Apple TV - I Still Don't See The Value

Question

I have had an Apple TV for a couple of years now and unfortunately I don;t see the value in it anymore. Apple has paid no attention to what this thing can be. And while I know that the goal is to make money, it's a shame that so many digital components are being left out.
For those of you who have an Xbox, you recently received Netflix and Last FM.
For whatever reason, Netflix downloads almost instantly on the Xbox. Apple TV take a pretty long time, and at least 4 hours for HD movies. Why is this?
Second, LastFm is like Pandora. While the addition to internet Radio is nice, why not bundle up with Pandora?
Finally, why not intergrate this into other digital spaces like facebook, twitter and even Hulu..... The entire thing doesnt make sense.
I currently only use this thing for Photos, and really that's even a pain in the *** because I need to have it identical to what's on my MAC. The whole system *****, and frankly not well thought out.
In fact, I personally think that their should be an APP store on the Apple TV, like the Iphone..... There is so much they can do to make this system better. In the meantime, Xbox has gained ground, if not passed them as a entertainment hub for the TV.... and honestly, I think they have only scratched the surface.
In a few years, I believe we will be capable of not needing cable, directtv, etc... We should be able to Pick "CBS" and pick a show...and watch....Through the internet. Not actually buying shows.

Answer 1

While there may be groups of users who want it to be an all-singing all-dancing machine for certain tasks, not every group will want the same things. Therein lies the problem, what to develop particularly when many options won't be cash-cows.
You presumably bought it for the feature set it had and it still has those things.
I'd buy one tomorrow for music playback alone via the hi-fi - my wish here would be for it to support better quality PCM audio output (limited to 16 bit 44.1kHz for music).
Mine get hours of use each day for family viewing, no messing around with VHS tapes or discs. Great.
I wish they hadn't added YouTube in 1.01 to be honest and even some aspects of iTunes store annoy me on it, though on balance I prefer the store is present.
I wouldn't use Twitter/Facebook and all that kind of stuff - not my thing really so it would be of no interest and just clutter menus, but I appreciate others would like them
Adding apps/plugins would be a good way to address different wants for the system as you'd customise in line with what you wanted and wouldn't be forced to use things you didn't need.
With regard to things like Netflix/Pandora etc many of these are country specific eg Pandora stopped those outside US from accessing it, Netflix is not available in UK. Last FM is great on the iPhone, I'd love it on the AppleTV. UK users would love BBC iPlayer, it would be useless to you.
So without opening up the system to allow 3rd parties to deploy local content/features specific to each country I would imagine it would be very hard to target what to develop in house that would work universally.
There are also usage concepts that annoy - syncing being one for a variety of reasons, I'd prefer a manual drag and drop method of populating it, but I mainly stream anyway. It's the AppleTV 'way' though so it won't change. USB port activation would also be incredibly handy either to backup material, extend playback storage or populate AppleTV. Again, unliklely to change.
You presumably know the feedback link:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/appletv.html
AppleTV may not be perfect but I don't think there is a perfect device out there currently - the competition is certainly hotting up though.