Why we won't see an App Store on AppleTV

Originally Posted by Feynman 
Why would Apple allow you to download apps to use on another companies television?

Ah, because you've already purchased the Apple TV and Apple has zero reason whatsoever to care about what brand of television you're using as long as you've paid for both the Apple TV box and are paying for and receiving your content through iTunes.

It's already available there. You can AirPlay ANY application to ANY TV or projector model from ANY company right now. They don't care. In fact, they care a lot about selling Apple TV boxes to do just that. 

Heck, they sell other companies' projectors in the Apple Store.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Feynman 

This would also allow for easier development of the platform and Apple will not have to worry about the various third party screen resolutions.

This is not an issue with televisions. Any TV that takes HDMI input can correctly display a 1080p signal, even if the panel is natively different. The history of broadcast television has driven such standards.

Certainly not the quagmire of computer and mobile displays where screen resolution and aspect ratio can provide a meaningful product differentiation.

There is nothing that Apple can't accomplish by building all functionality into the AppleTV. Going the route of "iTV" has no advantage for Apple. Sure it would be the nicest looking TV display on the market, but it would also be astronomically expensive...and you would have to buy one just to get the functionality that can be included in a $99 box. It would hurt Apple's TV effort, not improve it.

What they need to do is make the Apple TV better, and still charge $99 for it. Every iOS Device user that also has a television in their living room should want a $99 Apple TV....Apple just needs to bake in enough reason for them to want it.

Currently, it seems their offering is appealing to a small fraction of iOS device owners. What Apple needs to do is fill in the missing pieces.

I don't know if an App Store has any potential on TV at all....I just don't understand sitting on your couch browsing Facebook on your TV, reading articles, Playing Angry birds....it just doesn't make a lick of sense. The physical remote is not enough of UIController to interact with Apps, and iOS Devices also fail here, unless you don't have to look at the screen. 

Developers such as Rovio should have, by now, figured out how to make a game like Angry Birds display on the TV, while your hands move across the touch screen of iOS device, eyes-free. Considering the Mac version does exactly this via trackpad.

But....then again....you have a problem here: The whole idea is still idiotic.

not sure on the app store but I wish you could choose more then one genre too play e.g.: country and rock not just rock

I'm not so sure it would be about Facebook and Angry Birds. It would be about content consumption apps like Hulu and Netflix. While both of these are already on the device, it certainly wouldn't hurt to open the door for more. While I agree the remote can be cumbersome, Apple provides another remote that is anything but and that most, if not all, Apple TV users already have - their iPhones and iPads.

We also have to consider that if an app marketplace with potential profitability and mass appeal was available for televisions that app developers would find ways to leverage the platform in innovative and exciting ways that we have yet to conceive. Imagine the potential for apps that span across devices and screens or ones that can leverage the computing power of both an Apple TV and an iPad.

At the very least, I don't see any benefit for Apple to deny developers the opportunity to do this, given that Apple TV's software is already built on a variant of iOS.