If it gets the app store it would be even better, if you were able to get things like iPlayer, 4OD & last.fm
I don't think it deserves all the negativity!
I have XBMC on mine, and have iPlayer, iTV player and YouTube (a version which can play the 4oD content).
Also re. the 60Hz limitation: something weird has happened. When I first got my ATV1 a couple of years ago, and played back some Handbrake encodes (of PAL DVDs, obviously) it was stuttering appallingly. I went to settings and sure enough it was set to 60Hz, so I switched it to 50Hz and it fixed it.
Now with my ATV2, there's no such menu choice BUT I have not seen the stuttering with my content (which is from PAL DVDs). This is with two different Sony Bravia TVs (not particularly good ones at all). Either my brain has gone mushy and I can't see the problem anymore, or somehow the TV seems to be coping. It's probably the former, but regardless, the fixed 60Hz output has turned out not to be a deal-breaker for me (and I was posting all over the place, sounding off about it, when the ATV2 was released, and long before I got my own).
So, it maybe worth a try. And seriously, get XBMC on it (you'll need to get a recent build, which was linked to from somewhere on here, for iPlayer etc).