Yes, it's quite an odd omission as of 2015 on my view as are other UK catch up channels.
A few years ago I would not have expected BBC iPlayer but SmartTVs/internet enabled devices were then fewer - now most DVD/BluRay players/Freeview/Freesat tuners will have such features for the UK market.
My TVs are older and unfortunately it seems you almost need several devices to get the full complement of services you might want.
One of the issues I believe is that there would be so many permutations of apps required for each market that Apple may not want to invest time devoting resources much outside the US unless it's say for Sky Now where Apple will get a cut of subscription fees if set up via AppleTV. That said if Samaung/LG etc can add market specific catch up features to similar products perhaps Apple are just getting behind the times....
Provided Apple offered an AppleTV SDK it could then fall to BBC etc to produce their own services and offer them to Apple - this may be what happens anyway, in which case maybe the Beeb have different fish to fry.
Also bear in mind current AppleTv has no proper storage - catchup TV will be streaming, unless they implemented a fixed quality system with buffering.
If you have Apple portable devices with BBC iPlayer consider an HDMI adapter to feed the TV from those.
