The big buzz from the speed readers of the Steve Jobs biography is that Jobs’s last project for Apple was a television with a simple interface. Let’s go to the heavily quoted paragraph!
“‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ’It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”
Well, OK, maybe Steve cracked the problem, but that doesn’t mean there’s someone at Apple currently working on making the device Steve Jobs once said you watch to turn your brain off.
What’s that, Bloomberg? Apple’s Jeff Robbin is leading the project to create the Apple television?!
Oh, thank God, it’s true! It’s true! We still have something to live for!
Sorry, the Macalope was just channelling the Apple rumor sites for a second there. Yes, rumor sites, you’ve got something to wildly speculate about for the next X months. Congratulations.
The Macalope’s pal Shawn King (who seems to be coming up with a new site every month and may need to check into a program for website-creation addiction) made an astute observation about the commentary on the newest object of Apple rumor lust.
Almost every story has a line like…”It’s not exactly clear what Jobs meant, but if the TV offered…”
OK…stop right there…
For every article, everything after “If…” is projection on the part of the writer. There are so many aspects to this wishful thinking and lack of logic, it’s almost difficult to know where to start.
The rest of Shawn’s argument strikes the Macalope like a lot of arguments for why Apple wouldn’t make a smartphone—there is more in heaven and earth, dear Shawn, blah blah blah—but this part is very true. So while we might be inundated with book spoilers these days, don’t expect to get inundated with spoilers about the Apple television, if it even exists. The horny one’s not saying it does or it doesn’t; he’s just saying you can’t rule it out and, given Jobs’s uncharacteristic loose lips, he’d give it better than even odds.
Unless Steve was just messing with people one last time. The Macalope’d give that better than even odds, too.
[Editors’ Note: In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]