“Apple has filed for a patent for an application menu for a video system,” Dennis Sellers reports for Apple World Today. “It hints at a revamped interface for its TV app, which allows you to continue to watch your favorite shows and movies, discover new content, and find new video apps, all from a single location.”
“The TV app is available in select countries and regions. You can use the TV app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with the latest version of iOS, or on your Apple TV with the latest version of tvOS,” Sellers writes. “Note to Apple: let’s have a Mac version ASAP.”
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, and not just a half-assed Marzipan port, either.
“Apple says there’s a need to provide an intuitive interface overlaid on visual content that obscures a minimal portion of the visual content,” Sellers reports. “The company’s invention would ‘provide an intuitive interface that seems to anticipate user intention before input is complete by beginning an animation portion that is common to two or more user interface responses.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Basically, you can still see most of the visual, not just hear the audio, while using the interface. Think “mini guide” displaying and working in the lower third while you’re watching a show. This would, of course, be an improvement over any system that occludes all of the currently playing content.
I always thought a live Cover Flow type interface would be great, with the current selection playing in a bigger window and other content I want to thumb through below. Then an easy button to allow me to toggle sound from the main selection to one of the thumbnail items at the bottom.
I loved picture-n-picture on all of my Sony TVs in the 90s for this very reason. I could keep watching what I was on, while perusing for other content.