I wrote last week about the new AppleTV. After reading that piece of literary genius (it made Dan Brown** cry, it was so good) I got the sense that I may have left it at a bit of a cliffhanger. What kind of development could happen with the AppleTV? So I have a list of things I would like to see on the AppleTV preferably sooner rather than later:
1. Apps – I swear to whatever higher power you may or may not believe in, if this came out of the box with an App Store, it would have blown up bigger than the Fourth of July. Could you imagine some of your favorite games in 720p resolution (I am looking at you Angry Birds) on your big screen while you use an iDevice as a controller? This has already been accomplished by a game called The Incident. The developers of that game made it so that the person can play it on their TV (with the iPad connected to the TV with the proper cables) using an iDevice as the controller. What is the difference between an iPad and the AppleTV? Nothing really, except the screen is now your television. This is just not limited to games though. News and sports (MLB App) could all be incredibly useful on your AppleTV. At the $100 price point, I could see the AppleTV becoming the epicenter of the computer and content driven household.
2. Widgets – Something to quickly tell you the weather, time and maybe headlines that are connected to an app. This would add the ability to just turn on your TV and see everything you want easily, like your homepage on your web browser (but not a browser).
3. More Content – With Airplay, you can stream your web content to your AppleTV, but there needs to be more than that. Hulu+ would be a welcome addition, it is already on the Playstation 3. Or how about the rentals from the two other major networks (NBC and CBS). What would be nice is a monthly service for everything that iTunes offers in their store. People would pay for that. I think you would see Apple gain a lot of customers with that type of plan. This goes into my next wish…
4. Access to Personal Cloud Storage – Let’s say you have a cloud storage device (Pogo Plug comes to mind), wouldn’t be beneficial if you could access this from your AppleTV with the proper web address? You could have a terabyte of cloud storage with all of the movies and music you love easily accessible to you. The iTunes store is great, but there are a lot of other sources people can get content from.
Now a lot of people will say “Give me a web browser!!!” and “I want e-mail!!!” This is something that is not needed. A web browser would ruin the experience about what the AppleTV was meant for, which is content. I do not want to have to go searching for websites to get the content, I just want it to be there in a widget or an app. Television was designed to be instant access to the information we wanted (or not wanted in some cases). A person can go to the NFL Network or Food Network if they want information on either of those topics, I don’t want to have to go searching for it through a website. I openly admit, that sounds lazy, but that is what the best user experience would be. Also, a person can get e-mail on an iPhone, iPad or a computer, why do I need it on my TV too? I don’t and neither do you. My father always said “No one is that important to have to see their email wherever they go.” (This is before he got a Blackberry, by the way).
So these are things I would love to see on my AppleTV in the near future, leave some comments on what you would like to see or what your favorite ice cream is (they are constantly asking us these questions here at Small Dog Electronics).
*This is a reference to a book. Extra points if you know what I am talking about.
**Author who wrote The DaVinci Code.