Steve’s Final “One More Thing…”

They might be juxtaposing Jobs and his wife, who apparently does have a strong interest in education.

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=laurene+jobs+education

Steve Jobs was passionate about education. You need to read more about him.

Jobs was an amazing capitalist.

He was the epitome of an exploitrepreneur.

We are happy with what he achieved - but lets have no delusions about how he operated and built his position and fame.

Take 5K for building something he paid Woz $375 for (breakout)...

Jobs showed little of himself outside of keynotes and interviews with Mossberg, Swisher and Pogue.

There are anecdotes that he did care about education such as an Arrington article leading up to the iPad which said he wanted to use use the iPad to change education. He was also an active parent, though not as much as he may have liked.

It's not that much of a stretch to believe that someone like Jobs would think about ways to change education. There are excerpts from the book stating this.

You're right, the 'television' is just a display, but the concept of 'TV' which most of us consider is the entire ecosystem of content, delivery and consumption.

To try to give you some context, think back to 2005, and question 'how can you revolutionize a phone? It's just a speaker and a microphone'. Of course, there had already been inroads into making your phone much more than a phone, just as set-top boxes and other connected devices have added capabilities to your television.

I don't think we'll see a 'rebirth' of television so much as we'll see television joining mobile, tablets and computers in the middle.

Really, the revolution of the phone was making it more like a computer, but more portable. The revolution of the television I suspect will be the same, but less portable. Just like the portability of the phone expanded the things we used our phones for, a less portable large screen product could expose similar capabilities.

But Apple did revolutionize the computer monitor, by permanently attaching it to a computer and thus effectvely making it not exist.

Whatever they have in mind for the television will similarly be not about adding things, but about taking things away. They will simplify it in a way that geeks will consider a downgrade while opening up a world of possibilities for mere mortals.

Touch screen?

sure, but the success of the ipad, to me, shows that Apple is now more of a luxury marketer than anything else. People would buy an Apple TV for the same reason people pay more for a BMW. If Apple were to come out with a stylish looking TV, built in DVR and Bluray player, with easy WiFi connectability, and cloud storage of favorite shows/movies, and a streaming service for any movie or tv show you want to watch (which Apple can do with content providers because of its heft), and make it so simple your grandma could do it, then I am confident it would be such a success that their TV unit would become their greatest revenue generator by far.

Ok, let's take a crack at this.

1) iPhone as remote: First, they would probably allow iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches to be used as remotes. That would be the recommended use case, and in fact they've already got this with the new iOS5 Airplay:

http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/airplay.html

2) TVs are lean back: Next, the key question is: what is the difference between a TV and a computer monitor? They are converging in many ways, but probably the most important differences are that a TV is lower res, bigger, with less control over content, and situated at a distance. It's a lean back experience as opposed to a lean forward one. So whatever you do with TV has to focus on the lean back/remote control experience. The Airplay link above seems like a real key to this, to make the iPhone the ultimate remote.

3) Show-specific remote control apps: In fact, given that the iPhone's display is programmable, you could make it a responsive remote that changes its UI in response to what's on the screen. So for example, if you are watching the Office, your iPhone's remote app could show the top rated episodes of all time, with comments next to them. Tap that episode to watch it.

Going further with this, basically you could integrate the show website with the remote for a kind of "show specific app remote". You'd want to make this something that wasn't too much of a distraction while watching, but that you used to quickly get to the good stuff or learn more about a particular actor or fact -- or product -- in the show. For season long serial dramas, the remote might also show which previous episodes you should have watched to understand what's on the screen.

4) iTunes+iMovie for independent film monetization: TV content is programmable and you could supply that with iTunes. Hulu, Netflix, and Youtube are also potential content providers.

It might be more interesting if iTunes opened up "show development" in the same way that the iPhone opened up "app development". Make iMovie and iTunes really, really tightly integrated such that it's now incredibly easy for anyone to develop a TV show, push it out to everyone, and monetize it through iTunes.

While you're at it, integrate GarageBand and iTunes to do the same for music. Get all the bands which were internet savvy enough to set up on Myspace and attract visitors, and do the Amazon disintermediation strategy. Basically, allow bands and independent filmmakers to monetize without Hollywood and the record industry.

5) iTV Genius recommendations: one of the most interesting concepts with your super remote would be a smart clicker that would not just change the channel, but would be like a Zite for TV. With a deep knowledge of what you liked and what you didn't like, it'd almost certainly bring up something good.

6) Lean back applications: iTV could also be a deployment point for "lean back apps" beyond standard TV fare which are meant to be controlled with the remote. These could be Keynote presentations, educational presentations, or basically new kinds of apps that are meant to be interacted with at a distance through a smart remote. Again, iOS5's Airplay integration will be the first preview of these sorts of apps.

7) A true universal remote: If people get accustomized to this sort of thing, they'll expect a location-aware remote control interface to a lot of physical objects. This has a ton of potential. Not just for garage door openers and automobiles, but for restaurants, ticket vendors, home automation, and the like. Lockitron sees some of this potential already, I think.

This is just for starters. There's a lot they could do.

People don't buy textbooks because they like to read. They buy them because they are required for their classes. And they can cost thousands of dollars per year.

Typically there is one specific text approved for a course, so there is a serious lack of competition. And the publishers will release new editions every year, with trivial changes, to prevent reuse of old books. It's definitely a sketchy industry, in many ways, and there is plenty of opportunity for disruption.

No, they already have that. The new thing is a complete physical TV, with likely every component and service from end-to-end reimagined and controlled by Apple.

you mean the Google TV that had terrible user interface and a remote control that looked like a keyboard? no wonder they only sold about 5 of those. they suck.

Google TV was an unsuccessful imitation of Apple TV. Google has made its profession to just copy existing products. Anything that meets their eye.

I know he loves Apple, but that does not mean his articles are junk. In fact, they are quite the opposite. I love his article writing style, his logical approach to thinking, his ability to dig information (like his frequent articles on things going on in the google chrome project, Facebook insider info, apple insider info, etc), his ability to make articles interesting, etc. One needs to read his articles with an open mind, enjoy the content/news, but assuming he will be slightly biased towards Apple and/or more excited about Apple than a typical geek would be, but that does not mean his articles will be crap.