Apple News, Analysis and Podcasts

When the Apple TV 2 debuted last fall, people were hoping for an Apple TV App Store to be among its features. This was not the case and one has to ask why? We know the Apple TV runs the same operating system as the iPhone and iPad, so creating an SDK and app store would be easy.

In its current stand alone state, the Apple TV has no way of controlling applications and this is a big problem for developers. The current remote is used to choose which media to view or listen to, but it is not sufficient to control applications. Apple will have to come up with a better controller, if they want developers to build Apple TV applications.

The iPhone and iPad make great Apple TV controllers, but they don't come with the Apple TV, so you can't count on the user having them. Right now, the main purpose for the Apple TV is the play content from the internet or from iTunes on your television. For this purpose, the only applications that the Apple TV needs are those that play content from sources you can't already get on the Apple TV right now. An example of this would be Hulu. A full App Store is not needed to add new content sources to the Apple TV.

One of the best features of the new Apple TV is AirPlay. AirPlay allows you to display content from your iPhone or iPad on the Apple TV. Currently only Apple's applications can send video to the Apple TV, but coming in iOS 4.3, all other applications will be able to do so as well. This should allow applications like Netflix and Hulu to stream video from the iPhone to the television. Airplay could turn the Apple TV into a display for any iOS device.

Apple could expand the AirPlay technology to create almost a video out for every application in the iOS App Store. Apple would have to introduce new APIs and improve video latency, but this would allow iPhone games to be displayed on any HDMI display. The combination of an iPhone and Apple TV would then start to compete with game consoles like Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. The same combination would be used to create wireless presentation setups. With this type of video and audio wireless output, who needs an Apple TV App Store?

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