New year's wish for Apple TV

Ben Patterson put AppleTV on his worst of 2007 tech list. I couldn't disagree more. Only recently did I get an AppleTV but it is great. It is great to be able to subscribe to RSS photo feeds in iPhoto and see them on the TV so it is easy to keep track of what the friends are up to in their photo feeds.

I would love to see Apple make a few updates when MacWorld comes around in January. First of all I'd love to be able to better access YouTube videos. The search interface without a keyboard is the pits. It works but it doesn't live up to the Apple "it just works" expectations. But the biggest area I'd like to see AppleTV take the lead is as a player for iTunes, especially over a network of AirPort base stations. The whole thing about having the AppleTV in the living room would make it a lot easier to use as the main music player instead of having to either run back to or remote into the media server in the house.

The process of converting DVD's to iTunes with Handbrake has made it clear that the iMac G5 needs to be delegated to a role as a backup server. The MacBook Pro is more than 10-times faster in ripping DVD's. Back to the AppleTV Patterson has a point that it would be better to be able to buy movies directly from the box, but one has to think with the iPhone iTunes store model worked out, this update has to be coming soon. Even with its limits it comes nowhere close to deserving to be on the same list of hideousness as Windows Vista.