I'm not yet a Mac user, I'm about to switch from my Windows PC to a soon-to-be-purchased MacBook in a couple of weeks, but in the meantime I've been doing a lot of research in preparation for my migration and one thing that I've discovered is that Time Machine can back up to a NAS or another MacOS system over a network. I prefer to have as few boxes in my home as possible - elegant simplicity is something I value - so this has made me really wish that there was some way for an Apple TV to also act as a NAS.
Giving an Apple TV at least basic NAS capabilities would I think just be a case of adding a USB port for plugging in an external hard drive (potentially a RAID/JBOD enclosure) and adding the necessary support in tvOS. It would also add the ability for people with a library of locally stored content (Blu-ray rips or whatever) to store those on a directly attached hard drive. If the NAS functionality isn't intended to be able to support high intensity workloads - just basic stuff like backup for one or a very few machines (that can be throttled down if necessary) or streaming locally stored content to another device in the home - I don't think that it would be necessary to chase even Thunderbolt 4 let alone Thunderbolt 5 speeds for the external USB hard drive interface so the additional hardware cost of adding a basic USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 port (or even just Gen 2) should be too expensive.
Alternatively I would be quite happy if Apple had an option to set up a Mac Mini as either a MacOS device or a tvOS device (not sure if there are hardware implications with that in terms of a Mac Mini giving a good enough audio and video experience compared to the Apple TV hardware). To get what I want I would be prepared to buy the cheapest Mac Mini rather than an Apple TV and use that as my smart TV device to sit in my media cabinet but I would like the tvOS experience for a dedicated TV device (in terms of user interaction - NAS just runs in the background).
Is it just me or would others like to see Apple TV get at least a basic relatively low bandwidth NAS capability for stuff like being a backup target or storing downloaded/rip-ed media files directly plugged into the device rather than needing a separate NAS if you want to stream those media files around your home?
Giving an Apple TV at least basic NAS capabilities would I think just be a case of adding a USB port for plugging in an external hard drive (potentially a RAID/JBOD enclosure) and adding the necessary support in tvOS. It would also add the ability for people with a library of locally stored content (Blu-ray rips or whatever) to store those on a directly attached hard drive. If the NAS functionality isn't intended to be able to support high intensity workloads - just basic stuff like backup for one or a very few machines (that can be throttled down if necessary) or streaming locally stored content to another device in the home - I don't think that it would be necessary to chase even Thunderbolt 4 let alone Thunderbolt 5 speeds for the external USB hard drive interface so the additional hardware cost of adding a basic USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 port (or even just Gen 2) should be too expensive.
Alternatively I would be quite happy if Apple had an option to set up a Mac Mini as either a MacOS device or a tvOS device (not sure if there are hardware implications with that in terms of a Mac Mini giving a good enough audio and video experience compared to the Apple TV hardware). To get what I want I would be prepared to buy the cheapest Mac Mini rather than an Apple TV and use that as my smart TV device to sit in my media cabinet but I would like the tvOS experience for a dedicated TV device (in terms of user interaction - NAS just runs in the background).
Is it just me or would others like to see Apple TV get at least a basic relatively low bandwidth NAS capability for stuff like being a backup target or storing downloaded/rip-ed media files directly plugged into the device rather than needing a separate NAS if you want to stream those media files around your home?
