Now I can already hear some of you typing out responses that in a nutshell say “Why don’t you just use VNSea to do the same thing?” There are many answers to that, but I think the best of them comes in the form of a question: Have you ever tried to fit a 13 inch screen onto a screen barely larger diagonally than your index finger? Part of the allure of Touchpad Pro is that it very much simplifies your VNC experience, so that you don’t have a cluttered screen full of windows and Dock icons, but just a black touchpad in the palm of your hand. Another advantage is its low-latency format. Because it’s not streaming video directly to the iPod, response is very snappy, and a lot smoother than standard VNC.

Touchpad Pro doesn’t have the largest featureset, but it does have a number of attributes that one may find attractive. First, the setup is very simple. Simply input a connection title, the host machine’s IP address or hostname and the host machine’s VNC password. The interface is very clean, and includes only a black screen and a series of buttons on the lower edge for modifier keys like command (the Apple Key), control, shift and option. It also has a built-in keyboard for text input that you can show or hide when needed.

Touchpad Pro also has a different mode that allows for use as a media remote, controlling the arrow keys, tab and the space bar. Other, more necessary features are so well implemented that they don’t even need buttons. Simply tap to click, double tap to double click, or double tap and drag to drag items and use two fingers to scroll. Touchpad Pro even supports pinch gestures for zoom, just like the new MacBook Pros and MacBook Air.

Find Touchpad Pro and great instructions on installation for both the iPhone and iPod touch as well as for Mac and PC here.

Going a little deeper, though, one notices a few fatal problems with this.

Apple already has a business selling TV shows through the iTunes Store. A DVR-enabled AppleTV would cut into this business plan and potentially take money away from Apple. It’s also somewhat unlikely that the content providers (Fox, Sci-Fi, etc) will enjoy customers being able to record their shows and not have to pay royalties, though to counteract this, they may ask for something like the “Zune Tax” in which Microsoft payed Universal $1 for every Zune sold.

While introducing a DVR would make quite a few customers happy, Apple would have a hard time getting studios to agree to it, and it wouldn’t really be in the best interest of their business selling TV shows. Sorry, guys, but I don’t think your DVR will be coming this MacWorld.