What if the New Apple TV Is...

The Apple TV? Seriously, it makes more sense to me that Apple would be improving their device that can be added to any TV set than it would be for them to be attempting to enter the consumer market and trying to compete with products that have established distribution networks and, in most cases, razor-thin margins.

But could it be more than that? Certainly. What if the new Apple TV is... the next generation iMac. Put it in any room as a computer that can substitute as a second TV and use it as a media server to the rest of the home, just as you can through your existing desktop Mac and Apple TV, with the exception being that you can feed your cable through the iMac or through a simple add-on device that allows you to distribute all of your media to other sets in your household via your wireless hub, whether or not they're connected to cable, as long as they're connected to the current Apple TV box or its successor product. Get people used to accessing their program through the Apple TV with the Apple remote (or iPhone and iPad apps), serving audio and video from a central (Apple) computer, renting movies from Apple instead of their cable provider.... (A quick check suggests that I'm far from the only person thinking like this.)

As we can expect to see the next version of the Apple TV unveiled shortly after noon tomorrow, and may see the next iMac at the same time, you'll probably soon know if I'm maintaining my long history of bad predictions about Apple. I'll add to that list, if a new iMac isn't unveiled tomorrow I suspect that they're planning a significant upgrade, not just the incremental updates we've seen over the past few years.