The UX around TVs is horrific right now, and people put up with it because that's how it is. There's enormous room for a dramatic UX improvement and it doesn't seem like the incumbents realize this.
Without having read the article I'm guessing Apple will introduce something along the lines of 'Siri TV' dispensing with the remote control as they did with the stylus but instead of substituting it with fingers we'll use another built in human control device that you don't have to lug around or keep track of, your voice. It gets around the issue of needing a keyboard where a TV is web-enabled in so far as you can easily search YouTube or Google for content by voice and it solves the dilemma of the lost or sitting on the other side of the room remote.
First off, iTV or whatever it's going to be called, doesn't need Siri yet - see this: http://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2671593...
Siri is a game changer, but Apple's current implementation on the 4S isn't adequate. Whether it's bandwidth problems (due to bad coverage) or misunderstood commands due to noise, my experience with Siri has been mixed - it's a tough problem, but the results aren't there yet, at least for basics such as "(find|what is the|call) number of $mycityname water department". Strangely, the "speak text" feature seems to work pretty well almost anywhere... I have no problems editing contacts in the car.
The ideal climate control interface should never even have to be looked at. It should just know what to do with your heating/cooling equipment to make your house comfortable.
A ideal TV interface should help you do a lot of things, and ideally be fast in the process.
(The article was down while I was writing this comment, but cable equipment and TVs drive me nuts.)
That's kind of a judgement call - there's nothing wrong with a minimal interface that does what you want it to and nothing more.
Kind of like Chrome as a browser - Google's big thing with its design was minimal and out of your way, so you can focus on the web page (the reason you're running the browser in the first place).
In any case, modern TVs suck at doing either of these things. I wouldn't mind which way they go as long as they do one of them.
It's not just the UX that's broken for TVs, it's the pricing as well. Apple has strong success stories in pricing as well as UX - witness the original iPhone data plan ($20/mo for unlimited data + 200 texts from one of the top-4 providers? very good) or the iPad (both the device and initial data plan).