The Apple Television Rumor Returns With New Photos

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We’ve been hearing for several years that an Apple television is in the works, but as of yet, the only thing we’ve seen is the set-top Apple TV box. Most Apple gurus have finally admitted how unlikely it is that Apple would build a television set, which has a much longer life than a phone or even tablet or computer. However, now someone has breathed new life into those rumors with some photos, but there are some important caveats we should point out.

Is this really the long-rumored Apple television set?

Someone claims to have seen an actual Apple-branded television set, and they posted photos of it on the Chinese social networking site Weibo. The Weibo user calls the images “spy photos” of an “Apple OLED TV.” He added that the Apple television set is approximately 60 inches in size and has a “narrow frame design” and a metal shell. The TV set also has a thin bezel and, of course, and OLED display.

Supposedly, Apple is testing the TV set shown in the four photos he posted. Benjamin Geskin spotted the photos and tweeted them, bringing them over to English-language sites and naturally igniting a fire among Apple rumormongers in the English-speaking tech blog-o-sphere.

Two of the images show what looks like the supposed Apple television set sitting on a table in a room. The images look like they’re photos that were snapped of a video feed of the TV set. One shows the back of the very large display, while the other shows the front from an angle. It’s hard to determine exactly how the third one in the series was taken, but it shows the back of the set on a table. The last one looks like it was taken inside the room with the Apple television and shows the back of the TV set.

Apple Television

We’re calling shenanigans…

It doesn’t take very long to spot all the problems with these photos which purport to show the long-rumored Apple television set. The TV looks like pretty much every other TV set you’ve seen recently, which means that this could be any TV and not one Apple is testing for possible release to consumers.

That said, the back of the display looks like an Apple computer monitor, and it doesn’t seem to match with the front of it. The front of the display is the standard black we’ve come to expect of TV sets, while the back has a silvery look like most Apple computer monitors have.

The size of the display panel in the photos from different angles doesn’t seem to match up either, suggesting that the photos could actually be showing two different devices, one for the front and one for the photos of the back. In fact, only one of the four photos shows the front of the supposed Apple television set.

And then there’s the quality of the photos, which are incredibly blurry. The images of the Apple television on the video feed or whatever that is are incredibly suspicious. Although we can’t say for certain whether these photos were faked, the blurriness and just the overall quality of the photos suggest that they could be. It’s easier to hide the addition of an Apple sticker to a non-Apple device if the photos of the device are of poor quality.

So if the photos really show an Apple display, there is the possibility that the device in the photos is an Apple monitor rather than an Apple television set. This was my first reaction upon seeing the photos. There’s also no way we can know that the display panel in the photos is an OLED display. So while Apple fanboys may wish that there really is an Apple television in the works, we shouldn’t forget that the company prefers disposable tech with high margins that people will replace in just a few years.

Image source: Weibo

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