Steve Jobs famously told biographer Walter Isaacson that something TV-related was coming: “I final cracked it,” he said. The product would seamlessly sync with other devices and the iCloud service, Jobs said, and “have the simplest user interface you could imagine."  Sadly, history has proven that Jobs didn't crack it.

In today's Power On Newsletter from Mark Gurman he notes that "once Apple started to seriously analyze the TV market as a business, work on the the project stopped. The effort never got as far as the App Watch or Vision Pro — or even the now-defunct self-driving car. TVs are a low-margin industry, and consumers don’t buy new ones very frequently.

Apple also immediately encountered cost concerns, including the expense of air-shipping gigantic panels from factories to warehouses to homes. The company would have needed to develop and produce new chips to power the displays, as well as the input-output electronics. And the project would have required manufacturing facilities for the high-quality screens and adequate supplies of glass.

Some people within the company, like Dan Riccio, saw its Vision Pro headset as an offshoot of its TV ambitions." It's massive cinematic virtual screens provides an experience that a standard physical TV could never match on many levels.

Yet Gurman adds that "The Apple TV set-top box is lagging behind rival products, and the company’s best video-watching device — the Vision Pro — is years away from being a consumer hit.

Gurman spends a lot of time making his case for a $50 Apple TV stick, even though he acknowledges that "It’s an idea that Apple marketing executives detest."

Gurman adds that "At the top of the line, Apple could offer something like the new Mac mini providing the best streaming quality and gaming options. Apple could then augment this new central hardware with accessories.

For more on this, read/subscribe to Gurman's Power On Newsletter. 

Today's Power On newsletter also touches on the Ōura ring regarding blood sugar monitoring. This was reported earlier this week on Forbes in a report titled " Ōura Ring Major Update To Integrate Key Feature: Blood Sugar Monitoring." The report notes that "the Finnish maker of the Ōura Ring has announced a partnership with U.S. company Dexcom, so that the smart ring can give users deeper insights about blood sugar levels.

Secondly, Gurman talks about Amazon's new 21" Smart Home Monitor and finally, Gurman talk about a Siri overall for the ChatGPT era that we covered in a report on November 21 titled " Apple is Racing to Develop a more conversational version of Siri that could catch up with OpenAI’s ChatGPT."