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by kalleboo 784 days ago
The original Apple TV was so bare-bones that Steve Jobs had to qualify it as being "just a hobby"

edit: I'm not going to defend what Apple is doing now (I'd describe Tim Cook as the Steve Ballmer of Apple), I'm just saying that Jobs wasn't as perfect as the tinted rear-view mirror may make him seem, he had plenty of misses. iPod HiFi? Wtf?
2 comments
wkat4242 784 days ago
It was just a hobby, it was really just a cut-down Mac mini with a trimmed version of OS X that would just boot into Front Row. It wasn't really more than that.

It only got serious when Apple got into the ARM market with iOS.

I guess the market wasn't ready either. At the time when the first Apple TV was around, many people still had very slow DSL.

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MBCook 784 days ago
The story I remember hearing is that the iPod hi-fi basically existed because jobs wanted it to. He saw other people making iPod speakers and he wanted to make one to his standards.

Of course as great as it may have been (I never used one) most people just wanted something for 50 bucks. I’d be very interested to know how many units they ever sold total.

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