Was an Apple TV set Steve Jobs final "one more thing"?

Walter Isaacson’s biography on the life of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs hits stores today, and with it comes some tantalising tid-bits on what the Apple main-man was working on shortly before his death.

While many assume that the iPhone 5 will prove to be Steve Jobs’ swansong, it now appears that the king of Cupertino was setitng his sights on living room dominance with an Apple TV set.

Now of course, we’ve had the Apple TV product for many years, and for just as long heard rumours of an actual Apple-branded, iOS packing screen. But according to Isaacson, Jobs finally felt like he’d cracked the platform.

“He very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant,” Isaacson wrote.

‘”I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,” he 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.”‘

The Apple TV boxes have only had middling success, but the simplicity of an all-in-one unit, like an iMac for the living room, has obviosu appeal. Apple have crept closer and closer to the living room for the past few years; could Jobs’ final vision to be Apple storming it in 2012?

Steve Jobs, the biography by Walter Isaacson, is released today. You can read the entire first chapter of the book by clicking here.