When Apple announced the latest iteration of the Apple TV recently I was a little underwealmed by pretty much everything except the price.  The biggest disappointment was that they didn't announce the ability for developers to create apps for Apple TV in the same way they do today for the iPhone, iPod, and iPad.  A move like that would no doubt create a flurry engaging applications for the living room big screen.

But then I read an article this morning [on 9 to 5 Mac] showing how they had used Apple's new AirPlay product (or is it a feature of many products?) to send the audio from a Netflix movie playing on an iPad to some external speakers via an Airport Express.  This got me thinking more about AirPlay and Apple's potential direction for the product. What if Apple gives full access to AirPlay to iOS developers and lets them push the audio and video from their iPhone/iPad apps to other devices (like the AppleTV) instead of letting developers build apps for the Apple TV directly.

What could this mean for the consumer?  Think about a potential example of the Scrabble app.  You could be playing Scrabble on your iPad and decide to push the game over to your TV using an iPad-to-Apple TV AirPlay connection.  Then anyone on the local network with an iPhone or iPod touch could use their device as a controller (in the case of Scrabble, these would be the tile racks).

If this turns out to be true, I imagine adding AirPlay capability to your app would be similar to the process today for making your app 'universal' (a 'universal' app is one that has two UI designs, one for the iPhone/iPod and one for the iPad, all packaged into one download).  The definition of a 'universal' app might evolve to include one that plays on all of those devices plus the Apple TV via AirPlay.

The end result of this would be pretty much the same as if Apple announced development capability on the Apple TV directly.  We would still have engaging living room applications, but we would be pushing apps to the Apple TV via AirPlay from other devices instead of downloading apps there directly. All of the iDevices would be interacting in the AirPlay cloud.

Since the Apple TV is priced at only $99, the market penetration potential is big.  Apple TV buyers might be drawn into their first Apple experience with the cheap device, and then end up buying more products when they understand how valuable they are working together.

Of course I could be completely wrong. What do you think?