A couple thoughts on the new AppleTV:

The $99 price point is big. That's getting into impulse buy territory for the sort of people who queue up a day in advance for a new iPhone. I wouldn't be surprised if they sell a million of them, even if half of those go largely unused after installation.

Apple has fixed many of the bugs with the current AppleTV, most notably the insanely high idle power consumption. Also, it's now cheaper than an Airport Express for audio streaming.

The Boxee Box, for contrast, is ostensibly coming in at "under $200" (what, $199.95?). Of course it does a lot more, but it wil cost a lot more as well. At Boxee, I'm sure they're sweating bullets over this. I suspect that Boxee is also sweating over Apple having a reasonable library of "real" content to rent, while Boxee presumably hasn't been able to make similar deals.

I find it curious that Apple supports NetFlix (ostensibly a competitor!) while not supporting Pandora or other such music services. Clearly, there's something calculated going on here. This could be the opening that Boxee and its app model need to gain some leverage. On the flip side, I'm curious how well the new AppleTV hardware will run the Boxee software. My old AppleTV was a great box for Boxee, except that it would overheat and crap out. (To watch a one-hour show, I have to put an ice pack on it first.) Notice that Apple has a discrete little USB port on the back? That's the way you installed the original patchstick. It's almost like they're inviting the hackers in.

I find Apple's remote control to be absurdly useless. For contrast, the iPhone/iPod Touch UI is clearly the way to go. Too bad for everybody who doesn't have one. (Maybe I've got a use for my now-inactive iPhone 3G?)