If you need proof that Apple has ambitions to blow up the TV industry, then look no further than the new Apple TV, the streaming box the company unveiled on Wednesday.
There is little doubt that Apple is working on building a live streaming TV service that will come out next year. The New York Times reported in March that it would cost less and include a smaller bundle of channels than a typical TV subscription. Apple is working to include local channels, according to Re/Code.
And it's now clear that Apple's new set top box — the biggest update to the device in more than five years — will play a big part.
When he introduced the new Apple TV this week, CEO Tim Cook said that "The future of television is apps."
It would make sense that Apple’s live streaming service would be one of those apps Cook referred to. Theoretically, you’d be able to subscribe to Netflix, HBO, and an app from Apple that includes a small bundle of channels.
And the new Apple TV will allow you to interact with those channels in an entirely new way.
Take Siri, for example. Siri has a central role in the new Apple TV. It can process language, so it can understand advanced commands like "show me James Bond movies with Sean Connery" or "show me something new."
And the new Apple TV supports universal search, allowing people to search for content across different apps.
Just imagine how well this would work with live TV. Instead of navigating an unwieldy guide like you do with your typical cable or satellite subscription, you could say something like "show me all of the football games that are on right now," and instantly be shown every game that's currently being broadcast.
You'd likely be able to refine that even more — the ad for the new Apple TV shows how people can tweak searches, from “show me family movies” to “animated only” to “just the new ones."
Apple this week also cut the prices of iCloud, its cloud storage service. iCloud would be great for a virtual DVR, allowing subscribers of the live TV service to record and store programs. (The new Apple TVs come with a choice of either 32GB or 64GB of storage, too small to store a meaningful amount of recorded video.)
Apple offers 1TB of storage — which would store hundreds of hours of video — for $10 per month. That's a pretty great deal, especially if the Apple TV replaces your cable box that you're paying to rent each month.
“The reality is that all of these tools work whether you’re watching it live or whether you’re going into an on-demand library,” Jan Dawson, an analyst at Jackdaw Research, told Tech Insider in an interview. “Pretty much everything that Apple showed with regard to TV apps would also work with its own service.”
Dawson said that the new Apple TV could replace nearly everything that's plugged into your TV now. For casual gamers, it could replace a gaming console. It may replace your Blu-Ray player that you've had hooked up just because it has the Netflix app on it.
"Once Apple has a live TV service that’s part of the Apple TV box, then that box becomes the only input you need for your TV," Dawson said. "And then the Apple Tv box plus your television becomes functionally equivalent to an 'Apple television.'"
"From that perspective I think that’s kind of the holy grail,” he added.
In the past Apple has made hardware improvements that at launch were used for one purpose, but later on have been used for other purposes.
Take TouchID, the fingerprint sensor on the iPhone and iPad, for instance. When Apple first introduced it in the iPhone 5S two years ago, people could only use it to unlock their phones and make purchases from the iTunes Store. But a year later, the company opened it up to third-party apps and integrated it with Apple Pay.
Looking back, it’s now clear that with Touch ID Apple was laying the groundwork for something bigger.
It’s doing the same with the new Apple TV.
