It’s hard to predict when Apple will announce a new Apple TV, but the possibility is always in the wild-card hunt. Rumors of a new one appear regularly on those seemingly mandatory “What to Expect at Apple’s Next Event” stories, but they’re usually buried at the bottom in the "¯\_(ツ)_/¯" section.
A revamped version of Apple’s streamer was supposed to roll out at WWDC in June. It was also supposed to be announced before that, at last year’s iPhone event in early September. Whispers of a new Apple TV could be heard in the crowd at the Lincoln-Douglas debates. None of that panned out. The current version of the device is from 2012.
This time is different. Unless everyone from Bloomberg to Mark Gurman has been fooled, a new Apple TV will debut at the company’s September 9 event. It’s also a given that the new hardware will plow through the “it's just a hobby” wall like the Kool-Aid Man. Despite a crowded field of boxes, services, and in-set ecosystems, the new device could become as much of a disruptive force in the everything-that-connects-to-your-TV industry as the iPhone was in the everything-that-fits-in-your-hand industry.
However, it looks like the cable TV industry will be spared---for now at least. And that's because one rumored feature will be missing: an Apple-curated lineup of live-streaming shows from major networks and cable content providers. It’s likely coming, but not yet. According to Bloomberg, Apple’s network infrastructure isn’t optimized to stream hiccup-free live TV from coast to coast, and content providers are still trying to engineer the best possible deals. There’s a good reason for that: The entire future of content providers may hinge on whatever shakes out. Content delivery---and consumer behavior---is shifting from traditional cable boxes to streaming. A new Apple TV will be a market-defining platform for the next generation of live programming.
To many, the lack of an Apple-curated menu of live TV at launch may matter. Sure, Netflix and Hulu and HBO Now and iTunes may have the majority of our programming needs covered, but there’s still a need for live shows. News, sports, political debates, and much-anticipated season finales don’t have the same effect when you’re watching them on tape delay.
And most importantly, how will we simultaneously make the same bad jokes on Twitter without live TV?
But live TV will be far from the main appeal of the new box. Another rumored feature will be the real hook, the thing that may transform the streaming-box, game-console, and eventually the network and cable industries. It's something Apple's had in its back pocket all along, something that already won the digital world over, back for a repeat appearance.
It's the App Store.
Right now, Apple TV’s app arsenal is lacking public access on the developer front. It has the big-name apps that all the other major set-top streamers have---Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go, subscription sports services, and even some live network TV via the Watch ABC app---plus iTunes options galore. But it’s a VIP-only party. The app smorgasbord is about to grow in breadth and imagination and capability thanks to a new platform.
That platform, according to 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman, will be based on iOS 9. That alone may be enough to win the set-top-box war: Developers go crazy for iOS, they get paid more for doing so, and apps often land on iOS before any other platform.
This does not mean all iOS apps will run natively on Apple TV. It’s likely to be a big-screen-optimized subset of the larger pool much like Android TV apps, but expect development to be rampant once an Apple TV SDK is released. Essentially, Apple is giving iOS developers a nice big screen to get creative with.
The mammoth opportunity there is certain to be games. Along with new Apple TV hardware, Apple is expected to roll out a new Apple TV remote, complete with touchpad and Siri controls. Ever since the first Nintendo Wii was put out to pasture, there’s been a huge gap in casual console gaming. The iPhone singlehandedly crushed the handheld console gaming market. An App Store-enabled Apple TV---a box that will likely have support for the Metal API---will likely make buying a dedicated game console a tough proposition for anyone but hard-core gamers.
But first, we have to consider what the landscape looks like now.
In the past year, we’ve seen a few streaming services try to replicate the basic functionality and live content of a traditional cable package. Dish Network’s Sling TV provides a spread of 23 streaming cable channels, with ESPN being the major draw, for $20 per month. You can expand that arsenal with $5 add-on packages and even $15 live-streaming HBO without a cable subscription. Sling TV runs on pretty much anything---well, anything other than Apple TV: computers, set-top boxes and streaming sticks, and iOS and Android devices.
Sony’s PlayStation Vue service is even broader in its channel offerings, but it’s also more expensive and only available in certain areas. The base package includes 60 channels for $50 per month, including live shows from CBS, NBC, and Fox. You can ramp that collection up to 86 channels for $70 per month, and there are also a la carte channel additions available. At the moment, you can only get it in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Miami, and you need a PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, or iPad to watch it.
If early reports are correct, Apple’s service would slot right between Sling TV and PlayStation Vue in terms of price and offerings. It’d reportedly cost $40 per month. It’d likely feature network TV like PlayStation Vue, and thanks to Apple’s cozy relationship with Disney, live streams from ESPN and ABC as well. Given Apple’s popularity, influence, and integration with iOS devices, it would certainly put a sizable dent in the already waning demand for cable TV.
But how popular are live-streaming services anyway? Sling TV and Sony did not respond to a request for comment, and details about their live-streaming subscriber counts are scant. Earlier this month, Dish Network revealed that nearly 170,000 people had signed up for Sling TV in its first few months. Sony hasn’t announced its PlayStation Vue subscriber count at all.
These curated collections of channels are new and mysterious in terms of paid viewership, but there are indicators to just how popular live-streaming services can be. The most popular of them serve up sporting events. MLB.TV has sold season-long streaming packages since 2003, and MLB Advanced Media says it is projecting more than 3.5 million paid subscribers to its digital products in 2015. On the free side of the equation, NBC’s live-stream of the Super Bowl this year attracted more than 1.3 million viewers---a 200,000-viewer increase from last year’s Web audience, but still a far cry from the more than 110 million that watched the game on TV.
Major live events such as the Super Bowl and the Oscars notwithstanding, what’s less clear is whether cord-cutting viewers aren't just interested in dropping their $80 cable bill. They may actually be interested in dropping the live-TV paradigm altogether, especially if a rapidly expanding app ecosystem covers all the live sports, news, and event coverage they crave.
The ambient nature of live TV is what makes this all fairly unpredictable. In this age of having any entertainment we could want a touchscreen-tap away, sometimes it's nice to just flip on the telly and let it ride. It's nice background noise. It's the reason we use Pandora even though Spotify exists. But there are already free apps that scratch that itch, such as the Web-meets-channel-guide Pluto.tv. In other words, we can already do that without paying $20 or $40 or $60 a month.
Does replacing live TV and basic cable with the same thing for a bit less---while still paying $10 per month for Netflix and maybe $15 for HBO Now---even make sense? Pricing and content-wise, it’s probably a wash.
It’s the flood of new apps surrounding that proposition that will make the big difference. A delay in launching a live-streaming package may be a blessing in disguise for Apple. By the time the ink on the multi-network contract that determines the future of live TV dries, viewers may already be hooked on all the other stuff a box running iOS has to offer.
