What's up with Apple TV?

This year is heavy with Apple news, so the silence about Apple TV is somewhat suspicious and triggers comments like http://www.switched.com/2007/11/27/is-there-hope-for-the-apple-tv/. Not surprisingly Apple TV is painted here as a device only for "die-hard Apple fanatics" without future on the mass-market.
That would be sad, because Apple TV is a good and easy solution, if you don't want to listen to music and watch movies sitting at your desk in front of your computer, but on the sofa in your living room. Yes, Apple TV is restricted to the iTunes world, but that's a pretty big world. I buy video on iTunes and can rip DVDs - what else is missing? Apple TV is by far not flawless and I'm a little disappointed that we haven't seen a software update, for example bringing Internet radio and improved handling of slideshows, but still we have lots of fun with it.
And as far as using a Mac mini instead: did anybody actually do this? I tried and sank a couple of hundred dollars (on top of the mini itself) into it, but I just couldn't come to a satisfying solution. First even with a DVI-to-HDMI cable the picture on the TV was either too small or too big. Then - as opposed to Apple TV - the Mac mini cannot be used just with the remote. It needs a keyboard and a mouse, preferably with Bluetooth, which just don't seem right in a living room. And Frontrow would happily burn the iTunes logo in our plasma screen.
No, I think that Apple TV is still a great idea and I hope that Apple neglected it just because so many other things were going on this year.

The cellphone/carrier mess

It's holiday season and a the wireless carriers let loose a wave of commercials about fancy new phones, practically for free -if you are willing to sign a new two years contract. In other words, the carriers exclusively focus on customers of their competition, whose contract has expired. Of course, since all four major US carriers are playing the same game, it's obvious that the they win some customers on one side and they loose them on the other side.
This is a silly game with a negative impact for two groups of customers: first those who are still proudly carrying their old monochrome, brick-sized cellphone ("All I need it for is making phone calls"). They may save some money for hardware, but with their fixed monthly charge they cross-subsidize those who get the latest phones every year by switching the carrier. Second, those who like to buy a new gadget as often as they want, but cannot do that without the feeling to throw away money if they don't wait for the end of the contract.
This cries for regulation, as it's already done in other countries: carriers should be obliged to offer a bare-bones monthly rate without any hardware-subsidies priced in and hardware vendors should offer unlocked phones for the full price. That way customers can select a phone and the plan that they want, instead of having a drastically limited choice.

A pleasant iPhone surprise

There seemed nothing particularly interesting with the 1.1.2 update for the iPhone. As usual there was no information from Apple and the reviews are listing only multi-language support for the international roll-out and some security fixes. Whatever.
But there's more to it: One big flaw of the iPhone was always that it would only allow typing in English - the built in dictionary just went crazy if you tried to type in a different language. Well, that's solved now. And in a surprisingly good way: while I was expecting that I have to go to Settings, General, International, Keyboard to switch keyboards, it's actually much easier. You can activate multiple keyboards, which can be switched with a button next to the space bar. Perfect - as wished √