Dear Tim Cook: AppleTV + Spotlight-like Search Please?

Haysoos Marimba Apple. Sheesh.

Is it too much to ask for a simple, unified search across all the discombobulated silos that make up AppleTV content?

I’ve worked with Lucene and I’ve worked with Nutch and Acrobat Indexes. This isn’t hard to do. Heck, hire me for a couple months. We’ll get this done PDQ.

It could go a long way to helping your CONTENT PARTNERS… It would go a helluva long way to making the user experience immensely better. Isn’t that what you claim to be all about? Or is your “hobby” exempt from your best efforts? Hullo!!

I wanted to watch something, anything… with Stephen Hawking. I didn’t care if it was iTunes content, or Netflix content, or Hulu content, or Smithsonian content, or PBS content. But, why in hell do I have to search 19 times?

Update your more-than-capable OS just this wee little bit, please? Or let us write and distribute the app necessary to get the job done. This is getting ridiculous.

The New Apple TV Project

Apple’s always working to where “the puck is GOING to be” and so it should be no surprise they feel TV is next.

The iPhone wasn’t fully formed at birth. I don’t think we should expect the next-gen TV experience from Apple to be any different. So, when Engadget’s Lawler contemplates his navel over HDTV content deals… I can’t help but chuckle. We’ve been here before. He’ll, AC/DC is only just now joining iTunes. The Beatles didn’t come on until recently. Who the hell cares if Moonves is on board right this moment? Seriously!

We are very much headed toward a more tailored entertainment era. One where I can subscribe ala carte to whatever I want to consume. Radio. Books. Games. Video. I build what I see value in and then… Voila!

We’ve already chucked out Cox Cable. We are a purely AppleTV household. Apple, Netflix, Hulu and YouTube are our primary content portals now. We haven’t missed a beat. If anything we’re enjoying MORE of what we like in a time shifted kind of way. I don’t miss DVR. I don’t miss the cable bill and all the dumb ass fees that came along with.

My kids will never know a rotary phone or a tape based answering machine. They WILL think back on the day when we had that little box attached to the TV dad used to cuss at occasionally as a relic of days gone by. A simpler time. Funny to think in those terms.

They won’t give a rat’s behind if CBS was on board or not. There’s no shortage of content and its only going to get more crowded.

Where the problem is going to come is easily searching across all the available “streams”. It’s a serious pain in the ass to simultaneously search across Apple, Netflix, Hulu and YouTube on an Apple TV. I think it’s not possible today. So, to hear Jobs say, “We’ve nailed it.” Gives me hope their next big iteration of the interface addresses that sort of thing.