My suggestion for them to make a dedicated remote would allow them to do it for much, much less than any current universal, touchscreen remote on the market.

As for ease of use, I think you need to actually use a good universal remote (especially a touchscreen one) to understand exactly why they have the potential to be addictive.

Imagine being able to design you own buttons and have them on exactly the same place in the interface.

I have a Plasma with built in DVB, a DVR with built in DVB and a dedicated DVB decoder. That’s three units with EPG functionality that is in different places on their respective remotes.

A touchscreen remote would allow me to have the EPG button in exactly the place I want it.

Just apply the above to everything else that is spread out over different buttons with different names on different remotes and you begin to see the advantages.

Think about foreign users finally being able to label buttons in their own languages.

Think about discrete codes, macros etc.

Yes, The @tv needs a better input device. Yes, allowing an ipod touch or iphone to be that input device would be a great feature which they should totally add.

However, the current apple remote needs to be totally and completely replaced. An optional peripheral (however cool it may be) will not help them. Just look at nintendo. They had the dissapointing gamecube, a hugely popular handheld in the GBA, and tried to tie the two together. It failed miserably.

The situation is almost exactly analogous to Apple’s. For the @tv to be truly killer, it needs a killer input device bundled with each and every unit. An ipod touch, even stripped of all non-remote functionality, would be prohibitively expensive to bundle. They need something else.

I personally see no reason why Apple shouldn’t rip off the wiimote. It’s obviously the best solution to their problems: it provides a rich and intuitive pointer-based control scheme, perfect for a safari browser and third party apps, and a proven method for controlling games. Basically, your 2nd and 3rd ideas fall out of it effortlessly.

As for 5, Apple should partner with Netflix… and Microsoft and Sony and Tivo and everyone else who wants the one thing truly holding back video digital distribution: the lack of legal DVD ripping. That’s what allowed digital music and the ipod to take off. You think anyone would have bought an mp3 player if you could only put dowloaded music on it? It was the promise of having your music, ALL your music on you that made mp3 players take off.

The @tv will never truly become successful unless it can fulfill the promise of digital media: having all of your movies wherever you want them, whenever you want them. And unless DVD ripping becomes legal, this promise can never be fulfilled for the vast majority of people.

If you allow the networks to have commercial spots in “podcast” TV shows, allow Google to serve up commercials depending on what you have been searching for recently on Google. “Legitimate” advertisers….you know, Home Depot or such, not ads for more porn sites…. ;v)

You’ve been looking for lawnmowers recently, then you watch the podcast version of Lost, the first commercial is sold to Honda or John Deere….

here is Dallasmay’s suggestion which I agree with”

“Another option that might appease the Television co’s more is adding a way to show commercials.

Let NBC and the gang podcast their shows with commercials if they distribute them for free. If viewers want them without commercials they will have to pay the $2 fee. I for one would rather have commercials than pay $2. In fact, my wife and I have been watching LOST all season through ABC’s website in HD on my computer. It’s really pretty good.”

I also think this is a great idea. Apple would have to allow content providers a method for preventing users from fast forwarding through their commercials (as they do on their own sites). But, I for one, would welcome the ability to stream any show I like for free with the restriction of having to watch commercials.

I also like the idea of using my iPhone/Touch as a remote for the tv. Mostly since it could eliminate turning on my tv simply to select what music I’m listening to. I also agree that all the features would have to be available on the “included in the box” remote. Using an iPhone/Touch would be a beneficial option to those who had one (or chose to buy one for that matter.

Not against Apple selling a standalone universal remote which is basically a touch w/o the flash memory. But I don’t really see them doing that

It’s like comparing a $10,000 car stereo and a $20,000 car with an even better car stereo in it. Which is the better deal shouldn’t be a mystery.

There’s a simple answer to that: Distraction.

Apple is a very focused company, now. They know their target markets, and they target them with precision.

Doing any of these things too early takes away time and resources from their more important core businesses. That’s why Steve Jobs called AppleTV a “hobby.” They spent a minimal amount of time on it, and they’re still in effect tinkering with it on evenings and weekends.

They know their day job is to work on Mac OS X, Mac desktops and laptops, iPods and the iTunes ecosystem, and the iPhone. Those are the things that are appealing to the vast majority of their market. That’s what puts bread on their table.

These other things are appealing to only small slices of their market (especially the geeks and nerds, who think if something is technically possible, it should be done by all means, regardless of the delays it causes and fuzziness it adds to the product’s message–”it’s a vacuum cleaner AND a meat slicer! Only from Ronco!” Ever wonder WHY those Ronco multi-use devices weren’t more mainstream?).

Even as it was, the v1.0 AppleTV was too vaguely defined and nerdy for most people, which is why Steve Jobs changed its focus to target movie rentals, WITHOUT requiring the use of a computer.

I’m personally glad that Apple keeps their focus and incrementally improves upon their products where it makes the most sense. It’s always been a failing of Microsoft that they tried to throw every feature possible into their products, resulting in many difficult to understand and configure messes (you know the adage of adults needing a teenager to set up their computers and electronics products–to a teenager’s mind everything in life outside of their previous experience has similar complexity, so taking the time to figure out something electronic is no different from learning other life skills like how to drive a car, cook a meal, or handle their own finances). Sony’s even fallen into this trap after being well respected for making products that just work.

Daniel, with your previous writings explaining how Apple has incrementally built upon their past successes, I’m surprised you’ve fallen into the trap of wondering why Apple hasn’t yet made AppleTV more of a technological geek’s Swiss Army knife set top box.

The time may come when Apple adds features similar to the ones you describe. It’s simply not surprising that they haven’t done it before now.