You Can Stop Waiting For That Apple Television Set Now

After the iPod, iPhone, iPad and iWatch, everyone was expecting o see Apple's iTV. In his biography, Steve Jobs revealed the company was secretly working on a brand new Apple television set that would revolutionize how we watch TV. Tim Cook has since reiterated that idea, so every time the company announced a keynote, the question arose. "Will Apple reveal their TV set?" And while the rumors of the device's existence have persisted, there hasn't been more than a peep of anything official. Now we know why.

Turns out Apple was developing a television set, but abandoned those plans over a year ago because they couldn't come up with anything revolutionary enough. Read more about the Apple Television set below.

The news came in a fascinating Wall Street Journal article. Here's the meat of the piece:

After nearly a decade of research, Apple quietly shelved plans to make such a set more than a year ago, according to people familiar with the matter.

Apple had searched for breakthrough features to justify building an Apple-branded television set, those people said. In addition to an ultra-high-definition display, Apple considered adding sensor-equipped cameras so viewers could make video calls through the set, they said.

Ultimately, though, Apple executives didn't consider any of those features compelling enough to enter the highly competitive television market

What's interesting about the piece though is despite the sources telling the Journal the TV development has stopped, it also quotes investor Carl Icahn who expects them to introduce super high definition TVs in 2016. So either he's wrong, or an Apple television just won't be what fans have been expecting.

It also seems that the evolution of iTunes and Apple TV (the box, not the concept) has kind of made any plans the company had obsolete. Those are two ideas that the company continues to push ahead. They'd also flirted with a front camera for video conferencing, but their smaller devices ended up using that technology, and competitors have used it too.

Basically, Apple finally realized that they couldn't change the crazy competitive TV market like they did for digital music, cellular phones or tablets. And when they realized that, they stopped. It may still happen, but if you were waiting to buy a game-changing TV from Apple, it's not coming.