You need to hook your TV into your non Apple television set. And that is the point I think. Apple want to integrate everything under the Apple umbrella. So the entire setup had the logo on it.
You are thinking the way that stupid marketeers think (which is the way that Apple usually doesn't think). You are looking at it from what you think is Apple's point of view. Apple would be looking at it from the customers' point of view.
Everything that Apple can do better than the TV makers can be put into a little box plus the remote control. The other part, screen, speakers, monitor stand, that is not something that Apple can do much better. The reason why iPhone beat Nokia is that Apple could produce something that was actually _better_ than what Nokia produced. Only a tiny handful of idiots buys something because it has an Apple logo; they buy Apple products because / if they are better. Only very few would buy a TV because it has an Apple logo. I am quite sure that Apple can put something into a little box that would make me spend money for it. I do _not_ think that Apple could make me spend more money on a TV set than I would pay elsewhere.
I am with you. May be a coverflow type flipping will work. Or like a photo album type 'outplosion' into separate windows to show thumbnail of channels, 10 at a time.
That is perfectly doable, just not with the cheap hardware that TV and set top box makers use.
An example: In the UK, a Humax box has two receivers. Each receiver receives up to six programs multiplexed. The box can extract three programs to record two and display one. But each program is made of sequences of several seconds, and to display anything, you need to have the whole sequence from the start. That's why switching channels is so slow, because you switch to another program, and you are in the middle of a multi-second sequence and have to wait for it to finish first.
Solution: Record all channels in RAM continuously, at least a few seconds so that you always have the beginning of a complete sequence in RAM. When switching channels, start with the beginning of that frame. So the TV may display what it received a second or five ago, but nobody would ever notice that. All you need is a bit of RAM. Something that Apple could do easily.
Now if you have a powerful decoder, that can decode four channels simultaneously, then you can do coverflow with four live TV programs actually moving on the screen.
TV. I think you would see a TV/computer hybrid. Siri enabled, FaceTime enable, iCloud capable TV. Imagine being able to use and navigate your TV WITHOUT A REMOTE! Who knows, maybe they team up with Microsoft to offer built in Kinetic features! (Now I'm really pushing it, lol)
