Editorial: The Real Surprise from the Apple TV Is the Lack of Imagination


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AppleTVNewThe new Apple TV has been announced for about a week now and the more I look at it the more I feel that Apple just lost its imagination with their new Apple TV. Apple is long known for taking existing markets and bringing something new or better to it, yet this time they seem to have fallen short.

Here a few areas Apple could have done better in.

Touch Pad

One of the biggest new features on the Apple TV is the new touch pad remote. Yet Apple has failed to take full advantage of the touchpad. When browsing through the Apple TV menus the touch pad is really just a glorified dpad to move up, down, left, and right.

“So long endless button pushing. Hello swipe.” is Apple’s new touch pad catch phrase. Yet if it is just the same as using a button is it really that special? If anything the “new” touch pad makes the Apple TV less accessible to older users who may not be as comfortable with a touch pad as they are with a dpad similar to their old cable remote.

It feels like the touch pad had so many possibilities, yet Apple failed to take full advantage of its possibilities.

The Look

The new remote is honestly just ugly. With large weirdly arranged buttons and a two-tone black color that lacks the stylish appeal we expect from Apple. The box is the same look as the old Apple TV, but they made it bigger, which is an unusual move for Apple.

Apple missed a real opportunity to make a beautiful device and remote that could have given it the same wow factor in the living room the iPhone has. Instead, they just made one more box that looks like all the other set-top boxes on the market.

We could keep going from the lack of gaming remote to the user interface, but these two areas seem to be the biggest failures of imagination. When you think Apple you think of something beautiful or something that breaks new ground. The new Apple TV has fallen short in both of these areas, leaving us with just a new Apple TV that is lagging behind other set-top boxes that came out over a year ago.

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