In the last few weeks, Apple’s little “hobby” -- the long-lamented Apple TV -- has come back into the spotlight, ironically thanks to rumors that it’s about to be put out to pasture in favor of a cheaper, sexier box reportedly called iTV (which, even more ironically, was the original name for ATV). While that’s all fine and good, we don’t think Apple has quite squeezed all of the juice out of its original living room lemon -- so here are two handfuls of suggestions in case Cupertino decides to give the ATV another lease on life.

2010 has shaped up as an exciting year, what with a whole new iOS device introduced (iPad) and a groovy new update to the iPhone, not to mention speedy new Macs and even a Magic Trackpad thrown in for good measure. September 1 promises to bring new iPods, but the rumor mill has been grinding overtime of late talking about iTV -- supposedly Apple’s next salvo in the fight for our living rooms that began with the Apple TV.


If the rumors become reality, the iTV box will be priced at a mere $99 and feature little or no on-board storage of its own; rather, the box will stream media from elsewhere, presumably your computer or perhaps from Apple’s own cloud-based servers. Of course, the bigger news is that it might be driven by iOS, complete with an App Store of its own.

While that all sounds perfectly fine, it’s ultimately a long shot at best, so let’s forget about those rumors for now and concentrate on what we do have -- namely the existing $229 Apple TV with 160GB of hard drive storage. Surely that little white box has some life left in it, right? Or maybe Apple can do better...

New Guts, New Glory

Perhaps the biggest hurdle facing the current Apple TV is the woefully inadequate innards of the device itself. Inside the current box, Apple put pretty much the bare minimum hardware required to allow it to play 720p HD movies from the iTunes Store -- with very little room for its abilities to grow.

While enterprising hackers have been able to add goodies such as XBMC and nitoTV to the existing Apple TV, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t hit a brick wall when it came to expanding the box even further. Programmers for the popular Boxee software came close to getting Netflix streaming going on the Apple TV awhile back, but at the end of the day it just wasn’t a very pleasant experience, so they waved the white flag on it.

So what’s inside the current Apple TV? Apple only says it’s an Intel processor, but teardowns of the internals have revealed a 1 GHz Pentium M with a mere 256MB of RAM and a meager 64MB of VRAM. The latest iPhone 4 is actually a more powerful device, so that should tell you something. Let’s soup up the next Apple TV… next!

Take My Remote… Please!

The diminutive remote control that Apple has included with past computers and the ATV is perfectly serviceable -- that is, until you want to type into a search field or even enter your password to access your wireless network. It’s immediately apparent at that point why a keyboard would be a good idea, such as the clever remote that the Boxee Box is releasing this fall which features a full hardware keyboard on the back of it.

Apple has tried to remedy the situation with the free Remote app for the iPhone, and it does get the job done, despite not being a universal app that plays nice with the iPad. Third-party developers have also come up with better software-driven remotes such as Remote HD, which not only lets you control your Apple TV but also lets you view the menus right on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad as well.

Among the numerous iTV rumors is one where Apple will use the iPad to control the iOS-driven interface. Sounds great to us, but it might severely limit the audience for a $99 box if it requires a $499 (or higher) iPad just to control it. Over the weekend, rumors sprouted up about a Magic Trackpad-style device for the television, which sounds good to us. But how will we type with that…?

Tiger 10.4 is No Longer a Modern Operating System

Did you know that at the heart of your Apple TV box is running Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 with a customized Front Row interface? If you’re new to the Mac, you may not even have heard of Tiger, which was the precursor to Leopard 10.5 and Snow Leopard 10.6 -- which means that the ATV operating system is a full two versions behind current Macs. Sure, it gets the job done, but with all the great stuff built into the last two Mac OS X versions, we’d like to see our little ivory boxes get modernized just a bit.

While everyone is hyperventilating at the thought of iOS powering an iTV, why not just cut to the chase and add it to the existing (or our theoretically refreshed) Apple TV? While the hardware specs of the current Apple TV aren’t exactly much to write home about, they should be sufficient to run some form of iOS 4.

Useless USB Port No More

We were among those who got excited about all the real possibilities of the Apple TV when it was announced back in January, 2007, complete with a USB 2.0 port -- that is, until we learned the port was essentially useless, except for “service and diagnostics.” Hackers have managed to add real functionality to the port by allowing the use of external hard drives to extend media storage on the Apple TV, but we think Apple could make such use official and then go even a few steps further.

Why not sell a dedicated (and cheap) combo DVD and Blu-ray drive for the Apple TV? If you’re like us, you’ve run out of HDMI ports on your home theatre receiver or HDTV and who wants to control umpteen boxes anyway? Sure, we all know that Apple isn’t down with Blu-ray, but they could make the external drive serve a dual purpose by also working with current Mac computers as well -- as long as it’s small, self-powered and portable, of course.

Of course, with the USB port unlocked by Apple, the other possibilities are endless: Support for thumb drives for quick viewing of portable media, extended storage for a media hub-enabled ATV, wired mice or keyboards for short-term use or even dongles to control various other input devices, including infrared remote controls, game controllers and who knows what. Better yet, give us four USB ports like the Mac mini, including at least one on the front for easy access.

Tight iDevice Integration

Have you ever forgotten to sync your favorite TV show to your iPhone or iPod touch before you left the house so that you can watch it on your lunch break or other downtime? Wouldn’t it be nice to remotely be able to dial into your Apple TV and stream that episode straight to your mobile device? Sure it would.

Of course, there are already options that exist for this, such as SlingPlayer. But that’s another piece of costly hardware (and software) jacked into your home theatre setup, and who wants that? App Store apps such as the aforementioned $7.99 Remote HD have the right idea -- on a hacked ATV, you can stream live audio right from your box over a Wi-Fi, 3G or EDGE connection, but Apple should go one further and add the ability to stream your content to your iDevice with zero configuration. It just makes sense!

Speaking of which…

Apple TV as Home Media Hub

Maybe the real problem with the Apple TV is that Apple has it backwards -- we’re eating up tons of space on our internal hard drives storing content that gets synced to our various devices, instead of having one central location in our homes to store it all that is capable of doing the same.

So why not reinvent the Apple TV as an all-in-one media hub? Store your content on the Apple TV box (which would require a bigger hard drive, as well as the option to cheaply add more via external USB 2.0 drives as described above) and access it from any iTunes software in the house, even across multiple computers. The iPhone, iPod touch and iPad won’t get left out either, and they can access stored media both locally as well as remotely, likely through some sort of dedicated ATV app (we’ll get to that in a moment).

We’ll take this one a step further and say that the rumored iTV device could actually be a step down from this media hub-enabled Apple TV -- a cheaper box without storage that still allows your content to be streamed from wherever it resides in the house. You heard it here first!

Drag ’n Drop Content via iTunes

The simplicity of the iTunes ecosystem starts to become a problem child when it comes to syncing large media files such as HD movies. Sure, we all have big internal hard drives in our computers these days, but who wants to eat up all that space with a bunch of movies we might watch only occasionally?

There are workarounds -- for instance, keeping large media files on a home server such as Apple’s Time Capsule or something like D-Link’s popular DNS-323. You can turn off iTunes’ often-annoying “feature” that copies everything into one place when it’s added and still be able to add external content to your library, but it’s not terribly intuitive or easy to use for novices.

Since the Apple TV comes with 160GB of its own storage (and that can be upgraded by third parties and is likely to get increased if Cupertino ever does offer a new model), why not let us just drag movie files from anywhere on our computer right over to the Apple TV via iTunes, similar to how iOS 4 now allows the same over USB for apps that support it? Big files get saved on the box itself, our internal hard drive stays clean, no muss, no fuss.

A Peek Outside of Apple’s Walled Media Garden

If all you ever do is rent or purchase music, movies and TV shows from Apple, you probably love your Apple TV just the way it is. We can’t say we blame you, especially if you leave an iTunes-equipped computer running 24/7 in your house, which lets you access your full iTunes library in addition to any media that you’ve specifically synced to your Apple TV box.

But let’s face it: As nice as Apple’s iTunes Store is for content, there are many more choices out there today than there were when the Apple TV was first introduced three and a half years ago. Netflix and Hulu Plus spring immediately to mind, particularly since both services offer dedicated apps for your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. So why should you have to buy an Internet-equipped television or other piece of gear to get more streaming services?

The most likely answer is that Apple is protecting its iTunes Store revenue and their overpriced media rentals (particularly for movies and TV shows). Although rumors have persisted that Apple is lobbying for an “all you can eat” subscription model or possibly 99-cent per episode TV show rentals, as of yet we’re still left empty-handed and worse yet, forced to buy other boxes if we want to access non-iTunes media.

Enterprising developers for services like Boxee have found workarounds to get services like Hulu running on the Apple TV, despite continued resistance from the content providers. Surely if Apple worked directly with these services, something could be done to get them running alongside iTunes content… right?

Need For Speed: Why No Gigabit Ethernet?

Sure, the Apple TV might be endowed with 802.11n wireless, but even with a strong connection, the box is prone to occasional video hiccups. After being frustrated by lackluster streaming in our particular location, we finally hard-wired everything through Ethernet, only to discover that the Apple TV is still tied to 10/100 Base-T (aka “Fast”) Ethernet and not the 10/100/1000 Base-T Gigabit Ethernet featured on current Macs.

Yeah, Fast Ethernet should be fast enough, but we won’t be able to sleep at night until we get an updated box with top-speed Gigabit Ethernet -- especially if Apple adds the aforementioned drag ’n drop media superpowers, ‘cause then we’ll really need it.

Apple-Approved Extensions or Apps

There are already plenty of rumors that the iTV replacement for the Apple TV will get its own App Store -- assuming that it does indeed run on iOS -- and good for that box. But Apple doesn’t have to deny its existing device the same treatment, especially when it’s already running Mac OS X to begin with.

Instead of letting the hackers have all the fun creating patchstick tools like ATVFlash to add features, Apple should embrace ways to extend the Apple TV in the same way that it finally has done with Safari 5 -- be it through extensions or full apps. In this way, companies like Netflix or Hulu Plus could extend their reach to the ATV, assuming the hardware is up to it. We figure this one is a given, one way or another, just from the current threat of Google TV, which is promising to finally bring apps to the living room in a big way.

In many ways, iOS and the App Store would be Apple’s quickest route to living room domination -- but as many have noted, not only would it be a big challenge to convert touchscreen apps to the television, there’s also the aspect ratio to be considered. Television is wide while the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad are tall (with the option to be wider). How developers might work around that limitation -- as well as HDTV’s resolution differences -- remains to be seen.

*****

As frustrating as it can sometimes be to use the current Apple TV with its often limited potential, we’re not quite ready to let it slip into the company’s Museum of Good Intentions exhibit alongside the Power Mac G4 Cube and the Newton. Here’s hoping that Apple has spent the last three and a half years figuring out how to make the ATV box truly take over the living room after all.

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(Images courtesy of 9to5Mac, EveryMac.com, EvanAgee.com, All Things Digital)