hans.gerwitz

By now it’s generally agreed that iTV is coming on Wednesday and is likely to be iOS-​​based.

Many folks have assumed that “running iOS” means “running iPad apps” directly, or iPad-​​style apps via another App Store. This raises a lot of ques­tions about the inter­action model; how do you manip­ulate an app that’s beyond your reach? If we expect any new iOS device will run existing apps from smaller screens, we run into the “focus” problem: if you can’t touch directly, you have to have context for the “noun” you are about to “verb” with the next tap.

There are a few ways to address focus.

A direc­tional controller (d-​​pad or gestural touch surface) can navigate a straight­forward, recti­linear menu interface as most TV inter­faces (including Apple TV) do today. Or that same controller could move focus between more arbi­trary active regions, as with many DVD menus. Jon Bell and Dan Wineman are excited about gestural touch surfaces and their potential here. After all, the Remote app for controlling your Apple TV from an iPhone has a similar touch surface approach for navi­gating menus.

I’m not convinced. Even though it is common to confound gestural touch surfaces and direct touch UI, this is still an indirect focus controller. I cannot imagine Apple adopting a discretely-​​shifting-​​focus UI akin to DVD menus, and the best alter­native seems to be intro­ducing a cursor for arbi­trary focus. Once you’re using a direc­tional controller (gestural or not) to control a cursor on a screen (decoupled from the controller surface)… well, that’s a pointer. You might as well have a mouse.

The indirect nature of pointers is contrary to the “magic” of direct inter­action Steve Jobs is excited about.

A more widget-​​like App Store isn’t out of the question, though, for very simple apps with simple inter­ac­tions. My hopes, though, are for greater inter­action between iOS devices.

It’s a common complaint that we cannot stream audio from our iPads to AirTunes; we could see that enabled along with a video streaming API. I imagine content owners are the only obstacle to the SDK enabling the Netflix app to send video to your AppleTV. Such an interface could mature into a very compelling platform for passive display, whether for displaying Keynote presen­ta­tions or dash­boards for multi­player games.

Coordination from other direction would also be sensible. If any connected iOS “remote” could display inter­active meta-​​content, we’d finally have a chance at the sorts of compelling cross-​​screen expe­ri­ences I’ve seen mocked up to many times. Apple already has a format for that, which could let us browse through supple­mental content on our personal screen while watching media on the big one.

With time, I imagine we’ll see this sort of coor­di­nation, even if it’s disabled for “profes­sional” content. This week, maybe we just get a scroll wheel.