Other new features that have received less attention are quite exciting as well. The Flickr integration is as slick as can be, and the .Mac Web Galleries connection finally gives me a real reason to use that feature of .Mac.

One of the best Apple TV features is the expanded podcast support. I expect to do a separate column on this feature alone in the near future, as it is the one function of the Apple TV that puts unlimited content on your TV screen instantly. If you have loaded the Take 2 software and have not yet explored the Podcast menu, you are really missing out on half of what the Apple TV can do.

The Take 2 software upgrade is a major step forward in Apple’s Grand Unified Media Strategy, and playing with it this week left the CouchGuy thinking hard about what the next steps will be in that direction. Apple’s move into the home continues to accelerate. What will the Apple Living Room look like in another two years?

Here’s the CouchGuy’s look at The Average family and their Apple Home just after Christmas of 2009. This is no wild-eyed blue-sky prediction — I think of it as a speculative look at what is obviously possible and practical based on what we have now. If I were a betting man, I’d lay good odds that this is conservative, and when you look back on it in as little as a year you may wonder at how quaint and old-fashioned it appears. As always, your comments are invited...

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Our tour of Joe Average’s Apple Home starts with Joe in his family room recliner after work. It is his wife Kris Average’s night to cook, so he has a few minutes to relax before dinner.

Joe has already plugged his iPhone into a cradle in his office, so he picks up a 16GB iPod Touch from a cradle on the table near his chair. This used to be Joe Jr’s iPod before he got his upgrade to a new 64GB model for Christmas last week. Now, it is the family room Apple TV remote, running Apple’s VirtualRemote software.

Joe ‘s modest instant-on 56” plasma TV set was brought in just before the Super Bowl last year (Giants again... whodathunkit?) to replace an older LCD screen now residing in the bedroom. It is connected to  an Apple TV Media Server Edition he purchased at the same time, which in turn outputs to the family room’s Dolby 5.1 wireless stereo sound system. The Apple TV Media Server’s silvery case is itself attached to the wall just below the screen via a TV Tray 2 wall mount from H-Squared. Joe bought the wall mount to avoid having to put a table under the TV screen, and because he liked the built-in USB-powered backlight which gives the box a nifty glow. The only other ornament on the wall is the iSight 2 wireless camera mounted above the plasma screen, which the family uses for Apple TV iChats with Joe’s mother and father in Florida on Sunday evenings. He’ll have to show them the videos from Joe Jr.’s Senior Prom this weekend — if they haven’t already checked them out on the family’s .Mac video gallery account.

As the Apple TV menu pops up, he can see by the glowing color stars at the top right of the screen that he has a couple of alerts. The blue star tells him that there is an iChat recorded message waiting. The contents of the plasma screen are duplicated on the iPod Touch in his hand and he taps the blue star to go directly to the message. The image of his friend Glen appears, and from the background he can see Glen was in his office when he recorded the message. (Or was he? Glen likes to play with iChat’s Video Backdrops. Once he left a message that looked like he was on the moon...) “Hey, pal, don’t forget we’re watching the basketball game Saturday afternoon with Bill and Louise!” Ah! Another use for the iSight. The three families had not given up their Saturday afternoon sports gatherings when Bill and Louise were transferred to Seattle — they’d just moved them to “Watch Together” sessions using iChat. Glen and his wife Susan might come across town to visit in the flesh on Saturday — or they might just arrive as Bill and Louise do as a live image of their living room floating in a window above the widescreen image of the game.

The red alert star indicates a completed download, and this turns out to be the rental copy of Cloverfield II that Joe pre-ordered a few months ago. He’d forgotten it was due for simultaneous Blu-Ray and download release this week. OK, they’d have something cool to watch tonight — or they might save that for the weekend. Joe knew he would probably end up buying the movie, as much as he had enjoyed the original, but the first rental price would automatically be deducted from his purchase price later if he decided to keep it.

He glances at the Blu-Ray disk slot on the Apple TV Media Server and again wonders why he bothered to buy the unit with that option. It had been useful when he first got it, since most Blu-Ray disks now came with Apple TV compatible versions of the films right on the disk. He moved over some of his Blu-Ray purchases that way, and could use the slot to play the older disks without this feature. All of his old non-HD movies he has long since moved over to the Apple TV Media Server’s drives using Flip4Mac’s Drive-In 2 to archive them. With the old Digital Millennium Copyright Act finally modified earlier this year, it was perfectly legal to keep archive copies of his old DVDs on the server hard drive where they were available with a single touch on his remote. I guess the server’s built-in drive had been useful for that process, though he could have done it almost as easily from his office iMac’s Blu-Ray drive. CouchApple.TV had an article claiming the built-in drive model was the slowest-selling in the Apple TV line, and Joe could see why. These days, he bought and rented almost all his HD films directly from the iTunes store as downloads.

The yellow alert star indicates a new podcast of special interest had been detected. Sure enough, on the TwiT.tv channel the new episode of MacBreak Video Weekly was out a day early! He’d look at that later from the bedroom while Kris was getting ready for bed.

While he is thinking of it, Joe pulls up the plug-in menu for the EyeTV ATV Edition USB dongle attached to his Apple TV and selects to record the new episode of American Gladiators coming on later that evening. There is another feature he is using less often, he mused. Most of the TV shows he and Kris really cared about — Lost, Monk, Star Trek: The Academy Years and Three and a Half Men — they had purchased iTunes Season Passes for when several networks started offering bonus episodes for pre-ordering. He still records a few shows like American Gladiators to view once then erase, but if he adds it up it probably isn’t really worth it to him to keep all the cable TV channels. After the first of the year, the new FCC regulations will kick in and he can purchase individual cable channels a la carte if he wants. He’d have to put the numbers to it, but it might prove worthwhile for him to drop everything but ESPN, Turner Classic Movies and a few others. Heck, two of their favorite shows, CSI: Atlanta and Joss Whedon’s Luna City, are iTunes Exclusives, produced especially for Apple and not available anywhere else until the once-yearly Blu-Ray DVD collections come out.

Joe thinks about punching up the Games menu on the Apple TV to see if anyone out there is up for a quick game of Worldwide Naval Battle. Instead, he idly checks the drive space available to him on the Apple TV Media Server and is surprised to find he is over the halfway mark on the 2TB built-in drive. Maybe it is time to buy an add-on drive. He could stack a 4TB NewerTech MiniStack ATV right behind the Media Server — it would even fit in the H-Squared wall mount, as it is exactly the same size as the Apple TV server itself. Of course, he’d have to add additional drives to the TimeCapsule 2 backup system in his office, but he needs to do that anyway, since it is already handling backup for 2 Apple TV units, 2 iMacs, his old MacBook Air and Kris’ MacTablet. Drives are really cheap, though. Adding another 8 to 10 terabyte external drive to the TimeCapsule 2 is no big deal.

Joe gets up and wanders into his office, touching his wireless keyboard to wake up his 30“ iMac Pro and the matching 30” Cinema Display alongside it. a Dashboard widget shows him the current status of his TimeCapsule 2 wireless hub and backup system and sure enough over half the capacity of the built-in 16TB drive is full. He brings up the Apple Store window and places an instant order for a LaCie 16TB external drive array for the TimeCapsule, as well as the 4TB NewerTech MiniStack ATV  for the Apple TV Media Server. He glances fondly at the store’s order page for the MacBook Air 2, but decided he’d better not push his luck. Kris had frowned a bit when he purchased the extra Cinema Display for the office, but she had to admit it was convenient for watching movies and other video streamed from the Apple TV Media Server on one screen while working on the iMac’s built-in display. Besides, rumor has it that a new MacBook Pro Air is expected at MacWorld Expo next month.

His iPhone is sitting in the AirDock cradle next to the iMac and the cradle’s built-in liquid crystal display indicates it is now fully charged, finished syncing, and safely disconnected from the desktop, so he picks it up and reclips it to his belt. Joe finds he is reluctant to go anywhere without his iPhone these days. The 3G connection brings him the web, video, and books anywhere he goes, although he finds he can rely on quicker (and free) wi-fi access in most places — at home, at the office, and in most restaurants and larger businesses he visits. Last night while at the mall food court waiting for Kris to finish shopping, his iPhone offered him a special price on the download version of the new Tom Clancy novel. He purchased it right then and there, courtesy of the mall’s Barnes and Noble bookstore who co-sponsors the free wi-fi connection there. He read the first couple of chapters while sipping the coffee he had also ordered from his iPhone, which was brought over to his table by a smiling barista from the nearby Starbucks. Joe thinks of his iPhone as an extension of his home computer system, and he can get anything he wants from it with a touch or two, including any movie in his Apple TV Media Server library. His cable company now offers fiber optic connections direct to the home, which gives Joe and his family more bandwidth than ever before — and they need it more than ever before.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Kris is making dinner, using a recipe demonstrated by Emeril Lagasse on an episode of his show that Kris recorded earlier and archived. She views it on her MacTablet which sits on the counter in another AirDock, streaming the content from the Media Server in the family room.

Kris relies on her MacTablet much as Joe does his iPhone — it is her daily connection to her home and her office. As a real estate agent, she finds the MacTablet perfect for displaying listings to clients on the fly and keeping her busy schedule straight. It syncs directly and automatically with the local multi-listings service, keeping new local real estate listings at her fingertips as they are added throughout the day. It is also the perfect media player and electronic book viewer. — much better for the latter purpose than the smaller iPhone screen.

The MacTablet has 3G phone capability, but Kris has wireless access almost everywhere and doesn’t use the 3G much unless she is in the home of a client who doesn’t have wi-fi guest access or in her car if she gets lost on the way to an open house and needs to pull a Google map. She makes most of her phone calls from the wi-fi connections at Starbucks, which she thinks of as her “field offices”. She often meets clients there as well. It is amazing how many clients get relaxed and ready to buy when Kris is paying for the Cinnamon Dolce Lattes.

Kris has just used the last of her favorite curry spice mix, so she pauses the Emeril Live playback and opens the MacTablet’s browser, linking to a bookmarked page for Sugar and Spice, a local gourmet food shop she uses frequently. Like many specialty stores, Sugar and Spice has an iPhone/MacTablet optimized website where Kris keeps a want list. There are two other items already marked there. She adds the curry mix to the list and sends the order through, noting she will be by to pick it up the next day. On impulse, she adds a small stainless steel whisk like one she saw Emeril using a moment ago to the order, since the site noted it as being on sale. It is such add-on purchases that makes maintaining the site worthwhile for the store’s owner. Almost all of his customers have an iPhone, iPod Touch or MacTablet these days, and maintaining convenient want lists for them bring sales to his store.

Kris would not need to use the AirDock to link to the Apple TV Media Server nor to place her order for the spices, but it is convenient to have one in the kitchen to keep the MacTablet’s battery charge topped off and to hook to a nice set of under-cabinet speakers for better sound. The AirDock props the tablet up at an adjustable viewing angle as well. It recognizes her MacTablet when it is plugged in, syncing TV shows she wants to carry with her that are recorded by the Media Server. Joe could plug right into the same AirDock with his iPhone (though he usually prefers the dock in his office), and Joe Jr. could do the same with his iPod Touch — the server knows what each of them wants to keep synced and does so automatically, no matter where the individual portable devices are docked.

Right now, Joe Jr. is in his room watching music videos on the new iMac Media Edition he got the previous Christmas. The 24” iMac Media Edition has a built-in syncing dock for his new 64GB iPod Touch, and a built-in TV tuner so that Joe Jr. needs no other TV in his room. He uses either the iPod Touch or his Apple Remote and Front Row to watch TV and movies and listen to music in his room, as served by the Apple TV Media Server or resident on his iMac’s hard drive in his own copy of iTunes. His iMac Media Edition also backs up to the TimeCapsule 2 in Joe’s office, and his music collection and subscriptions to a host of music-oriented podcasts is a primary contributor to that device’s need for additional storage capacity! Having an iMac Media Edition gives Joe Jr. both a powerful computer and a media center as powerful as an Apple TV in one device. He’ll take it to college with him when he leaves next fall. The iPod Touch lets him draw on that content anywhere he goes that has wi-fi, which describes the homes of most of his friends, his school cafeteria, the mall where he hangs out, and the under-21 dance club he frequents with his girlfriend Mindi. Mindi has an iPhone, but since Joe Jr. is rarely away from a wi-fi connection, he decided to ask for a higher-capacity iPod Touch instead because he likes to keep lots of music and video on board. Besides, he can still use it to place telephone calls via Skype over wi-fi with an add-on Bluetooth headset.

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This look at the Average family home in December of 2009 is probably pretty conservative. If the expanding market demand for more and more bandwidth can bring us widespread access to WiMAX or some other low-cost, high-bandwidth, longer-range wireless alternative, all bets are off. There will be no difference between an iPod Touch and an iPhone — they’ll be essentially the same device. Better battery and charging technology could come along as well, which could be a major game-changer. It is possible that content providers will wise up even more than predicted here as well, making the experience of getting music and video content to any device you choose very cheap and utterly painless. There could be no such thing as a “record label” or a “TV network” any more — look at the Averages in ten years instead of less than two and that will certainly be the case.

Comments? How do you see the Average family and their Apple Home?