Will Apple Rule the Living Room?

There is a better than even chance you're the victim, um, consumer of one of those asinine triple play deals. You know the pitch: Get your phone service, cable TV and internet all from the same company for only $99.

You're smart and you know you're really only buying one thing and that thing is bandwidth. Naturally you'd like to get rid of the landline phone because who uses those things anymore? Inevitably, when you price out just the internet and cable option it turns out that it costs at least as much as the maddening "triple play" or "beefy bean burrito" or whatever stupid marketing name the plan foisted on you has been given.

So you do some research. If you could just pay for the internet, it would be cheaper than the "trio of trauma." Getting viewing material over the net is easy. You've got YouTube, Hulu and Netflix. Those that really want to get hardcore can download TVShows and turn their Mac into a nifty TV watching/serving machine. A little extra work, but the savings are both substantial and recur monthly. Finally, you've beaten the man! You are going to be able to pay for just what you want!

It is at this point that someone whispers that soul crushing word: "Sports." They probably say it all creepy too, like Gollum saying "Precious." Dropping to your knees you let out a sound born of equal parts anguish and frustration. It isn't very loud, but those who are unfortunate enough to hear the moan feel a great sorrow pass through their soul. The man has outsmarted you once again and all those that hear your cry feel your anguish.

Perhaps that description was a bit over the top. No matter, Apple can fix all these problems if the company would just crank out the entire TV. If you had an iTV (instead of the underwhelming box-o-renting called the Apple TV) you could ditch two parts of the "Trio of Temerity." Happy Days would reign supreme as would any other rerun you wanted to watch.

There have been rumors that this could come to pass, but no good dream should go unchallenged and there are nay sayers. For example:

One day, the company decided to get into the television manufacturing market, a low-margin commodity good that had dozens of major brand competitors that had been in the market for decades. The Cupertino company already made a modestly-successful and arguably best-in-class TV set-top box that allowed viewers to rent, purchase or stream media. Some of their would-be competitors were already working with another major tech company on an operating system that provided similar, but inferior capabilities. Others manufacturers had their own deployment of integrated “apps” from providers of  video and music streaming services – both paid and free. Despite all this, the logic of “we have a buttload of cash from doing all things that aren’t this successfully – what else are we going to spend it on?” proved too compelling for their normally shrewd and trend-leading CEO, so they plowed headlong into one of the most established markets in consumer electronics, second only to radio."

Well, you have to hand it to the MacAdvocate here. That take is exactly right… For any company but Apple. Let's try to think of another fully saturated market where Apple came in and made a difference. You could argue that Macs fit the bill since OS X came out. Market share has almost doubled and Macs are more popular than ever. But the computer market was still growing and Apple had been a player from the start. The iPad might be an ideal example but tablet computers never really caught on until the iPad reinvented the market. The iPod? Well, you could make the argument that Apple killed off the personal radio, the walkman and personal CD players all at once and have nifty argument, but it lacks certain forcefulness. Is there anything left?

What about the iPhone? That did take the market by storm. Lines of sweaty people waiting in the hot sun for the original iPhone. More lines for the 3G and even more for the iPhone 4. Cell phones were an already established market, manufacturers were already really good at making phones. Some excelled at making cheap phones, some excelled at making more powerful phones. Anyway you slice it the market seemed to be fully saturated with great manufacturers and great marketing. Yet the iPhone still sells like crazy.

TV is the same deal. Imagining that there is nothing that Apple can do that others haven't already done is probably true. Imagining that Apple can't do it a whole lot better than what other manufacturers have already is an entirely different proposition.

How will Apple be better? If Apple can divine a way for all of your programming to come over the internet, including sports, Apple has found a way to save you money. Instead of putting up with a confusing mess of the Three bagger you just pay for the 'net and forget about the rest. Of course, the infrastructure for that would be crazy huge. You'd have to build giant ass data centers in North Carolina or something.

At this point, let us assume Apple can make a better solution. Will the better solution sell? These TV makers, as MacAdvocate reminds us, know what they are doing. There are already a ton of internet enabled TVs available and consumers aren't lapping them up, why would Apple fare any better?

Here's the rub. When a better TV experience comes out, a compelling experience people rush to buy the things. HDTV was a compelling reason to buy a new television. People snapped them up when they were going for five grand for forty inches. Not everyone was buying them, it was just too expensive but enough people bought them that it was a very profitable undertaking to produce them. A TV made by Apple could be great enough to reignite the revolution. Something that marries the vastness of the internet and the power of on demand viewing, if done well, could have everyone rushing out to buy a new TV.

Of course, other manufacturers would race to catch up. And then inevitably, Apple would be crushed. The company would have revolutionized TV but lost in the long run. Remember how the Dell Ditty rolled over the iPod? How the Blackberry Storm utterly destroyed the iPhone? How BuyMusic.com destroyed the iTunes store?

Of course, there is a danger. When it comes to TV people have to really want it. Look at the failure of 3-D TV. The manufacturers really want you to want it. They really want the high margin days of flat panels to return, but consumers just aren't buying it. The special glasses, the limited viewing angles, the fact that for a lot of people the 3-D experience sucks in general all adds up to a dud. So if Apple tries this market the company has to get it just right. It has to be easier than the TV you are using today,

Will Apple do it? Who knows? But the idea that Apple can't is foolish. The idea that Apple knows it can't is twice as foolish. If you want to find a company that is afraid of established markets you need to find the Apple run by John Sculley. If you want to find a company that will bust into an already overly saturated market, whip something shiny out and say "ours is bigger!" you just need to look at today's Apple.