When Steve Jobs handed over the leadership of Apple to Tim Cook in 2011, he was planning to stay with the company to work on an Apple-branded television set, according to friend Walt Mossberg.
On August 24, 2011, after Jobs’ exit as Apple CEO was announced, he called Mossberg and expressed his view that Apple had a “fantastic” idea in the area of television, Mossberg recalled in a Recode report. Jobs added: “I want you to come out, in a few months, and I want to show it to you.”
While Jobs apparently didn’t detail the hardware and software that he intended for this project, Mossberg has opined that he was referring to an integrated television set, rather than a set-top box like the currently available Apple TV.
Mossberg added: “If you would have asked me five minutes after we hung up, I would have said he was going to reinvent the whole TV set. It would be Apple-esque, meaning it was high quality, and very easy to use. But he was thinking about more than hardware — that was clear, too.”
Less than two months later, on October 5, 2011, Jobs died of pancreatic cancer. Since then, Apple has not brought out a television set of any description – though the fourth generation Apple TV, with a dedicated App Store and released last October, likely comes closest to Jobs’ enigmatic vision.
