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Comment by alain94040 | Hacker News Reader

What I don't get is... what happens to touch? The whole point of the iPhone OS is touch. How does that work when you can't touch the screen? Isn't that the #1 issue? Or are we talking about a remote control that would effectively be an iPod touch?

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You haven't heard of the Magic Trackpad?

http://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/

An iPod touch or an iPad would suffice as well.

The Magic Trackpad still sort of assumes the presence of a cursor. I suppose you could have it use absolute positioning for this case, but that would still feel pretty inexact.

I think it's partially about the hardware. iPhone OS is a lightweight, stable embedded OS that runs well on cheap, low-power hardware. The old Apple TV is expensive in part because it's a low-spec Mac desktop with a custom UI (read: expensive Intel + Nvidia hardware). An iPad logic board without a screen or battery is probably pretty darn cheap, and more than powerful enough for video and music.

Touch is just part of the UI layer. A D-pad for navigation and two buttons (Go + Cancel) are enough for a set-top box. I don't buy any of the "touch remote" theories, and I don't think games are going to be a part of the picture. In the casual games world, iTV doesn't have the same advantages over Wii that iPhone has over the Nintendo DS.

My guess is they would include a basic remote bundled with the device that was not a full blown iPod Touch but instead a half-sized Magic TrackPad with a gyroscope and accelerometer. Maybe a headphone jack too. Text input could be done on the TV screen using a pointer since you don't really need to type often when watching video or playing games. I'm not sure it makes any sense to include an LCD on the remote since you would want to be looking at the TV screen most of the time. You could probably use an iPod Touch or iPhone as a remote or pair a bluetooth keyboard for better text input.

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