The “new” Apple TV will be two years old this autumn. When Apple first launched the device it was a bit groundbreaking. Running a variant of iOS called tvOS, the device turned your TV into something akin to an iPhone, allowing you to download apps and interact with it much like you do an iOS device. Also, the Siri Remote was quite groundbreaking, not because it offered voice control (lots of devices did before the new Apple TV) but because of its unique touchpad input on the remote.

But while Apple has added new software features to the Apple TV (dark mode, improved Siri input) there are still several software and hardware features the Apple TV is lacking that keeps it from being a truly great device. With WWDC coming up in less than a month, hopefully Apple will announce at least some of these software improvements in the next tvOS–and then, this autumn, the hardware improvements. Here’s what we’d like to see:

Amazon Prime Video App

Yes, this isn’t something Apple can actually control. But it's something the Apple TV needs to be called a great media streamer. Right now Amazon and Apple are locked in a pissing fight over several of their competing services, which has kept Amazon Prime Video off the Apple TV. However, there are rumors that that could be changing and we could see an Amazon Prime Video Apple TV app by this autumn.

Picture-In-Picture

With iOS 9 Apple brought picture-in-picture support to the iPad (only).

Picture-in-picture allows users to be working inside one app while the video player of another app is playing in a small box on the same screen.

PIP works great on the iPad, but it's baffling this feature isn’t on the Apple TV—especially after Apple it to macOS last year.

Screen Saver App Store

The Apple TV has beautiful aerial screensaver that slowly pan over landscapes.

They’re very hypnotic and it’s easy to just find yourself watching them and not other content on your Apple TV. However, it would be great if the tvOS App Store had a new Screensaver category that would allow you to download third-party screensavers to run on the Apple TV.

Fix The Keyboard

This is probably the most common complaint about the new Apple TV. It’s keyboard layout sucks. It’s just one long horizontal row of letters from A to Z with a with caps, lowercase, numbers, and symbol toggle buttons below.

Because of this you need to swipe on the Siri Remote trackpad an insane amount of times just to spell simple words. What’s worse is that the space button is on the left side before the A and the backspace button is on the right side after the Z.

It’s the most baffling keyboard layout in history–it just takes so long to type anything. Apple, just give us a QWERTY three-row keyboard like every other device has.

A Mute Button

One of the best features of the Siri Remote is old-school: it has a physical volume button so you can use it to turn the volume of your TV up or down. What’s even more amazing about this button is that it requires zero pairing or set up with your TV (unlike when you buy normal third-party universal remotes for an existing TV.

This makes using your Apple TV a much more enjoyable experience because you don’t need to use two remotes to operate things–well, most of the time anyway. Like many, I frequently mute my TV when I get a phone call.

The thing that sucks about the Apple TV is that even though the remote can control my TV’s volume, it can’t mute it. This is a small complaint, but it becomes annoying when I can control my whole viewing experience with a single remote, yet I need to pick up a separate remote just to mute my Apple TV.

I can’t see this being a problem Apple can fix via software, so the only hope is that Apple comes out with a new Siri Remote in the future that offers a mute button.

Buy Netflix

This last one is a long shot, but here goes. Part of the reason the Apple TV isn’t a great device is because Apple doesn’t have its own movie streaming service. That’s why Apple TV users are reliant on Netflix and Prime Video to have a full catalog of media content.

Sure, Apple could probably secure the content rights that would allow it to have a movie streaming service, but why go through all that? Why not just buy Netflix, with has a great catalogue as well as tons of terrific original content.

After all, Apple is worth close to $800 billion now and has over $250 billion in cash in the bank. Surely the company could afford to scoop up a relatively small player like Netflix.

Still... if you use iPhone and Mac exclusively, Apple TV is easily your best bet for streaming media around your home. It might not be perfect, but given the choice i'd take AirPlay over Cast any day of the week. 

And for those of you in the US: