Under Steve Jobs, Apple changed how most people listen to music and established a gold standard for both smart phones and tablet computers. All this while the company’s set-top box called Apple TV has seen only modest sales. However, excerpts from Jobs’ forthcoming authorized biography by Walter Isaacson suggest that Apple’s assault on the living room is only just starting.

Isaacson said that Jobs wanted to make TV simpler, more elegant, and fully connected to Apple’s existing media infrastructure. The Washington Post quotes Isaacson quoting Jobs:

‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ [Steve Jobs] told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’

Rumors of an updated Apple TV have been swirling for some time, but perhaps some far grander could be the last “one more thing” Steve Jobs has in store for us. 

Take a look inside the iOS file system and you’ll find a reference to “Apple TV 3,1.” This is somewhat odd, since the current version of Apple’s media streaming box is “2,1″ and could herald the arrival an all new version of the device.

The folks over at 9to5Mac believe that this is evidence the device is currently being tested and think that a new version would be a major upgrade to the project famously referred to as a hobby. They anticipate, though they have no evidence, the addition of an A5 dual-core chip, a boost to the RAM, and 1080p playback. The possibility of iOS running on the device is particularly tantalizing since that would give more users access to their apps and games in a new context, though Apple’s experience with the Pippin might be a sign that this is a foolhardy hope.

Despite previous upgrades, and the rise of streaming devices like the Roku, consumers have remained pretty cool about Apple’s offering. So perhaps the most pertinent question about an Apple TV upgrade will be if anyone will care should one materialize.

File this under “we’ll believe it when we see it,” but it’s a very intriguing suggestion: Brian White, an analyst with Ticonderoga Securities, sent a note to investors this week from a Chinese electronics trade show in which he reported that Apple appeared to be gearing up for the release of a proprietary HDTV, possibly by the end of this year.

Our research suggests this Smart TV would go well beyond the miniature $99 second-generation Apple TV that the company released last fall and provide a full-blown TV product for consumers.

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The combination of Apple’s powerful ecosystem, industrial design savvy, powerful brand and ability to reinvent product categories could make Apple a powerful force in the TV world over the next few years.

If Apple does make an HDTV this year, here’s betting it costs 3-4 times as much as comparable HDTVs and sells out on day one.

(via AppleInsider)

Rumors abound about what afternoon’s press announcement from Apple will bring: The long-rumored iPod Touch 4G; streaming iTunes; an Apple TV reboot; iOS4 for the iPad. The guitar pictured on Apple’s press invite teases musical news of some sort, and RWW notes that Apple fall events “have always focused on the iPod line.” So: We’ll just have to see, and soon.

According to a breaking Engadget report from what they call a trusted source, the vaunted Apple TV reboot has a new name: iTV. They reiterate earlier reports that it’ll be be pretty cheap and lightweight — $99, with an A4 CPU and 16GB of flash storage. However: This may not be enough to handle 1080p or 1080i video — full HD — meaning its maximum resolution would be just 720p.

After trying its hand at countless desktop, mobile, and web apps and products, Google has ambitions towards shaking up yet another, historically difficult frontier: television. According to the New York Times, Google is partnering up with Intel and Sony to develop Google TV, a new, Android OS-based platform with a Chrome browser (currently not supported by Android) and aspirations towards “mak[ing] it as easy for TV users to navigate Web applications … as it is to change the channel.” They’ve tapped Logitech to work on the peripherals.

Top-down attempts to hook up television with the web have not been especially successful in the past (see: MSN TV), and even Apple had what’s generally thought to be a clunker with its media-centric Apple TV, though TechCrunch’s MG Siegler thinks that Google TV could angry up Apple’s competitive spirit and revive its TV platform.

But the key idea behind Google TV isn’t so much “let’s figure out a way to bring the Web to your television set” so much as who would be doing a lot of the figuring: third-party developers.