Back at ya
We figured it wouldn't be long before Apple responded to the Google TV announcement of a week ago and possible details of the next-generation Apple TV (wouldn't it be funny if Apple bought ITV just for the name? - Ed) are already starting to leak out, according to tech blog Engadget.
According to Engadget's sources, Apple has been a lot busier on the Apple TV project than it's led us to believe. It looks set to be yet another utilisation of the A4 SoC/iPhone OS combination, so much so that it has been described as an iPhone without a screen. The relatively small amount of storage this entails will be rendered unimportant by the whole platform being geared up to stream from the cloud.
This efficient use of existing Apple hardware and software resources will apparently allow Apple to offer the future Apple TV device at a very competitive price of $99. While Apple is not expected to announce the next-gen Apple TV at the impending developer conference - although it must be tempting to go head-to-head with Google - the feeling is that it's not too far away.
In some ways the Internet TV market is not dissimilar to the mobile Internet one, in so much as it's all about enabling access to the full capabilities of the Internet via a consumer electronics device, as opposed to a PC.
While the TV remains primarily a static device and, of course, there's already a very well established advertising model already in place, this has all the makings of another front - alongside things like in-vehicle infotainment - in the campaign to make the Internet truly ubiquitous.