Coming Back ...

It's a long time since my last Post. A quick summary: In the meantime I have changed my country again (Italy), discovered that someone is really reading my Blog by watching AdSense stats (I still have to figure out how to get more detailed figures), and bought my current favourite tech tool an Apple TV (together with a full Apple echosystem including a MacBook and Airport Extreme WiFi router). More on all of this later in the next posts because today's piece of news for me it's Goldman Sachs research that provides some hints to Apple TV future. According to the note the next change or upgrade is scheduled somewhere in the second half of 2008 and might include the addition of an LCD screen.
Obviously we get this type of information quite frequently and only a minimal part of them turns out to be true. Personally I believe that this could be the case: if there is something that Apple TV doesn't need is an embedded display: what this little box desperately need is software updates to show it's real potential. Hackers all over the world have shown that with a little coding effort the usefulness of this box can be multiplied by X times by adding features like streaming from NAS, additional codecs like DIVX and others, Internet Radio, YouTube, etc. (the starting point for Apple TV hacks is certainly the AwkwardTV site).
Much more could be done and I am a little bit surprised that nobody is trying to address some design weaknesses like the ability to download or stream podcasts or videocasts DIRECTLY from the box without having to use iTunes on a computer. So come on Apple give us a few fixes and the popularity of the device could multiply further.