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mcgrew writes:

CNET reports [cnet.com] that PBS's Charlie Rose interviewed Apple CEO Tim Cook; the program airs this weekend on PBS. CNET says:

It's been rumored for years that Apple has been working on a TV set. Cook didn't clarify if this is actually in the works, but he did say television "is something we have great interest in." He said viewers' current TV experience is "stuck in the '70s" and it "almost feels like you're rewinding the clock and you've entered a time capsule, and you're going backward."

Cook has a terrible memory, or is lying to the kids who don't know any better. I bought a brand new TV in 1976 when Cook was sixteen years old.

It was nothing like today's TVs. It had the largest screen available at the time, a niggardly 25 inches. The screen wasn't flat, it was a CRT; slightly curved, with the edges of the picture rounded. TVs ordinarily had no remote controls back then. The very expensive remotes at the time had only buttons to turn it off and on, adjust volume, change channels, and changing from channel 5 to channel 10 took five clicks through "snow".

TV was analog, not digital. The sound was monophonic; stereo TV was still in the future. TVs had less than half the resolution of today's TVs. The face of my brand new 1976 RCA (do they still make TVs?) was as large as a 36 inch modern TV and the cabinet was two feet thick.

Oh, and my 25 inch TV cost $600, at a time when gasoline was fifty cents a gallon. The only resemblance to a modern TV was that you could watch TV on it. But you could only watch TV on it, as VCRs were still incredibly expensive and there was no internet. Today I watch Hulu and listen to internet radio through my TV (the computer is plugged into it).

Has Cook been partying with Toronto Mayor Rob Ford? Or is he just another lying salesman?

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