Apple TV Could Get Apps When The Time Is Right, Says Jobs

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Remember when everybody said that the Apple TV would be called iTV and it would be running iOS and you could run apps on your TV? Then it turned out that it was an all new Apple TV with no iOS and no apps. But then, last week, we found out that the Apple TV is running a highly customized version of iOS. Now, a cryptic comment from Steve Jobs may mean that we could see apps on the Apple TV someday.

Here’s the quote in question from Bloomberg BusinessWeek, who interviewed Jobs:

What Jobs didn’t say is that Apple wants to become king of the living room. He tells Bloomberg Businessweek that when the time is right, Apple could open an App Store for the TV that could do for television sets what all those apps have done for the iPhone.

Before we knew that the Apple TV wouldn’t have apps (at this time around), there was a lot of discussion amongst the tech punditry about how an App Store ecosystem would do on a television set. Imagine a premium TV channel (ah la Showtime, HBO, etc) putting out an app, as opposed to forcing you to get them through the cable company. Heck, HBO could charge whatever they make through the cable subscription, minus whatever goes to the cable company. It probably would be cheaper and folks would eat the cable company’s lunch.

Last week’s revelation that the Apple TV is running iOS has gotten some interested in what the modding community could do with the platform. Imagine a jailbroken Apple TV that will stream content from newsgroups or BitTorrent or some (illicit) place.

Just like many modders liked tinkering with the first Apple TV, it looks like the new generation device will be just as fun for that lot. And Jobs may put apps on it yet.