If Apple made a TV

OK I know Apple makes the AppleTV media box but what if, as some have suggested, Apple actually stepped up and took on the Japanese and the Koreans and made a full blown 32/40/52" TV set. What could we expect?

Well obviously Mr Ive's team would deliver another fantastic industrial design. It would certainly be thin and maybe have an aluminium unibody construction. I'd expect it to be true HD and I think they'd bypass plasma/LCD technology and move straight on to OLED. I'd obviously like a built in DVD or Blu-ray Drive, built in wifi and a hard disk.

So what's the special about that? Well so far nothing of course. However, if you think I'm heading down the internet TV route now - and yes I'd expect all the sort of stuff you can get already using the AppleTV, photos, buy/rent movies from iTunes. But no. That's not where I'm headed with this post. Beside all of this functionality is offered by media boxed like the AppleTV already and the TV world as yet hasn't changed.

Lets look at what Apple could do if it played to its proven strengths - the UI and Simplicity. Apple would look to differentiate, innovate and improve. Where could it improve the current TV experience? We'll when you look at it pretty much everywhere.

Look at your current TV and examine something that has hardly changed in the last 40 years - The remote. OK so it has a lot of buttons - mine has 55, my cable remote (Foxtel) has 40 and my DVD player remote has 50. How many of these 155 buttons do I use on daily basis? Perhaps a dozen. Of course I can buy an all-in-one programmable remote - I did once - but ultimately that was just as frustrating.

Examine the TV further and ask yourself what are the key functions I will want to do all the time?

On/Off, Change channels, search for channels, set reminders or record programs, mute and volume and change inputs (i.e. Cable/DVD/Game console).

Let's say I want to select a channel. Currently I have three options. If I know the channel number I desire I can key it and presto. This was fine in the old days when there were half a dozen or less channels but now there are hundreds of channels. So I resort to channel hopping which apart from driving my wife to distraction is a pretty inefficient method of selecting (it's essentially a sequential scan). Not very clever. Ah, but what about the EPG. Well yes, it's an index of sorts but its still rubbish really and only partially help solve the problem. The EPG will typically show me about 10 channels for the next 2 hours in the default window.

But I'm still missing the point here. Why should I want to find a channel? Do I care whether I'm watching Channel 9 or Fox 8? No. What I should be searching for is content. As I stated I can use the EPG but they really are pretty useless. So let's imagine we could search for programs instead of channels. Well you can on Foxtel but have you tried it. It's rubbish. I can search by category or by A-Z. That's it.

The basic limitation that kicks in is that the UI is fundamentally based around a 10 digit numbering system, or a series of four coloured buttons, of one of four selections of arrows. Yes that's right. Here we are deep in the digital age and were selecting what we watch with 1970's remote control technology. Crazy isn't it. So how about if we could have a remote control and UI that was neat, friendly and allowed us to search content in a more meaningful way that Program Title. Let's say I wanted to watch something starring a particular actor, or something by the a known director. What if the remote resembled something like an iPod Touch or iPhone. Imagine a programmable remote that utilised the easy to use interface Apple bring to their consumer devices. Hey wouldn't that be cool.

It progress init!

I currently work for the Department of Hopes and Dreams (not their real name) and like many out there I have to complete a weekly timesheet for project accounting purposes. Whist it's never much fun I recognise that it is a necesary evil.

However my real bugbear here is the timesheet software that we use, let's call it Opacity (again not their real name) which is a commonly used application that has been sold extensively worldwide. Here's the problem.

How many clicks/keystrokes should it take to enter my start time, end times and breaks for 5 days. Have a guess. Maybe 20, 25? Wrong. I counted it this week. It took 73 mouse click and 20 character presses. This raises more questions than answers.

How can anyone write a user interface so bad? How could anyone demo this package and go home and sleep at night? What idiot actually sat through a demo and selected this software?

Answer please on a postcard to ....