By Ermal Hajrizi
What’s this? The chief of Apple’s primary manufacturing partner in China, Foxconn, revealed plans that the company was making in preparation for an Apple-branded television set, according to the China Daily. Just as a reminder, this is not the small Apple TV box that streams content from iTunes, rather, this is a fully-fledged, “traditional” TV set. While development and manufacturing has yet to begin, the head of Foxconn, Terry Gou, revealed the long-awaited news amidst rumors about the fabled TV, sending technology outlets into a flurry of speculation. However, Apple has yet to announce or comment on anything, and it’s unlikely that they will until they hold a formal product announcement.
As per the report, the iTV is poised to feature an “aluminum construction, Siri, and FaceTime video-calling”. In addition to this, other reports have thrown around the terms “Retina display” in conjunction with “iTV”. The Retina display is, of course, the very high-density display found on the iPhone, iPod touch, and most recently, the new iPad. Whether or not this will make it’s way onto the iTV is dependent on how exactly one defines it. You see, when Apple first introduced the technology at the iPhone 4 launch, it claimed that the term references a display who’s PPI (pixels per inch) was so high that the human eye could not distinguish individual pixels. Other times, however, they’ve brought distance into the equation. For instance, the new iPad has a lower PPI than the iPhone, but Apple claims it is still a retina display since you hold an iPad further away from yourself, and thus cannot see the pixels. Taking distance into account, a standard 1080p screen would fit the bill for the iTV.
WWDC 2012 is approaching, so we are sure to find out more about this mysterious TV set that has evaded the public eye for some time now. Hopefully it’ll be out sooner, rather than later.
