Apple makes a lot of money and is surrounded by hype. As a result, there are a lot of rumored Apple products in the works. Some of them are likely, some of them are not, but here’s what we know about them… and how likely they are to exist.
The Apple Television
Long rumored and supposedly a gamechanger for television like the iPod forever altered music, the Apple Television is reportedly being tested at manufacturing facilities even as we speak. Rumors about this thing date back to at least 2009. It’ll supposedly be coming in 46 inch and 55 inch configurations.
Will We Ever See It?: In some form, probably, but not as an actual television. It seems more likely Apple will overhaul its set-top box, the Apple TV, than it will enter a market with terrible margins where established titans are struggling to not lose billions of dollars. Apple is more likely to sell a specific chipset to be put inside televisions so they can get the Apple brand… which is probably what Foxconn is testing.
The Apple Watch
Basically it’s an iPod Nano, you know, the one with a touchscreen, on a wrist strap. This is apparently a rumor inspired by the extreme popularity of watches like the Pebble, and would pair via Bluetooth with an iPhone.
Will We Ever See It?: No.
Everybody in the tech world thinks wearable computing is the future, but we’ve been down this road before, and the fact that nobody can write about Google Glass without stating how dorky it makes you look tells you exactly how long this fad will last. The “iWatch”, unlike Glass, really has no professional applications… so why use it? A prototype likely exists, but seriously, who’d buy this thing?
The iPhone Mini
The name says it all: Some Apple watchers are now insisting Cupertino will roll out a teeny iPhone to compete with the Android market’s domination of the budget sector.
Will We Ever See It?: Probably, but the reasoning is all wrong. When has Apple ever, ever cared about the “budget” sector?
Apple is already catering to the budget sector anyway, so the iPhone Mini would exist not to cater to people with no money, but because Apple knows it can sell tiny things to hipsters.
That said, there are engineering and software problems: The current iDevices are very light and very thin, and in order to get them smaller, you’d have to give up some functionality.
Nonetheless, this will probably be around at some point, because not even Apple can resist the desire to make things tiny.