Steve Jobs told Top Executives that Apple Won’t Make a Television

Ever since Steve Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson that he had finallycracked integrated Television sets, the chatter about Apple possibly releasing its own branded television sets has got louder.  

Interestingly, based on an excerpt from Yukari Kane’s upcoming bookHaunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs told employees at Apple’s 2010 “Top 100″ meeting for executives, managers and employees that the company did not have any plans of releasing a television.

Joe Yarrow of Business Insider who seems to have got early access to the book reports:

Yukari says “Jobs didn’t hesitate.” He said, “No.”

“TV is a terrible business. They don’t turn over and the margins suck,” said Jobs.

He did want to control the living room, though, he said. He also said the Apple TV, the little video streaming box, would remain a hobby until Apple got all the content it needed. 

Every year Apple hosts a “Top 100″ meeting, where the top executives, managers and employees in the company are taken to a resort, and given presentations on Apple’s business. Sometimes new products were also revealed at the meeting, which not surprisingly was supposed to be very secretive. The 2010 “Top 100″ meeting was Steve Jobs final one, where Apple also revealed the iPad 2 with its magnetic cover.

Apple has maintained that Apple TV is a hobby, however, with hardware and content sales reaching $1 billion, Tim Cook recently admitted that “it’s a little more difficult to call it a hobby these days.” He has also acknowledged thattelevision is an area of intense interest.

As Business Insider points out, the possibility of Apple launching its own branded television cannot be ruled out based on Steve Jobs comments at Apple’s Top 100 meeting as did tell his biographer Walter Isaacson the following:

“I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use … It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud … It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.”

Recent rumors seem to suggest that Apple has scaled backs its lofty TV plans. It is reportedly in talks with media companies and pay TV distributors about launching a revamped Apple TV set-top box.

Apple’s next generation media device could be announced as soon as April with a launch in time for the holiday shopping season. The next generation device may be more than just a media-streaming device with support for apps, games and bluetooth gaming controllers. It may also connect to the iPhone and iPad, which could be used to interact with games on the HDTV-connected device.