Should Apple migrate the Apple TV to the iPhone OS ?

sonofmof said:

looking at the tiny footprint and high performance low power ratios used on the iphone OS in the iPad and iPhones, should apple consider moving the model to apple tv ?

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I don't really see any downsides to adopting the iPhone OS... but then, I'm not an Apple programmer. They certainly need to do something, though

I have no idea Apple's plans but I'm not sure apps make a lot of sense on Apple TV. And Netflix seems unlikely to ever come to Apple TV, though stranger things have happened.

iPhone OS on the ATV is a bad idea for one reason how would you control it?

It's alright you saying Apple could introduce a new multi touch control, but people don't want to be forced to purchase a new remote/controller just because Apple forces a OS update on them.

Now if Apple made the OS a hybrid mix of the two OS's so people could continue using there ATV's as normal with there normal remote and get the same functionality as they do now but then had an option to switch into an iPhone like mode if they wanted to and had the correct remote/controller for it. Then people like me who have no interest in multi touch or app stores could continue using the ATV like before, but people who wanted to buy a new fangled remote and use the app store could also do that.

Then you've also got the problem that iPhone apps are designed to be viewed on a tiny lowres iPhone screen, can you imagine what they would look like blown-up on a 42" TV. Not a pretty sight.........

sonofmof said:

have you ever tried browsing youtube with the apple remote ? :-(

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I spend hours using YouTube on my ATV with the standard remote and have no problems. I think the interface is very easy to navigate.

regarding the scaling of apps, the original apple tv had a very visual menu, and the size of the images did not look so bad.

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I'm not sure what you mean, the ATV's menu was and has always been designed for viewing on a HDTV so of course the images will look good. However the iPhone OS was never designed to be viewed at such a large size and as people are finding out when they stretch there iPhone apps to fill the iPad screen they start to look bad so imagine stretching them even more to fill a HDTV.

Of course an iPhone app will look horrid, but look at iPad apps, 5x more screen real estate, and designers are already making gorgeous apps, it could be the same here

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But how many developers are gonna want to have to design and make 3 different versions of there apps, one for iPhone, one for iPad and one for ATV.

I'm not trying to be negitive but I can't see Apple pouring time and resources into something that just would not translate well to a larger screen without serious changes to both the OS and the way devs design there apps. Add in the fact that an ATV straight out of the box dosn't come with anything that could control the apps and I just can't see it happening.

I honestly believe that a version of the A4 is going into the next Apple TV.

I think Facebook on Apple TV gets overly gadgety for the device's goals, could be wrong. Maybe some widgets like weather or traffic would be interesting, although I already get those on my phone so I wouldn't personally be interested. The existing YouTube interface is about as good as you can make it with a remote control, works great.

NintendoFan said:

I honestly believe that a version of the A4 is going into the next Apple TV.

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I do too, but not necessarily using the iPhone OS since that OS is touch based. Unfortunately, that will kill the current patchsticks and unless Apple provides for an app store for the aTV, the new ones won't be able to run 3rd party software like Sapphire and XBMC which I've come to rely on to view my non-iTunes encoded movies and interface with MythTV.

Yes it should!! Updated remote please.

It probably should switch. People shouldn't confuse the Iphone UI with iPhoneOS. The UI involves the launchpad, icons and multitouch. Apple could quite easily slap an HDTV UI over the top of the iPhoneOS and most users wouldn't know the difference. I seem to recall Apple said the ATV would be migrated to 10.6, but OS 3.0 came and it still seems to be based on 10.4...

Of course, I don't know whether it's worth Apple adding support for the ATV hardware to iPhoneOS. It's likely the next ATV (whenever it appears) will be based on an ARM chip with PowerVR GPU so it should be simple to run iPhoneOS on such a setup. This brings up the possibility of the new ATV running iPhoneOS and the old boxes being stuck on 10.4.

kiranmk2 said:

Apple could quite easily slap an HDTV UI over the top of the iPhoneOS and most users wouldn't know the difference.

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But then what would be the point. The reason people want the iPhone OS/UI is they think the apps store would be good on the ATV. But with no way to control those apps whats the point.