Interaction architecture decides the night
Back when I obsessed over the Apple Remote, I learned the living room problem isn’t about shaving off buttons. It’s mapping a huge media state space to quick, low‑error input for multiple people sitting ten feet away. Lovely hardware counts, but interaction architecture decides the night. 📺👇
Quick rewind to 2007-2015: Apple TV showed up in 2007, the second‑gen landed in 2010, and Google TV arrived with Sony’s gigantic 80‑key remote (yes, really). Apple went the other way with seven. In March 2015 I wrote that the materials and restraint were spot on, but I wished for an iPod‑style click wheel to scale navigation and scrubbing. The bet was simple: keep things minimal, as long as speed and predictability don’t take a hit.
What remotes actually juggle:
- focus navigation
- transport control
- selection confirmation
- mode switching
Hard keys are discrete and eyes‑free. Touch surfaces add velocity but invite slips. Wheels and rings compress distance with stable gain. IR wins on compatibility, BLE cuts latency and works through furniture, HDMI‑CEC shares power and volume yet brings vendor quirks. In 2015, Apple nailed elegance and basic transport. Large library traversal and precise scrubbing were the real stress tests.
How it aged by 2025: Apple moved from a glass touch surface to a tactile clickpad ring with jog‑style scrubbing, a quiet nod that gestures alone weren’t enough for precision. Roku doubled down on lots of hard keys and service buttons. Fire TV and Google TV leaned on voice for search and kept D‑pads for control. Voice is perfect for intent like “play Arrival,” not continuous control. CEC helped cut button bloat, but reliability still depends on your TV chain. Net result: multimodal wins when mappings stay consistent across apps.
Open questions I’m still chewing on:
- What gain curve makes scrubbing feel right for both casuals and power users?
- How do we show mode and state on a remote with no screen?
- Where’s the handoff between remote, phone, and voice?
Original 2015 post for context: https://anandchowdhary.com/blog/2015/apple-remote