Reading the always fantastic Stratechery, I came across a truly excellent post reflecting on the Apple TV. What doesn’t give enough attention is that the Apple TV was announced at the same time as the iPhone, and yet the two products have completely divergent paths. The iPhone fundamentally changed society, upended entire industries, and created several new ones.
The Apple TV on the other hand did none of these things. For a long time it was a hobby product, and as only been revised three times since that initial offering. Like Thompson, I find great solstice in the fact that Jobs didn’t know what the impact of the iPhone would bring. The future is a vast, unknowable thing and it’s glorious to see that no one can truly predict the future, not even Steve Jobs.