OMG, Eddy Cue Totally Says No Apple Television Soon!  

Only…not really.

The headline over at Fortune, which is quickly being mirrored by sites like 9to5Mac, is summarily deceptive. The ‘Apple execs’ that it refers to are Peter Oppenheimer and Eddy Cue, its CFO and SVP of Internet Software and Services, respectively. They held a meeting with analysts Wednesday in which they were, of course, asked about Apple making a more significant move into television distribution.

Their responses were taken by the analysts to mean that an Apple television ‘appeared extremely unlikely’, according to the headline of the note quoted right in Philip Elmer-DeWitt’s article.

This was an inference on their part based on Cue’s comments. But if you read the actual text of the note, the only comment from Cue is that Apple will ‘enter markets where it feels it can create great customer experiences and address key problems’. If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s the company line, oft repeated by [CEO Tim Cook](“can we control the tech?”, “can we make a contribution in this area?” and “can we make a product that we would want?”) and others.

That’s the only direct comment mentioned to be made by Cue. There is absolutely no passage here that says Cue said ‘no TV solution’ and certainly none that says ‘not to expect and Apple television any time soon.

Now, the analysts can make whatever inferences they wanted. They were there, perhaps Cue signaled to them with some kind of body language that they shouldn’t expect a TV, who knows? But the rest of their text reads as supposition based on their opinions about broadcast rights and the difficulty that Apple faces in that arena.

And that supposition was then cranked up to 11 by Elmer-DeWitt with his catchy headline, which will be parroted by the usual suspects, without actually delving into the text themselves.

The fact of the matter is that Apple executives aren’t allowed to share any information about anything that could significantly change the course of the company in those meetings, and Elmer-Dewitt knows that, he even says it in the first paragraph. But the headline, and even the text of the article, implies the opposite.

Whether Apple is making a TV or isn’t, this particular analyst note and the headlines that will follow, are pure speculation, nothing more.

Update : Seth from 9to5Mac spoke to the analyst in question and stands by the 'no TV soon’ position the article takes.