Apple reportedly in talks to acquire German HDTV maker Loewe | Hacker News Reader

Apple reportedly in talks to acquire German HDTV maker Loewe

iphone.appleinsider.com

For some reason the submitter used the mobile website link, which if you're on a desktop redirects to the homepage. Here is a link that should actually work:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/05/12/apple_reported...

Blame Apple Insider for breaking one of the basic rules of making a mobile version of your site: if you share the links they should work on any platform.

> For some reason the submitter used the mobile website link, which if you're on a desktop redirects to the homepage.

A little off-topic, but is anyone else irritated by the fact that many websites redirect you to their homepage when you access the desktop version of the site from a mobile device, and vice versa? I don't understand why you would ever implement this sort of behavior.

Pageviews, Pageviews, Pageviews.

If I were to put my "suit-hat" on, I'd think like this:

"Most of the population that encounter this inconvenience will think 'oh, I navigated to the wrong version of the page, my mistake. Now, time to find the proper page'. They aren't going to realize that we could have implemented the logic to properly route the reader to the corresponding page on the other version, mobile or desktop. Furthermore, while I can't quantify how many people get pissed off and become resentful of the site for implementing this kind of behavior, I can quantify how many more pageviews we get from putting up this inconvenience (via logs). I can translate this increased pageview to increased ad revenue (simple multiplication). That means increased (at least superficial) profits! I better get a promotion next quarter!"

(I admit to employing excessive hyperbole, but I wouldn't be surprised if people actually thought like this)

There's an old saying... never ascribe to malice what can be perfectly well explained by incompetence.

Laziness. Just point to the homepage for all the "Desktop" links. Done!

The correct behavior would need them to write some logic (even if it's just: s/mobile\.//) to point to the correct desktop URL based on the mobile site URL, and then maintain this logic in future. That's extra work!

The correct behavior would be to have one link that works across all platforms, and serves by default the optimal CSS/JS for your user agent.

I grew up with a Loewe TV in our household. Loewe products are of a very high quality and easy on the eyes. exactly what Apple would look for, to get started with their TV business.

Side note: Apple has always had a love for German companies. Frog Design made the hardware cases back in the 80s and some of the iPhone parts are from a company in Germany.

Don't forget the many design examples Braun has set for apple four decades before their hardware became design pieces.

http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secr...

Apple also bought Emagic in 2002 - a German company known for its 'Logic' sequencer.

One can see that the companies share some design language in Loewe's current product line:

http://www.loewe.tv/int/produkte.html

This is interesting, because it probably means an "iTV" is further away than previously speculated (this summer, end of 2012). Unless Apple decides to rush it, which usually results in a bad product, transforming an acquired company's product into your own takes a while.

More likely a plan for the future, like when they bought P.A. Semi.

Very possible. I don't think there's any huge rush to get the iTV out the door. It could also be they plan to get started with 'off-the-shelf' components but hope to do some custom parts for later models or perhaps they've been working with Apple the entire time.

What would be nice is if Apple pushed the boundaries of HDTV. One thing that's hard to deny, Apple has always been willing to push old technologies out the window without an apology. With the new iPad screen pushing beyond 1080p HD even on a 10" screen, it'd be nice to see a massive screen with a massive resolution to match. An 85" 4K TV screen with the content and delivery system Apple would be able to force might just make me buy whatever Apple required me to have.

But we should keep in mind that while Apple products are on the pricey side, they are firmly within the reach of the common man. Apple products seem to be deliberately positioned below the utmost premium of the price scale for each of their products (ex: you can find laptops with higher performance and a higher sticker price). Their strategy is definitely not "bigger, better, pricier, is better".

If we believe in the "common man stretching his arms" ethos, then the 85" TV screen is definitely out of the question. How many people can even fit a 85" TV into their living rooms? (count me in as one of them)

Apple sells premium products, they just have the sales volume and operational chops to sell them at reasonable prices.

I think you missed the point. Look at Apple's MacBook line, for example. While it's true Apple makes great products, there are plenty of laptops out there with higher resolution displays, better processors, more RAM, and better video cards.

Like someone else said - Apple makes the BMW of products, not the Bugatti Veyron.

It's obvious that Apple doesn't compete on specs. Features like the iPad retina display though, or the laser-drilled sleep indicator on the MacBook Pro, or the unibody enclosures would be dramatically more expensive if they were even available, were it not for Apple's ability to secure them at large scale. There's no massive advantage or design taste in having marginally more RAM, so that's not where Apple's attention is spent.

"But we should keep in mind that while Apple products are on the pricey side, they are firmly within the reach of the common man."

Just so. With the caveat that it's more like "the common middle-to-upper-middle class (hu)man." There is something for nearly every level of consumer buying power within the Apple line, but the "fat middle" of the curve is within products that are slightly premium priced.

So, where would an Apple HDTV ideally be placed? At a price point where they can have mass market, premium appeal. (I'm utterly unfamiliar with TV set prices, so can't speculate upon a number.)

They'll want to create the "BMW 3-Series of TVs", not the Audi R8 or Bugatti Veyron. So the Retina quality 85inch screen is a non-starter.

To add to this, modern TVs are very poorly executed, with high latency, terrible UIs, bad color faithfulness, the whole >60hz motion interpolation disaster, bad software integration, bad handling of specs like HDMI, a tendency to be cheap and break... I would love to see Apple do TVs right.

As Apple's iTV doesn't support 24Hz output, I suspect that they are unlikely to change this aspect of the TV industry.

I'm really hoping they push the state of the art in TV interfaces and menus. All I've used are slow, unorganized, and often barely different from something they could have made in 1995.

While a higher resolution would be nice, I seriously doubt Apple would make anything above 1080p. Broadcast and cable area a mix of 720p and 1080i, possibly 1080p on some special channels. Blu-rays only go up to 1080p.

That leaves Apple to provide the content. At this point it's possible to stream 1080 on a decent connections, although it's compressed more than a Blu-ray. Short of FIOS or Google Gigabit, I don't think anyone could reasonably stream 2k/4k. Downloading such files would take a very long time too.

More importantly, 2k and 4k are what's currently used in theaters. Given the entertainment industry's constant anti-pirate fervor, I don't think there is any way they would cooperate with letting the public easily get such high quality streams. "The piracy risk would kill us".

I remember reading about some company that sold equipment to receive recent (or possibly still running) movies in your home. It was tens of thousands, and each movie was like a rental (at hundreds of dollars, if not more). It was aimed at the super rich who build their own mini-theaters in their mansions.

What are the chances they'd discount that a $6 rental from iTunes?

Well the iPad is a 2K screen already. Just a 2K screen in a 4:3 aspect ratio vs the HDTV 16:9. And OEMs are starting to create consumer 4K TVs and projectors now. I've heard the biggest cost of LCDs is the size of the panel, and not the pixel density. I'm guessing maybe iTV 3 might have the 'retina 4K display' and the original iTV might have start with a 1080p/2K screen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cinematography#Video_fo...

or the they simply need loewe's patents.

Any idea what type of patents are in Loewe's portfolio?

tried to research but found only tube related stuff, they had some key patents on how tubes where made.

Not that I think AppleInsider is that reliable, but I would highly doubt it would be a patent / IP acquisition given the price being talked about is only around $100 million and the insane prices being paid for IP right now in tech. It would be far more likely to be a talent acquisition.

Loewe has a superb engineering team, and has been working for ages between TV technology and design. Employees are no more than 1,000, and these guys know how to market high-end, design oriented TVs. This is a talent acquisition.

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