Regarding my AppleTVs, I stated this before, but it's so important to me that I hope someone in the deep depths of Cupertino will channel this to the right people:
1. Take 3 on the UI. It maybe a gateway to the iTunes Store, but please get the front end out of my face, burying my current media at the bottom right corner of each menu. Most of the time, I'm accessing the media I purchased or synced into it, so I'd like to get access to it first before having to sift through a bunch of menu options that are trying to get me to buy and rent.
++ Completely second that.
2. Speed it up. You made good optimizations for Snow Leopard, put some of that expertise in the direction of the AppleTV group. It's just slow as balls since 2.0 came out.
Underneath, the ATV is running OS X 10.4 (Tiger) still, albeit in a "streamlined" form. It's now two full major OS versions behind. Now, many of the Snow Leopard improvements (like removing all PPC code binaries) are already there, but it's gotta cause problems for anyone trying to work on Apple TV software that they can't use any of the best tools which have come available in the past couple of years. As a Mac developer myself, let me assure you that it's always
really hard to continue developing software for an OS older than the one you have installed (and as a Mac user it's impossible to not want to install the latest OS on your dev box).
3. Make it a portal to the Internet. Unlike many others, I don't want to hack my AppleTV the same reason I don't want to hack my iPhone. I trust you'll add value to the device that it won't need unofficial third-party support: how about news feeds (RSS), stocks, weather, alarm clock (heck, even just the time will do!). License a voice or two from the Acapela group and get my AppleTV to be my first wave of information in the morning: have it read me the latest news (think Tick Talk on the App Store), or how about news on demand? If my TV can power itself at 5AM, you can schedule the AppleTV to do something at 5:05. Even if you don't put a full-on browser, make it at least show the Weather Channel and show some current headlines.
There are a few directions Apple could go there. One is bringing in the Internet one piece at a time. You saw this with YouTube and Podcast integrations. The other direction is getting Safari working on the ATV.
I think the major thing stopping Apple in the second approach are hardware limitations. The processor in the ATV was slow when it was introduced, a few years ago. It's just not powerful enough to handle things like Flash playing currently (the anemic processor is helped out by a respectable GPU, allowing the ATV to play high-def content easily, but that GPU isn't available to Flash player and I'm not so certain Apple would want to promote Adobe's tech on their platform anyway). Which puts a damper on the "just give them Safari" line of thought. OTOH, a processor as underpowered compared to top-of-the-line processors today as the ATV's processor was at launch would go a long way towards making Safari and Flash work well on the device. Existing customers would get the shaft, of course, which hurts, but it'd be good for the ATV in general.
4. Open the doors for other services. If you won't offer an all-you-can-eat subscription, how about giving the keys to Netflix, so they can do it? How about Skype or iChat with the ability to add a USB webcam mountable on the top of your LCD display? Right there, you expand the possibilities of grandparents in Florida watching movies and photos you're sharing with them from your AppleTV or iTunes/iPhoto/iWeb and being able to do a video chat. No complicated UI's, just a screenname you can scroll down to and click with the AppleTV remote, and initiate a video call. And, you can offer the ability to do surveillance on your house. Watch the babysitter, or watch your kids (think iCam on App Store).
While I can appreciate the desire for video chat, mounting a camera there has a few drawbacks.
First, of course, unless you're dramatically increasing the resolution on the camera, one person's face occupying say 400 pixels across in front of the MacBook is now occupying about 40 pixels across across the room sitting on the couch. If you've ever used an existing MacBook Pro's camera to do video chat and showed someone the "room", you've probably got a good idea of how craptacular such a wide-angle view can be. To get more resolution you'd need to up the iChat AV "pipes" to handle it, which in turn would rule out a lot of grandparents' homes (my in-laws Quest service has a hard time keeping up with iChat AV as it is, often going to low-res mode and periodically just crapping out altogether).
Second, most webcams have fixed focal lengths. Not only would people across the room be squished into a small number of pixels, those pixels are blurry because they are out of focus too.
Not to say it couldn't be done, but I think the ability to see Grandma 50" across instead of 15" across isn't really that beneficial to me.
... To the main point, though, of allowing third-party development: I think that's a natural step for Apple here. The original ATV (and Take 2) was before the iTunes App Store was open for business. I think Apple's been very pleased with the App Store success and will likely want to expand on that.
I have two 160GB AppleTVs in my house, only because 1. connecting and disconnecting iPods/iPhones to the TVs were cumbersome and not that instant to my entire iTunes library, and 2. the Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF) hit an all-time high. You guys couldn't have made the interface and remote much easier to use. Have you seen some of these Windows Media Center and Logitech Harmony remotes? It's a nightmare to the technically challenged.
I still think you've got your hands on a winner in terms of hardware. Now, let's get that software up to snuff, and you'll be AOK in my book.
As soon as ATV Take 3 comes out (presumably with upgraded hardware) our existing 160GB ATV will go up to our bedroom and a new one will be bought for the living room.
TV in action at my house is astonished by it, and surprised that such a cool thing exists. Not really sure why Apple hasn't hyped it a little more.
