but to limited success. Whether or not you think 1993’s TV tuner–equipped
Macintosh TV counts, the justified bomb of the Apple Bandai Pippin multimedia platform, released in 1996, definitely does. It likely put people within the company off non–computer hardware, and of course, Apple was a computer company.
Until it wasn’t. The iPod, in 2001, set the cogs whirring towards Apple Computer’s transformation into Apple Inc, and set in motion a chain of events which would, just before the launch of the iPhone, see Apple entering the consumer TV space. At a special event a month after 2006’s WWDC, Steve Jobs unveiled improvements to iTunes’ TV store and a One More Thing introduction of “near-DVD quality” movies from the Disney camp.
One Last Thing, though: those movies needed a new home, and Jobs revealed the iTV, due for release the next year. “You can take a movie, download it to a computer, put it on your iPod,” he said. “But what about your big flat–screen TV?” Apple’s solution was a box with HDMI, component video, optical and analogue audio, and wireless networking. “You need a box to drive that big screen TV,” said Jobs.
That first Apple TV, rechristened after UK TV network ITV threatened legal action, was released in March 2007, into a media market very different from today’s. So much so that many users just didn’t get it. What, really, was the point? Apple made it clear that it was taking its place in your living room — “Den, living room, car, pocket. I hope this gives you a little idea of where we’re going,” said Jobs, but it was arguably too early: the Apple TV landed when owning a DVD made more sense than picking up a device–locked, lower–resolution download from iTunes. It demanded a widescreen TV with high–definition inputs, despite not being able to display HD content. The Digital Video Recorder (DVR) was the hot ticket at the time, but the Apple TV had no TV tuner, and couldn’t interact with over–the–air TV. For $299, you didn’t get a stand–alone product — you got an accessory.
PRICEY PERIPHERAL
Apple TV mark one wasn’t quite the same as the devices we know today — or the device it became less than a year later. Packing an Intel Pentium M CPU running a custom OS based on the core of Mac OS X Tiger, the Gen 1 Apple TV looked much like Apple’s Front Row multimedia skin for Mac OS X, and mainly acted as a way to pull content from a Mac or Windows machine and display it on a TV. It was basically an expensive iTunes peripheral, auto– syncing content from one computer to its 40GB hard drive. Steve Jobs told the New York Times that Apple TV was a “hobby” for Apple — but it wouldn’t stay that way.