Why Apple's iTV Will Change Everything
The rumor: Apple will be releasing a revamped/renamed version of their ‘Apple TV’ set-top box, called ‘iTV’. The box will run the Apple iOS (same as the iPhone/iPad), and be priced around $99. — Why will this change everything?
Context & Ripple Effects
Kevin Rose is reviving his iTV claim: a revamped, renamed Apple TV rebuilt to run the same iOS as the iPhone and iPad, priced around $99. What gives the rumor traction is timing — three days earlier, reports had Apple internally testing iOS 4.1 not just against next-gen iPod touches and an iPad revision but against an unidentified product, which fits a new living-room device entering the pipeline.
If accurate, this is Apple extending the playbook behind the iPhone and iPad — a controlled iOS platform with app distribution — into the television, at a price point that treats the box as an accessory to its handheld devices rather than a standalone product.
First-order effects
- At roughly $99, Apple would reposition its set-top box from a niche add-on to an impulse purchase sitting alongside the iPhone and iPad, putting its app-store model in the living room for the first time.
- Content owners and pay-TV distributors would gain a new counterparty negotiating for living-room placement on consumer-electronics terms rather than carriage terms.
Second-order effects
- Rival set-top and console makers would be pushed to answer a $99 iOS box whose value comes from the same developer ecosystem as Apple's phones and tablets, not from the video catalog alone.
- An iOS-based Apple TV would deepen lock-in across Apple's device line — an iPhone or iPad owner gains another reason to stay within the platform, reinforcing the flywheel the iPad launched earlier in 2010.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, television follows the phone's arc: competition shifts from channel bundles and hardware specs to who controls the app platform, with Apple positioned to replicate its mobile market structure in a second room of the house.
- A confirmed move would pressure regulators and rights holders alike, since app-store gatekeeping over TV content raises the same distribution-control questions Apple already faces on iOS — questions amplified by its rumored interest in kill-switch controls over jailbroken devices.
The trend: Consumer electronics is consolidating around single vendor-controlled platforms replicated across device categories at accessory price points, and the television is the next frontier after the phone and tablet.