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Apple is hard at work filing patents with the most recent one being discovered by AppleInsider entitled “Apparatus and Method to Facilitate Universal Remote Control.” The details of the patent filing indicate that the device would feature a touchscreen and endeavor to replace all of the confusing and overly-complicated, existing universal remote options most folks have sitting around at home.

The patent suggests that this touchscreen interface could be used to control all of the electronic devices in your home, inclusive of televisions, DVD and BluRay players, gaming consoles, stereo equipment, even “smart home” systems that manage your lighting and such. The idea of course is that you only see the buttons for the device currently in use and as a result you are not bothered by the clutter of unnecessary options on the screen. This is great, but it’s also being done with some degree of style and finesse by other manufacturers already such as Logitech with their popular Harmony line of universal remotes.  So if this isn’t really all that new, what detail or piece of the puzzle is Apple possibly looking to solve?

Of course, we are all on the edges of our seats wondering exactly what this TV thing is that Steve Jobs apparently “cracked.” If you ask me, there has to be more to it than just a fancy remote control. Some industry pundits speculate that Siri will be involved and voice commands will become a key differentiator to Apple’s TV experience. I hope there’s more. I am actually not that interested in barking things aloud to my television. My car takes verbal instructions for a host of controls from connectivity with my iPhone and for interacting with the navigation system and while it works really well, it can still be infuriating at times.

We’ll have to wait and see if and how this patent application makes it into a real product.  If Apple does release a universal remote, I hope the engine that drives the remote control will also be available as an app that you can install on an existing iOS device, much like you can with Apple’s current Remote app. For those of us with a house full of iPhones, iPads and iPods it seems rather redundant to have to purchase another piece of hardware when it would seem these other devices would be more than capable of doing double-duty (and we have them with us all of the time anyway).