Here is what we think we know about what Apple will announce at WWDC on Monday about Apple TV. It will be releasing an SDK to allow developers to create apps for a new Apple TV App Store which will be part of iOS 6. The existing Apple TV device and an improved version of AirPlay will enable iOS devices to control the TV screen through mirroring and dual screen apps. iOS 6 will be deeply integrated with iCloud, which will bring email, contacts, calendars, documents, music, movies and photos all to the TV screen in a way that is fluid and synchronized with all of your other screens.
To reinforce what Jeremy Allaire of Brightcove said last week, when and if Apple goes into the actual TV set making business is not the critical factor. How Apple enfolds the TV screen, the biggest screen in our lives, into an iOS app ecosystem is. And that is just what they will be announcing tomorrow at WWDC. And Allaire makes another good point that Apple will do this in concert with existing cable and satellite TV content suppliers instead of seeking to become a "multichannel video programming distributor” (MVPD), no matter how the FCC redefines what that might mean.
But the existing MVPDs are about to get outflanked by Apple who will make their content only one of many streams accessible to its users. What will those other streams be? Anything, potentially, on the internet and any of your own or your friends and family's content that you have access to via iCloud.
What I predict will happen with a more fully featured iOS on your TV is that over time, viewing habits will change. The act of looking for content which is an annoyance as a TV viewer is a primary activity as a web surfer. The routine checking on your favorite blogs and social networks will change and become more TV-like as people spend more time consuming those things through a combination of their phones, tablets and TV screen. The launch of Airtime is an attempt to anticipate the kinds of live video communications that people will expect as the internet and TV merge. In this vision, bloggers will perhaps become more like TV presenters and we will each have a handful that we check in with regularly. And this is a very different anticipation than the interactive program guides and social media tickers that have been the unimaginative stock of the promoters of "connected TV."
As Ben Parr writes in CNet, this new ecosystem will give Apple even more of a hardware advantage against its competitors. "The big vision is to make all of the screens in your home interoperable via AirPlay and iOS. Once that happens, it'll be impossible to buy anything but Apple devices, because they will be the only products that work with the rest of screens in your home. Why buy a TV that can't pull up your favorite apps, shows, and games instantly?"
The new "Home Screen" that this all enables will have a larger place for our own personal content and a larger place for the kind of narrow casting that we enjoy on the web than the traditional TV experience. But our experience of our own content and of the web will also be changed by the scale and sociableness of the big screen. This may take time away from our consumption of the offerings of the cable companies and broadcast networks, but it will also mean that we will value the time we spend with high-quality, water cooler worthy content more, because we will be choosing it more actively among the things we actually care about.
I think it is fair to say that TV will never be the same.
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