Apple CEO Tim Cook Talks 'Grand Vision' for TV

The giant technology company has sold 13 million Apple TV units, but executives aren't saying what else is in store regarding television.

Apple CEO Tim Cook isn’t impressed with television and intends on changing it. He just isn’t ready to say how.

“When you look at the TV experience, it’s not an experience that I think very many people love,” Cook said Monday night at an event that kicked off the 11th D: All Things Digital conference in Rancho Palos Verdes.
The TV experience, he continued, is “not one that has been brought up-to-date for this decade. It’s still an experience much like 10 years ago or 20 years ago.”

He spoke of a “very grand vision,” but when Wall Street Journal writers Kara Swisher and WaltMossberg sought specifics, Cook clammed up.


Cook said Apple has sold 13 million units of its Apple TV, an Internet device for streaming television shows and movies on-demand on TV screens that both Cook and Steve Jobs has called a “hobby.”

Half of those 13 million Apple TV units were sold in the past year or so, Cook said.

“It’s been great for customers,” Cook said, according to the All Things D website. “But it’s also been good from a learning point of view for Apple.”

Cook said Apple has built relationships in the TV industry, but he wouldn’t say what Apple’s next play in that space would be. He also said Apple TV is already more popular than he thought it would be.

The CEO also said Apple has no intention of getting into the content-creation business by producing it’s own shows, as Netflix, Amazon.com and others have been doing.

“I don't want to go into detail,” Cook said of Apple’s television plans. “It continues to be an area of great interest for us.”