AppleTV: What’s next?

After my entry on my initial impressions about my new AppleTV a few few weeks ago, it’s now time for a follow-up..

The truth is that I haven’t been using it very much at all. To some extent this is no fault of Apple’s entry into the home entertainment market.. my baby son loves eating the remote, so I’m reluctant to parade it around in front of him..

More seriously, however, there are lots of short comings:

• 90% of YouTube is still missing
• typing on the keyboard is painfully slow..
• there is still no web surfing (why not?)
• little video/ movie content available outside of the US
• you need to select each music video individually, no shuffle, no repeat, etc.
• the remote kind of sucks.. it’s elegantly simply but the absence of any means to quickly and accurately scroll, point or type is a major handicap. It’s a bit like using a cheap iPod rip-off.

All in all, the AppleTV is no more than Steve’s hobby project at the moment. I was so certain that Apple would do something fantastic with this product very quickly. The potential is enormous, but Apple haven’t done anything much to unlock it so far.

This is why I’m still hopeful that tomorrow’s iPod unveiling will bring good news to AppleTV owners too; so here is my wild speculation of what Apple could do (I’m not an insider, this is pure speculation:

There are twin mysteries for me:

• the USB port at the back of the AppleTV
• the bizarre choices around the blue tooth version of the new iMac keyboard

The USB port is obviously there to plug something into it. By the strength (or lack thereof) of the current AppleTV, it’s perfectly possible that this was just included in case Steve gets a cool idea later. I choose to believe that it’s to plug in a keyboard and/or mouse or better still a bluetooth adapter (I’m right to think my AppleTV doesn’t have bluetooth right now?).

Which gets me to the weird keyboard: nobody I’ve spoken to wants a bluetooth keyboard without a numeric keypad! Sure it’s smaller, but why do you care? Are you really prepared to sacrifice the keypad for an extra 4 inches of desk space (ok, you might be?).

On the other hand, wouldn’t it be a great form factor for an AppleTV keyboard? I think it would be.. plug in the bluetooth adapter into that spare usb port, take your keyboard and all you need is Safari on your AppleTV and you have an internet surfing appliance. Perhaps with a real .Mac mail integration?

One question remains: what do I point with? My preferred answer would be an oversized gesture-enabled track pad, like the one next to my keyboard. Curiously enough Apple acquired the small company that made my (now discontinued) trackpad a while ago and used its technology to get a head start on the gesture interface of the iPhone. Thinking about it, why not use the iPhone or new iPods as the remote control?

Now, Steve has already stated that gestures make little sense on your Mac: you’ve got a keyboard, you’ve got a mouse and touch screens are no good anyway. He did not, however, state that gestures have no place in the living room.

So here it is: my wishlist for tomorrow is:

• iPhone interface for the iPods
• iPhone interface and keyboard for the AppleTV
• Safari for Apple TV

If I’m far off the mark, then Apple should do this even if they aren’t going to..