Steve Jobs on an Apple Television: No Need for 'All These Complicated Remote Controls'

The New York Times publishes an interview with Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson which among other topics may touch a bit further on Apple's plans for a connected television set.

Isaacson had quoted Jobs in his biography as saying that he had "finally cracked" the difficulties in building an Apple television set, describing "the simplest user interface you could imagine" and iCloud integration for content. In the wake of the book's release, it was reported that Apple is indeed working on a Siri-enabled TV, an innovation that would fit with Jobs' description of his rethinking of the television.

The new interview with Isaacson suggests that input methods were indeed one of Jobs' primary concerns regarding a TV set, lending credence to the idea of a Siri-enabled device.

I didn’t go into details about these products in the book because it was implicitly Apple’s creations and it’s not fair to the company to reveal these details. But, he did talk about the television. He told me he’d “licked it” and once said, “There’s no reason you should have all these complicated remote controls.”

Essentially reiterating comments shared last week at a Fortune meeting, Isaacson notes that beyond television, Jobs was also working on textbooks and photography as his next areas of focus, but it remains to be seen whether and how Apple pursues those areas of exploration without Jobs at the helm.