A patent application has fueled the speculation fires that Apple may create a “wiimote” styled remote for the AppleTV.
While patents certainly don’t mean that something is truly going to see the light of day, this one would be most welcome, in my opinion.
One of the biggest limitations of the AppleTV is the clunky navigation when it comes to searching…well, anything. It takes way longer than it should to click through the alphabet to get to the various letters you need – and the longer your title, the worse off you are.
With this new remote, should it ever come to pass, you’d have much faster access to your entire on screen keyboard, and it would make the entire browsing experience much more user friendly. Anyone that has ever used the Internet on a Wii can verify that the mouse-like design of the Wiimote is heads and shoulders above the abilities of a simple D-pad styled remote.
There is no confirmation that this is coming anytime soon, of course, so we shouldn’t get excited just yet – but I would put this towards the top of my list of patents that I hope Apple actually acts upon.
What do you think?