In September of last year, Apple filed a patent that provided some potential insight as to what they are planning for their upcoming Apple TV line up of products. According to the patent filing, it would seem that Apple has intentions of creating their own touchscreen TV remote.
Their filing is known as the Apparatus and Method to Facilitate Universal Remote Control which is quite a mouth full. As you go through the patent, Apple’s argument is that a traditional remote control can have a large number of buttons for various functions. Many of these buttons may be for functions that the user does not generally use and in fact do nothing more then confuse the end user. Apple goes on to say that universal remotes aren’t much better, but rather add another layer of complexity to the basic remotes that they are actually replacing.
Apple’s solution is a touchscreen remote that will have a very simple user interface that can be programmed for what the end user needs to control. Based upon the patent, it would seem that devices would send their interfaces to the Apple remote which would then make the various controls available for use.
One of the interesting reports that have been circulating is that Apple may integrate Siri into the remote. Siri is their voice activated assistant that is currently only available on the iPhone 4S. However, Siri will only be used to augment the features of the physical remote control, not replace it.
