The rumour mill has exploded over the past few days, all over a short comment made by Jony Ive, senior VP of Apple. In a recent statement he said that Apples most important product wasn’t the Mac, the iPhone, the iPad or even the iPod, it was something else, and that something else was some of Apples best work. Rumours of imminent Apple releases always garner huge media attention even without any official hinting from prospective employees, so when one of their most senior guys makes such a bold statement everyone is bound to sit up and listen.
So what could this new product be? So it’s not a Mac, a phone, a tablet or a music player…. the only thing left which has been doing the rounds is the new Apple TV, not the small black box which sits in a few select living rooms, but the mass market television sets with built in Apple functionality, voice control (akin to Siri on the iPhone 4s). Dubbed iTV in the majority of places, although ITV in the UK may have something to say about it, the idea of Apple getting their products to an even greater market than ever before is an exciting prospect. Not everyone owns a Mac, an iPad or even an iPhone, but most people own a television.
So is the new Apple TV, or iTV, the next big thing? Well to be honest we don’t know. Maybe the next big thing is the new iPhone or indeed the iPad Mini, however Jony’s words indicate this not to be the case, not unless Apple are positioning this new device to be neither an iPhone nor an iPad, and place it as some completely new type of device entirely. It remains to be seen what the guys at Curpertino have come up with, but one thing’s for sure, if Jony has high praise for it, it must be pretty special.