It’s one thing for the Macalope to play mythical leapfrog—he is, after all, a mythical beast—but it’s another to suggest that someone’s leapfrogged an Apple product that doesn’t exist yet.
Lenovo gets a jump on Apple in smart TVs
Lenovo on Sunday announced its first smart TV that will recognize voice commands and run Android 4.0 applications, getting a jump over Apple’s rumored pursuit of TVs with advanced features.
When the horny one wrote Monday’s piece wondering where all the bravado about iPad killers at CES was, he should have known better. iPad killers are so 2010. This year it’s about Apple television killers.
Why try to kill existing Apple products when killing ones that don’t exist is so much easier?
“This allows the user to tell the remote control what they want to do, such as accessing thousands of TV apps available running on Android 4.0, or accessing LenovoCloud service to download new upgrades, and also access personal multimedia content or interact on social networks,” Reynolds said.
“Thousands of TV apps,” huh? The Macalope thinks what you mean is “thousands of Android phone apps that are going to look totally awesome when scaled up on a 48-inch HD 3D screen.”
This could give Lenovo an edge over Apple, which is rumored to be pursuing the TV market with a television set.
Oh, totally. That first-mover-piece-of-crap-jacked-up-with-a-bunch-of-“features”-like-3D-nobody-asked-for-and-slapped-together-without-any-thought-to-how-they’d-actually-be-used advantage is tough to overcome.
“As a new player in the highly competitive TV market, it is very important for Lenovo to offer significant differentiation right from the off. So the K91 is designed as a premium product,” Reynolds said on a conference call.
Translation: “We threw everything into this thing and then couldn’t figure out how to get the price down. We are incapable of making the tough choices that Apple knows how to make. We’re going to sell about five units to very unhappy customers and we know it.”
Look, this is all very interesting, but you can keep your imaginary Apple televisions and your PC OEM vanity attempts at beating Apple to the punch. Because the Macalope has seen the future of television and he has two simple words for you:
Ubuntu TV. (Tip o’ the antlers to Michael Gartenberg.)
Oh, you heard that right. Ubuntu TV. Run, don’t walk, to your nearest electronics retailer and ask them how you can get in on the ground floor of the next wave in home entertainment…Ubuntu TV.
Open always wins, people.
[Editors’ Note: In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]