iOS on an Apple TV? A VERY Bad Idea

By now you've probably heard that Apple has scheduled a press conference for September 1st. You never hear the words "Apple has scheduled a press event" without an immediate deluge of speculation over what the press event might reveal. And this piece will not dissapoint you.

Honestly, this event shouldn't be too difficult to decipher. It's in September and that means...drumrolls please...iPods. The iPod touch looks a lot more like the iPhone 3GS than the iPhone 4. Hence, the easiest guess is that the iPod Touch will be updated to be more iPhonish.

You know, a front-facing camera for FaceTime functionality, a camera on the back for snapping photos, a better screen and so forth. Updates to the other iPod models will also likely show up but does anyone really care about anything in iPod land but the Touch anymore?

The FaceTime update makes particularly good sense because by adding FaceTime functionality Apple can tout the number of potential FaceTime users out there without noting that the number of actual repeat FaceTime users is laughably small. (Everyone tries it once, right?) So updating the iPod Touch to iPhone standards seems like a lock. Consumers get a better value, Apple sells more iPods and gets some great marketing out of the event.

At this point you're thinking "A front-facing camera on an iPod? We need more drama than that!" Two things here. The first thing to remember is that Steve Jobs will be giving the promo. It won't come off as just a front-facing camera. Steve will pitch it as a revolution of some sort. One imagines it might go something like this:

"When we put FaceTime on the iPhone we didn't realize just how revolutionary it would be. Every single person with an iPhone has tried FaceTime. The biggest problem with FaceTime? People are running out of other people to chat with. Today we're going to solve the problem. Today, we're adding FaceTime to the iPod Touch. You know who has touches instead of iPhones? Kids, that's who. Now you can yell at your kids face to face one hundred miles away! BOOM!"

Or something like that. Some fail to grasp the power of Steve Jobs' presentation skills and imagine there has to be more to the press event than just some iPod stuff. If it has to be more than just iPod updates that means there will be Apple TV shenanigans. The iPhone update is only a few months old, Macs have been recently refreshed, so the only thing left is the Apple TV.

What do people imagine will happen to the Apple TV? They imagine it will be renamed the iTV and run iOS, the same OS that runs the iPad, the iPhone and the iPod touch. The benefits of such a change are immediately obvious. Apple will sell more apps, people already know how to use iOS so there is no learning curve and Apple can make everything more integrated. The idea is perfection encapsulated, a no brainer, the easiest move in the world, right?

Not so fast. What commonality do all the iOS devices share? It isn't screen size—the iPad is much larger than the iPhone or iPod touch. And it isn't the need for a contract, you can't get an iPhone without a contract but you can get an iPod touch or an iPad without a contract. The one commonality across all the iOS products though is the touch screen.

Now, slam iOS on an Apple TV. How do you use any of the apps? How do you fire up, say, the Weather app? In iOS you touch it. Chances are your TV doesn't have a touch sensitive screen. So you can't launch the app by touching it. The obvious solution is to add a cursor to the Apple TV remote right? Well, maybe not. When you touch something in iOS it launches, just a pointer won't do that because if it did you'd launch every app you accidentally hovered over. Well, you could add a button, just one, so that the app wouldn't launch until you actually clicked the button. Congrats you've just invented the mouse.

It actually is a bit more problematic than all that. Designing for touch instead of mouse click goes a lot deeper than replacing your finger with a cursor. Let's use Flight Control (a popular game for iOS) as an example. The idea behind Flight Control is that you direct various aircraft to land at specific spots using your finger. It works great on an iOS device where you can use your fingers, but it would be horrible trying to direct the planes with a mouse from across the room. You may argue that the Wii does exactly that and you'll be correct, but the telling difference is that the Wii games were designed with the Wii-mote in mind. In short, expecting Apple to come up with some kludge to make a remote act like your finger on your non-touch screen TV is too much to ask.

At the event expect to see an updated iPod touch but don't count on much with the Apple TV. If an iOS Apple TV does show up, sell your Apple shares because despite  iOS, Apple will have lost its touch.