These are minor quibbles, really, but it's this sort of interface clutter that makes me feel that the TiVo Roamio OTA DVR is a closer relative to the cable company DVR than it is to a more modern set-top box like the (DVR-less, but still quite awesome) Roku.
Hence the need to track both the eye and the face, and to think carefully about where best to apply this sort of interface.
Of course, if you find yourself drawn to this sort of interface and user experience, you don't have to wait for Apple to build something like it – the two other leading mobile platforms, Android and Windows Phone, let you do this sort of thing today.
Plus, its circular widgets may not be the sort of user interface redesign that people can adjust to after so many years of swiping through screens filled with apps.
But Underkoffler's former professor at MIT, Hiroshi Oshii, says Underkoffler is working on a system of gloves and cameras that allow just the sort of ethereal interface that Spielberg imagines and that he has spoken with major tech firms about licensing the technology.
There are competing schools of thought of how to bring more technology to the driver, each employing some sort of interface that is less than intuitive ("See, you spin this knob here, which moves you through these selections up here.
The company has also utilized the hands themselves as a clever sort of interface, moving to different positions to indicate different things.
This sort of interface is obviously the future, but in some cases I think we gain more in complexity than we bargained for.
What scares me, however, is that since Apple isn't a fan of open systems, my vision of an Apple HDTV is an iMac-looking display with three ports on the back — coax for OTA HD, some sort of digital/analog audio output and some sort of interface for an Apple A/V switch for, you know, just in case you want to use older, non-Apple equipment through HDMI, component or composite.
