I cry foul with your conclusion. If not having the remote app wasn't a regression then maybe you'd have something there. God knows I do lack an appropriate amount of patience at times. But anyone would figure, and most assuredly Apple would figure, that the most annoying thing to do with an onscreen keyboard is type passwords. And when are an an inordinate number of passwords needing to be entered? During initial setup of the box and all the apps that you download in the first day or so.
While I would like the remote app to function again, the only password I entered on the AppleTV was my iTunes password. All the apps for streaming services made me authorize on the web using the on-screen code provided. This made typing my Comcast password easy for me since I used my Macbook Pro for that.