Year after year, Apple customers may have felt that the Apple TV set-top box had a future. Once it hit the second generation, as a tiny device capable of receiving streaming video, the possibilities seemed rich. While the second generation was limited to 720p HD, it was enhanced to 1080p, the maximum HD resolution, in 2013. Two years later, the third-generation Apple TV was discounted from $99 to $69.

You might have felt Apple was doing that as a holding action, as an all-new model was being developed.

As Tim Cook continued to tout Apple’s interest in the living room, it didn’t seem that much was going on. Well, there were rumors once upon a time that Apple was developing a smart TV set, which grew out of a pointed quote in the authorized biography of Steve Jobs. There were reports of prototypes and then — nothing. Maybe Apple tried to make it happen, but couldn’t find a place for yet another TV in a very saturated market.

It’s not the same as smartphones or tablets, where there was unrealized potential, and Apple found ways to make a difference. At the time the iPhone and iPad arrived, there were huge numbers of potential customers who had yet to partake of smartphones and tablets.

But what about Apple TV?

Well, it wasn’t altogether certain what Apple planned to do beyond using iTunes and streaming from Netflix and other services. For a time, there were rumors that Apple was planning its own subscription TV service. But the entertainment companies wouldn’t cave as quickly as the music compares did in the days of Napster. So whatever Apple wanted, the industry wasn’t buying it.

Indeed, there were rumors that the fourth-generation Apple TV was meant as the front end of this new service. When the plans fell apart, Apple cobbled together something with support for third-party apps, an App Store, and Siri to help bring it all together.

To be fair, Apple has not told us any of this. It’s just a matter of speculation, informed and otherwise.

But the late 2015 Apple TV lacked support for 4K and HDR — the latter was still being developed by the way — and thus might have been considered out of date before it was released. With list prices of $149 and $199, for the 32GB and 64GB models, it was regarded as way overpriced compared to the competition.

The most expensive Roku, the Ultra, lists for $109.99 including 4K and HDR. These features are also found in the $89.99 Premiere+. Roku boasts thousands of apps. And if you don’t care about 4K and the other frills, you can get a Roku Express for $29.99. It’s a basic streamer, a casual purchase, which you can buy them at Walmart and other large retailers.

After all, most people do not have 4K sets — at least not yet. So even the cheap stuff makes sense. Well, I haven’t tried them, so I can’t attest for their readability. But if you Google “Roku Sucks,” you’ll find a litany of problems, particularly with its erratic interface. But if all you want is Amazon and Netflix and maybe Hulu, it may not even matter so much.

Unfortunately, the proliferation of cheap streamers hasn’t helped Apple’s cause. So far at least, people are not seeing the Apple TV advantage, and thus sales are dropping. According to a Parks Associates survey, Roku’s share of the streamer market rose from 30% in the first quarter of 2016 to 37% in the second quarter of 2017. Amazon’s Fire TV and Fire Stick streamers now garner 24% of the market. And, despite a lack of hardware success in most markets, Google has managed to hold onto an 18% share among streamers.

Apple TV? 15%

And don’t forget that most new smart TV sets also offer the major streaming services with interfaces of varying quality. VIZIO depends on Google, and there are TV sets using Roku’s interface.

Now it’s not that Apple is unaccustomed to holding a small share of a market. Consider the Mac. Even the iPhone, which sells more than any other company’s individual model, has a worldwide market share in the teens. It’s overwhelmed by Android, largely because of the cheap stuff, and Apple still earns the lion’s share of profits.

So I suppose you could rightly state that it doesn’t matter that Apple is fourth in the market among set-top boxes, or that it’s falling further and further behind the competition.

But I do see a problem. While Apple can certainly make compelling arguments for Macs, iPhones and iPads, does the Apple TV really offer enough goodies to deserve a higher price? While the features no doubt work well, how many customers really use them — or care about them? Is it more about the tight integration with Apple’s ecosystem, or just the desire of some people to choose an Apple TV because they have other gear from the company?

I don’t pretend to have all the answers. It may well be that Apple is content to have a small share of the market, and is again taking a holding pattern as it develops ways to flesh out the product. Support for 4K and HDR would help. Also a $50 price reduction to make it more competitive, but that’s just me.

So is the Apple TV moving in the wrong direction, or is it just too early to see Apple’s end game? Remember that Apple often plays long ball, rather than focus on the last quarter, this quarter, or the next. There may be a really amazing game plan in place that’ll truly revolutionize the living room experience as Apple has hinted, only we mere mortals haven’t seen any of it yet.

With the news that Apple plans to spent a cool $1 billion to finance TV projects, the media is pretending that there is going to be some sort of “battle royal” among the various services to get your cord-cutting dollars. While that, in part, may be true, the facts are far more nuanced.

It very much depends on your choices and your priorities.

So if you want to watch broadcast TV, you can buy a regular digital antenna. What type depends on how far you live from the transmission towers, and the quality of reception in your neighborhood. So if you live too far away, you may have to erect a roof antenna, assuming you’re allowed to do that — and landlords and homeowner associations may balk. Or you will be confronted with the original need for cable TV, which was to have a central facility with equipment to receive broadcasts from distant cities, and feed the signal to your home via wire.

Cable channels with repeat or original programming came later, along with premium channels with commercial-free and more hard-hitting content.

The cheapest cable and satellite packages offer a basic set of local stations plus popular off-air channels. Similar offerings are available for streaming, and examples in the U.S. include Sling TV from Dish Network, DirecTV NOW and PlayStation Vue.

Now I fail to see the value of such services because you get the same fare at similar prices with the wires or dish.

Regardless, they are all competing with one another for your eyeballs, but what you can get depends on where you live. So if there isn’t a local cable company, you can choose satellite. If you cannot get a satellite dish to work at your home, perhaps the streaming service will be suitable. But the ISP usually has its own TV system.

Where things get more complicated is the independent streaming service. They are not necessarily competitors — even if the media wants to suggest they are — but alternatives. If Netflix has the programming you want, choose them. But with other systems adding original programming, you may want to have more than one. A possible dream combo, if you want to keep costs low, is a streaming service plus an antenna for local broadcasts, assuming you live in an area where that’s possible.

But most subscribers to such streaming services as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu probably have cable or satellite too. They subscribe to these services as supplements to the basic fare.

And those choices are growing.

So CBS, HBO and Showtime offer streaming services. They also provide original content, but the first two are available on cable/satellite. Disney has announced it’s going to pull its content from Netflix in the next couple of years, and that might eventually include the hard-hitting original Marvel super hero shows that include Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and the new show featuring all four, The Defenders.

If Apple gets into the TV production game, it’ll probably require a subscription to Apple Music, since it’s not likely that a separate TV service will be established. That ship has already sailed.

Again, it’s not a matter of making an either/or choice. It’s closer to an a la carte menu, where you look at the available offerings and pick the ones that cater to your interests. You may, in the end, decide you can live with just Netflix. My son, who lives in Madrid, has already made that choice. But he’s not that much of a TV watcher these days.

Instead, you might set up Netflix, HBO and — when it arrives — Disney and be perfectly pleased with your decision.

However, once you stray from traditional cable/satellite, you’re no longer accessing a single interface, even if the streaming services are received with a single set-top box or smart TV. They may match more closely on, say, an Apple TV, where a more consistent look and feel is mandated. But it’s still more complicated to navigate than just choosing different channels on cable/satellite, although such search systems as Siri can help.

The real debate, I think, is whether too many services will just confuse matters for people who want to simplify their TV watching. If you want to cut the cord to save money — and you’re willing to put up with the inconvenience of dealing with separate services and billing — you might indeed find a setup that’s a lot more affordable.

But when you begin to add up the monthly cost of all the services that are vying for your subscriptions — and the number will increase — you may find that you’re not saving money after all. But you may want the various services to get the shows you need. They will never be available from traditional carriers.

Obviously a single sign-on, as Apple has touted, can help deal with this mess. An improved Apple TV or a similar device might make it possible to integrate separate apps to give you smoother access yet retain the individuality of each service. Maybe we’ll see the streaming equivalent of cable/satellite in terms of interface consistency of relative ease of use.

Right now, though, the proliferation of individual streaming services threatens to just confuse people even further, and they may just want to see which shows they can do without. Do we really need yet another season of “House of Cards?”

What Apple plans to do to conquer the living room remains a question mark. We know the company is interested. Tim Cook has said so. But the rumors that there might be an Apple branded TV set never came to fruition. Even though there were reports about possible prototypes in the world, it never went beyond that.

Maybe Apple just realized there was no space in the saturated TV market in which to compete, and might as well put its efforts elsewhere. At the same time, the Apple TV set-top box remains an unrealized product. Apple added apps and Siri to the fourth generation model, which also claimed a much higher price tag. But such key features as 4K and HDR were missing in action.

All right, it may be true that HDR standards were fluid until the past year or so, and Apple might have been waiting for more efficient chips before including support for the higher resolution TV standard. Remember that Apple isn’t always first with a new feature, but the solution is usually more elegant.

Some published reports claimed, however, that the Apple TV was as stopgap. Apple wanted to assemble a low-cost TV subscription service, and use the streamer as its front end. Supposedly the entertainment companies balked at Apple’s stiff contract demands, and thus it didn’t happen. But it may well be that, if Apple really and truly wanted a deal, it would have found a way to make it so.

But that doesn’t mean Apple has lost interest in doing something in the TV space. Indeed, it has already created novelty content, “Carpool Karoke,” for Apple Music. Getting such A-list talent as Will Smith to participate may seem a coup. But Smith’s films haven’t done so well of late, and, as I said, this is hardly compelling entertainment.

It appears to be more of an experiment at this point, to provide exclusive content to help boost Apple Music against Spotify. But Apple appears to have bigger plans.

According to recent published reports in the Wall Street Journal, Variety and other newspapers, Apple has allocated $1 billion for original TV shows and movies for the coming year. The report indicates that it is seeking to buy up to ten TV series with that cash hoard. The company has also hired two skilled entertainment executives to head the project. They are identified as Jack Van Hamburg and Jamie Erlicht, both former presidents of Sony Pictures Television, who were reportedly responsible for such shows as “The Blacklist,” “The Goldbergs” and “Breaking Bad.”

In other words, solid people with solid credentials to match.

Now hit TV shows don’t happen overnight. Hit TV shows don’t grow on trees. It can take years to fund and produce the right projects, and, even then, there are no guarantees.

Clearly Apple is also entering the business gingerly. $1 billion may seem to be a huge investment, but it pales in comparison with Netflix, which plans to spend $7 billion on original content next year. Amazon Prime Video will do about half that.

The Netflix example is particularly compelling, and it came out of the blue.

So most of you recall that Netflix was originally a place from which to rent DVDs. Netflix killed the video rental store by allowing you to rent videos, keep them as long as you needed, and receive a replacement when it was returned and received. Different packages specified the number of videos you could keep at one time.

Compare that to the way a video store would work, where you had the disc for a few days, and if you failed to return it in time, you paid a hefty late fee.

As with Amazon, Netflix discovered how to establish efficient mailing centers in key locales, first in the U.S., where you could usually depend on one-day or two-day delivery of your selected video. Unfortunately, when a popular movie first came out, you might wait extra days or weeks to get your selection.

Netflix saw the future, and began to migrate to streaming video. Indeed, it dominates the Internet in such a way that some ISPs would routinely throttle Netflix content in favor of their own cable systems. That’s what forced net neutrality, although its future is dim with today’s FCC. That said, customers won’t stand for a recurrence of this untoward behavior.

In any case, streaming content tended to be a mixed bag, and not always the latest movies or TV shows. But Netflix had a trick up its corporate sleeve, which was original content. Beginning with such provocative shows as “House of Cards,” a compelling political thriller, Netflix got on the map real fast. Some of these shows have even earned Emmy nominations and wins when pitted against traditional TV stations and cable channels.

The Netflix stock-in-trade is to release all episodes of a season in one fell swoop. So you can sit there and binge on a full season in the space of a night or two. The typical Netflix series may consist of eight to 12 episodes, and is thus much shorter than the traditional network TV season, and the same as fare from such premium cable channels as HBO and Showtime. No ads, no restrictions on language and some explicit content, Netflix is doing the traditional premium channel routine one better.

On a smaller scale, Amazon Prime Video is a compelling competitor, and it also offers video sales and rentals, same as iTunes.

So is Apple planning to go up against Amazon and Netflix? Is it going to jumpstart yet another subscription service, or make those shows exclusive features of Apple Music? Does it mean that there’s an Apple Music & TV in our future?

Of course, it would help to see a true demonstration of compelling TV content rather than a silly novelty series. But Apple has certainly hired the right executives to deliver the goods.

My only concern is actually having time to watch yet another TV series. I’m just getting around to catching up on some Netflix fare, and I haven’t even considered Amazon. All right, I’m starting the second half of the new superhero series, “The Defenders,” but I can’t be alone in feeling overwhelmed.

Isn’t there quite enough out there already?

Funny how things have changed. It wasn’t so long ago that the Apple Watch (I know that Apple doesn’t want us to use “the,” but I don’t care) was regarded as an underachiever. Or perhaps even a failure, even though the sales figures were pretty decent for an all-new gadget.

At first, Apple was regarded as late out of the starting gate, delivering its smartwatch a couple of years or so after other companies had already entered that space. One of the most promising contenders was Pebble, which got its start with a massive Kickstarter crowd-sourcing campaign that raised over $10 million. It was the largest such campaign up through 2012.

Unlike some other smartwatches, the Pebble was compatible with iOS and Android. It was also cheap, with prices starting at $99. For a time, it appeared as if it would be successful. It went on sale in the summer of 2013. By December of 2014, one million units had been sold.

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