The Apple TV Set is an idea whose time will never come

Apple has sold multiple “TV” products, including a TV set-top box. Former CEO Steve Jobs talked about the device way back in 2007. But it’s never made an actual TV set.

Is Apple going to build a TV?

First: Probably not. Second: It would be a terrible idea if Apple did.

But for the record, Apple is “evaluating” the idea of an Apple-branded set, reports Mark Gurman, Bloomberg’s very well-sourced Apple expert.

Gurman himself doesn’t seem to think there’s a meaningful chance that this happens. He made a short, throwaway reference to the idea in his latest column, which focuses primarily on Apple CEO Tim Cook’s relationship with Donald Trump. (TLDR: Cook became an expert Trump-manager during Trump 1.0 by letting the president-elect do what he wanted in public — like take credit for things he didn’t do — while prevailing on him privately to do things Cook wanted Trump to do — namely, exempting Apple products from tariffs.)

What Gurman thinks Apple is going to do is roll out an “AI wall tablet” that people would use in their homes to control smart devices and talk to people in other rooms, etc. — basically, a souped-up intercom/doorbell system using a series of iPad-like devices. But in theory, if that goes well, then maybe Apple will be more interested in chasing an Actual TV Set. (I’ve asked Apple PR for comment.)

The thing is, we’ve been hearing about Apple and its ambitions to build an actual TV set for a long, long time. And they didn’t really make sense at the time, and they definitely don’t now. Ben Lovejoy spells it out here, but the short version is that TV sets are cheap, low-margin commodities.

That’s why the companies who actually make and sell TVs today are trying to find other ways to make money — namely, by selling ads and apps via the devices, like Roku does. There’s even a startup giving away TVs for free in exchange for access to your eyeballs.

As Steve Jobs himself reportedly said, per biographer Yukari Iwatani Kane: TV sets are “a terrible business. They don’t turn over, and the margins suck.”

But, then again, there are many reports that Apple, under Jobs, was indeed interested in building a set. One of them comes from my old colleague Walt Mossberg, who said that in August 2011, after announcing he was stepping down from Apple’s CEO, Jobs called him and told him he was going to work on “big strategic things.” And a big one was going to be a TV set.

Jobs died weeks later. And since then, Apple’s TV efforts have been almost entirely focused on programming, not hardware. At one point, the company was trying to build its own version of a pay TV service — similar to what YouTube TV and others sell today — but by 2015, it had walked away from that.

Apple still sells a dedicated Apple TV box today, which you can plug into any TV and transform it into an “Apple TV” (you can do the same thing with hardware from many rivals, including Roku, Google, and Amazon). But its real TV push for the past several years is its Apple TV+ subscription service, which works on any screen, regardless of who makes it.

You can debate whether Apple TV+ is actually successful — its movie strategy seems … challenged — but it at least makes sense strategically: Apple TV+ is supposed to generate recurring monthly revenue, and Apple is all about recurring monthly revenue as part of its “services” push.

A TV set — even the most awesome TV set — would be a one-and-done proposition for Apple. I’m always happy to be wrong, but I just don’t see this one happening.