Joe Hewitt speculates on the future of Apple TV

I completely agree with him on AirPlay's potential.

When AirPlay came out, I was thinking that it would be great to take advantage of it outside plain audio and video. I figured, if CPU allowed, it'd be possible to create a video stream on-the-fly with whatever UI you'd want in it and push it to the AppleTV. (I'm no hardcore developer, so this never went much further than a theoretical dream)

Then Apple announced AirPlay Mirroring, which is pretty much what I was thinking with the advantage (I believe) that it's managed in big part through hardware, making CPU usage lower, thus doable. My Twitter stream is witness of my excitement about that.

I'm convinced that when games start to really take advantage of it, this will give Apple access to gaming in the living-room. And not only racing games, first-person shooters, etc. but board games, games à la TV-game show, etc. Having two screens, one being private, can lead to very interesting apps and games. For example, you can have Pictionary/Taboo-style games where one player has an iPod with some info, and the rest is shared on the TV. And you can also take advantage of other iOS devices nearby.

Now, I was not convinced about Apple going to the expense of building TVs when the AppleTV (box) already has much of the benefits of what I would think an Apple TV set would do. But Joe made some good points about improving the current TVs: no need for a remote to turn on/off, no need to switch inputs, possibility to improve the network connection with the devices… (e.g. like AirDrop does with a dedicated channel between two Macs)

Finally, regarding his last line "If I were an iOS developer, and I'd start investing in AirPlay right now.", my understanding is that it's actually very simple to implement: https://developer.apple.com/library/safari/#documentation/Au...

You can get a notification of a second connected display and use that screen to build your UI in exactly the same way you would your main interface. The only thing that seems to defer is just the window object it's applied to.

I'm not sure I agree about the necessity of building this into a tv. I have an ATV2, and the TV just stays on that input, generally. This would be more true if there were more content apps. Also, my TV goes to sleep when the ATV does. So I just leave it on, and when I want to watch something, I hit the ATV remote, and everything turns on.

Mirroring is actually not what I want from Airplay. I want full mirroring only as an option. Usually, I want the TV screen to display just the video. I want all the UI to be on the iPad (or iPhone or iPod). I also want to be able to queue up video, manipulate video, and do other stuff on the iPad while the TV continues to play video.

I'm also not sure about games. Maybe casual gaming, but not serious gaming. When playing a serious game, you don't want to have to look at your controller. Your eyes should stay on the screen at all times. The controller should become an appendage. With a touchscreen this is never really true (which is also why typing on a touchscreen is never quite as satisfying or accurate).

I think this certainly opens up new and interesting interactions, just like the Wii did, but I don't see it becoming a viable control system for serious games, and I also don't really see Apple releasing a console-style controller.