The idea of an Apple television set has never made sense to me for a number of reasons — most of which is discussed in this piece by Neil Cybart. But the one reason that I’ve never seen anyone else mention is the physical limitations of Apple’s retail stores. They have to keep dozens of these televisions somewhere in their stock room and dedicate a portion of their sales floor to display models. From a logistics standpoint, this just might not be possible in their smaller locations.
Now, obviously Apple is going to make decisions about what products they’re able to produce solely on how they would be managed in their retail stores. But I could certainly see it being a topic of discussion when their trying to decide whether it’s a worth-while endeavor.