What Could Developers Do With Apple’s Rumored iTV?

Posted January 3rd, 2012 / By Joel Falconer in Apps

Rumors that Apple has been working on a television set have been going for quite some time. The fire was stoked on the release of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, in which Jobs declares that he “finally cracked it” — referring to television user interfaces — and again in the past week after DigiTimes claimed the company was working on a summer 2012 timeline with 32″ and 37″ models (at those sizes, I hope DigiTimes is wrong — their track record is hit and miss).

The current Apple TV, a fantastic product but not a television set in itself, runs a version of iOS that has no support for third-party App Store applications. In the last few months, we’ve had the smallest taste of what apps on an iOS TV platform could do with the introduction of AirPlay, which allows an iPad to serve as a controller, serving up the control interface on the tablet and another view on the television.

We can assume that a fully-fledged television set from Apple, with the interface Jobs says he finally perfected before his death, will do what the iPhone 3G did for third-party developers and allow applications on the platform. But just what exactly is it that we can look forward to? What innovative ideas will take root on Apple’s television platform in ways that could be significantly different from the apps present on existing iOS devices?

Gaming

With AirPlay, some of the most interesting developments have been in the gaming world. When the feature was announced in June, I wondered about the potential that could be unlocked by using iOS devices as controllers for console-like gaming, with many parallels to the upcoming Wii U. The big question is: will AirPlay setups eventually dent console sales as much as devices like the iPhone and iPad have put a dent in sales of dedicated mobile gaming devices like the PlayStation Vita and Nintendo 3DS?

The iPad is a pretty great mobile gaming device but the current Apple TV is decidedly underpowered; it still can’t run 1080p video content, which is at this stage otherwise pretty ubiquitous. It pretty much goes without saying that the iTV would run 1080p video and there’s a good chance it would have the guts to run apps with 3D graphics of some quality if Apple has any plans to let developers near it.

With a television that can handle high-definition graphics processing and an iOS controller that can change to suit any game, I’d say this is one area that independent and big name studios alike will have a field day in. I don’t believe it would take serious gamers away from the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation but I can see the Wii losing market share.

Education

I’m not a fan of straight up educational video, and I’m not a huge fan of audio teaching either. I love learning using web apps or the reflective nature of learning via text where you can pause and think about certain concepts or lines, or the passive, reactionary mode of learning through video — which pretends to be more like classroom experiences where the teacher can interact with the students but is really anything but.

We’ve had heaps of great apps on computers, tablets and mobile devices for learning new skills, such as the plethora of language-learning apps that have been selling in droves since before the Internet was a common household utility, but I think an iTV running iOS, using voice or other iOS devices as an input, could make for a great learning environment in your living room.

Imagine, for example, pulling up guitar tablature on your iPad while watching the technique in practice, in real-time on the TV, and being able to quickly pull up related instruction — for instance, if there’s a pinch harmonic in the song you’re learning but you’re not sure of the technique, you can keep the context — the tablature for the song — on the tablet and learn the technique from the video instruction on the big screen; you wouldn’t have to leave the current exercise to learn prerequisite techniques as you went along.

As the Siri technologies of voice recognition and intelligent processing get more advanced it’s exciting to think about what teacher-student interactions our devices could emulate in the future.

Fitness

For longer than I can remember, aerobics on the beach has dominated early morning TV. One of the most popular product categories inspired by the Xbox Kinect is fitness gaming, with titles such as Zumba — which appeals primarily to women, not the Xbox’s traditional demographic — selling insanely well, along with other strong performers like UFC Personal Trainer.

It’s clear that, for those who can’t find, get to or afford fitness groups in their area, or are just taking baby steps off the couch, the television is a great facilitator of beginner exercise. I can see iOS developers building programs much like those seen on TV but that offer the user complete customization over their workouts, and integrated ways to track and graph things like weight loss and gain and logging of food consumption.

Where Xbox fitness titles can be pretty gimmicky, I can see iOS developers creating a cohesive system across devices: responsive video training in front of the TV and logging data on the go with the iPad and iPhone.

These are just three of the areas that developers will undoubtedly leap on first if the iTV arrives and if it opens up for App Store submissions. Let us know your own predictions in the comments section.

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