Siri is not yet approved for all countries.. I think only USA and UK.. at this point I don't think it is all a functionality issue, but a regulatory one
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An In-Depth Look at Storage and App Thinning on the New Apple TV
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4k is still not ready, i don't get it. Until it's full 4k 60z supported by hdmi properly, even 2.0a is not right if you know the ins and outs of subsampling issues and the variables involved in color depth.
Once a standard for delivery at 60z is there apple tv will support it but it just isn't right now so you are asking for something that doesn't exist, 30hz is much worse than 1080p 60hz for video. on 1.4 hdmi it's a fudge and not really even full 4k.
Yeah but read that the remotes do not even have mics in them.
I will have to wait and see.
If Apple ships different remotes - then it's terrible.... I will have to buy a new remote when SIRI is available??
On the webpage there is no pointing on the remote itself that has mics in it.
I also read on some websites that indeed remotes will be different.
I will have to wait and see if this is true.
I kinda loved the idea of SIRI on the remote. Even though I am not native English speaker, I kinda get understood by SIRI in general
AppleT
The A8 and its display port is capable of rendering 4K just fine. It's just the firmware that would need an update.
Every single time Apple releases a product people on this forum complain about the most fringe use cases. No, millions will not record 4K with their phones because it isn't enabled by default. But, this device will support 4K if Apple pushes a firmware update for it. There are no good reasons to do it right out of the gate with the content so minimal at the moment. It's odd, only on this forum do people get so negative. I get that competitors come here to try to convince people not to buy, but that will never work. Ever. It just baffles me.
What is fringe about recording a 4K video on my iPhone and wanting it to play it on my 4k TV? I have to first load it to my Youtube account as is stands now.
I think the poster is saying it is fringe because only a small percentage of US consumers are capable of playing 4K video from any source. By the end of 2018, only 10% of US households will own a 4K TV.
I would have to agree with the poster that according to Apple's standards, that would be considered fringe.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Actually, I would describe the "negative" the other way. This is a public forum made up of Apple enthusiasts. That makes this a biased group favoring Apple; else, why are we here? There's 3 key segments of people:
- a segment that seems to subscribe to "Apple is always right" no matter what they do or launch,
- a segment that seems to subscribe to "Apple is always wrong" no matter what they do or launch, and
- a segment that I consider the fairly objective crowd somewhere in-between those two.
Apple rolls out any product and group #1 will praise it to no end, group #2 will fault it to no end and group #3 will write what THEY actually think- good or bad. If good, they win the hearts of the "Apple is God" crowd. If bad, they win the hearts of the "Apple is the Devil" crowd. But no matter what, there will be multitudes that will find fault with their stance because they are obviously not at the extremes too. And they'll be sure to pound them hard to try to make others see that "think different" doesn't actually apply to those who do it unless, in doing it, it's pretty much all "rah, rah" or all "pooh, pooh" depending on which extremists decide to respond.
The most passionate of either group will inject spin like crazy to support their stances... even making up or implying something as truth so that others might be fooled into supporting the extreme pro or extreme con stance. For what? I don't know. I doubt many of these closet Apple marketers are on Apple's payroll and I doubt many in the other extreme are on competitor payrolls. Sometimes it appears that the core players of group #1 still see Apple as a fledgling company at risk of going under and needing every possible sale it can get no matter what choices they make in rolling out this or that. So they will argue on behalf of Apple no matter what. The same is mirrored by the other extremists in group #2.
In this particular case, consumers are buying 4K TVs. They have them in their homes. What do they want to do with that new TV? Show some 4K on it. They buy Apple's new iPhone and shoot their own 4K. They use Apple new iMovie or FCPX to edit that 4K into final form. They render their movie out to a 4K Quicktime file. That file will go right into iTunes just like any other movie file. Then what? How do they get it from there to their new 4K TV? This was an opportunity for Apple to completely own that chain. Instead, they need to use a competitors product, jump through some less than "just works" hoops, or settle for downscaling to 1080p and having their TV upscale back to 4K (which is FAR from the same as native 4K).
If this was another time and I was one of the first buyers of televisions, I'd desire television shows to watch on it. 5000 arguments against television (too expensive, almost every program is radio, hardly anyone has a television, etc) doesn't change that consumer desire.
At another point, if I bought a new color TV, I'd covet color television programming. 5000 arguments against color programming (too expensive, almost every television show ever shot is B&W, hardly anyone has a color television, etc) doesn't change the consumer desire.
At another point in time, consumers bought new "HD" televisions. What did they want to show on them? HD programming. 5000 arguments about how there was hardly any HD programming, almost everything is SD, hardly anyone has a HDTV, etc) doesn't change that consumer desire.
And now, if anyone is buying a new TV in 2015, a 4K set is viable, not overpriced and accessible for the masses. Go to a Best Buy and look around. Increasingly it seems there are more 4K sets than HD sets. And they look spectacular. Sit down and watch for a while. Note boxes moving toward the exit door with new TV buyers. What's going out those doors: 4K or HD? Those who have already purchased a 4K TV desire 4K sources immediately. 5000 arguments against it (too expensive, almost nothing is available in 4K, hardly anyone has a 4K TV, etc) doesn't change that consumer desire.
Is there much 4K available to feed those sets right now? No. But there wasn't much HD when HD was new, nor color TV shows when color was new, nor television shows when radio still mostly ruled. Sometimes things just need to move forward to bring on television over radio, or color over B&W or HD over SD. Us Apple enthusiasts see Apple embracing 4K in just about every other Apple product and some of us wish they had in this one too. Putting millions of new app-store and 4K-capable
TVs in homes would certainly create motivation for content owners to make more content available... much like color televisions motivated B&W shows to switch to color, or HD hardware motivated SD shows to go HD. Someone has to take the lead. Why not our favorite company?In a public forum made up of consumers- not corporations- consumers should be able to post their wishes and not be judged wrong because they don't tow the company line... or wrong because they are otherwise liking a new product except they wish it also had this one thing. But that's how it is here. Rah Rah Apple no matter what Apple has chosen to roll out or the ADF will pound you. Pooh Pooh Apple or the other extreme will pound you. Can there not be room for those who write what THEY actually think... those more objective people in the middle who are doing nothing more than just "thinking different"? Wishing that a new product had some feature- fringe or not- doesn't affect the God or Devil at all. It just is fellow consumers expressing how they wish that this new product had this new feature too.
Relative to this particular device, it's basically the lone product in the core Apple lines that is NOT embracing 4K yet. I wouldn't call 4K "fringe" when the rest of the lineup is touting 4K, shooting it, editing it, displaying it, etc. Apple is marketing 4K to sell 5K iMacs and new iPhones and iPad Pros. I doubt that Apple sees it as "fringe". They just didn't adopt it in this ONE product. And as such, the ADF needs to rationalize Apple's choice to delay the one remaining link in the chain from iPhone->iMovie->Quicktime->iTunes->AppleTV->4K TV. Why? I don't know. Apparently the supreme rule is to never want what Apple is not selling right now. But these same passionate posters won't be calling Apple stupid when they roll out the "5" "now with 4K". How do I know that?..
This is simply 1080p again, where all of the same arguments were used against those who wished for a 1080p
TV before the "3". All that passionate anti-1080p sentiment appeared to just evaporate immediately upon Apple rolling out the "3" "now with 1080p". If we genuinely feel as we do against 4K, we should still feel that way when Apple adopts it... and should deem Apple ridiculous for endorsing it as it is for consumers to wish Apple would have endorsed it in this "4". But we don't. If we can only roll with whatever Apple decides as best for all, then we're really not thinking for ourselves but simply towing the company line. For what? I don't know. Apparently we want to market for Apple so bad, we'll do it for free... to no real end and for no tangible gain.
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I think it would've been fine for Apple to not support 4k for the new apple tv except for the fact that they raised the price of their hardware from ~70 retail to over double that. I'm also not seeing what's the use of the 32/64gb of storage given the "app thinning" and with the limitations on app size, why couldn't tvos be supported on the 3rd gen apple tv (which has a few gigs of ram that could've easily been used for apps but is relegated to "buffering".)
Actually, I would describe the "negative" the other way. This is a public forum made up of Apple enthusiasts. That makes this a biased group favoring Apple; else, why are we here? There's 3 key segments of people:
Almost all of those people are consumers, more alike than not except in their view of Apple as God, Devil or neither.
- a segment that seems to subscribe to "Apple is always right" no matter what they do or launch,
- a segment that seems to subscribe to "Apple is always wrong" no matter what they do or launch, and
- a segment that I consider the fairly objective crowd somewhere in-between those two.
Apple rolls out any product and group #1 will praise it to no end, group #2 will fault it to no end and group #3 will write what THEY actually think- good or bad. If good, they win the hearts of the "Apple is God" crowd. If bad, they win the hearts of the "Apple is the Devil" crowd. But no matter what, there will be multitudes that will find fault with their stance because they are obviously not at the extremes too. And they'll be sure to pound them hard to try to make others see that "think different" doesn't actually apply to those who do it unless, in doing it, it's pretty much all "rah, rah" or all "pooh, pooh" depending on which extremists decide to respond.
The most passionate of either group will inject spin like crazy to support their stances... even making up or implying something as truth so that others might be fooled into supporting the extreme pro or extreme con stance. For what? I don't know. I doubt many of these closet Apple marketers are on Apple's payroll and I doubt many in the other extreme are on competitor payrolls. Sometimes it appears that the core players of group #1 still see Apple as a fledgling company at risk of going under and needing every possible sale it can get no matter what choices they make in rolling out this or that. So they will argue on behalf of Apple no matter what. The same is mirrored by the other extremists in group #2.
In this particular case, consumers are buying 4K TVs. They have them in their homes. What do they want to do with that new TV? Show some 4K on it. They buy Apple's new iPhone and shoot their own 4K. They use Apple new iMovie or FCPX to edit that 4K into final form. They render their movie out to a 4K Quicktime file. That file will go right into iTunes just like any other movie file. Then what? How do they get it from there to their new 4K TV? This was an opportunity for Apple to completely own that chain. Instead, they need to use a competitors product, jump through some less than "just works" hoops, or settle for downscaling to 1080p and having their TV upscale back to 4K (which is FAR from the same as native 4K).
If this was another time and I was one of the first buyers of televisions, I'd desire television shows to watch on it. 5000 arguments against television (too expensive, almost every program is radio, hardly anyone has a television, etc) doesn't change that consumer desire.
At another point, if I bought a new color TV, I'd covet color television programming. 5000 arguments against color programming (too expensive, almost every television show ever shot is B&W, hardly anyone has a color television, etc) doesn't change the consumer desire.
At another point in time, consumers bought new "HD" televisions. What did they want to show on them? HD programming. 5000 arguments about how there was hardly any HD programming, almost everything is SD, hardly anyone has a HDTV, etc) doesn't change that consumer desire.
And now, if anyone is buying a new TV in 2015, a 4K set is viable, not overpriced and accessible for the masses. Go to a Best Buy and look around. Increasingly it seems there are more 4K sets than HD sets. And they look spectacular. Sit down and watch for a while. Note boxes moving toward the exit door with new TV buyers. What's going out those doors: 4K or HD? Those who have already purchased a 4K TV desire 4K sources immediately. 5000 arguments against it (too expensive, almost nothing is available in 4K, hardly anyone has a 4K TV, etc) doesn't change that consumer desire.
Is there much 4K available to feed those sets right now? No. But there wasn't much HD when HD was new, nor color TV shows when color was new, nor television shows when radio still mostly ruled. Sometimes things just need to move forward to bring on television over radio, or color over B&W or HD over SD. Us Apple enthusiasts see Apple embracing 4K in just about every other Apple product and some of us wish they had in this one too. Putting millions of new app-store and 4K-capable
In a public forum made up of consumers- not corporations- consumers should be able to post their wishes and not be judged wrong because they don't tow the company line... or wrong because they are otherwise liking a new product except they wish it also had this one thing. But that's how it is here. Rah Rah Apple no matter what Apple has chosen to roll out or the ADF will pound you. Pooh Pooh Apple or the other extreme will pound you. Can there not be room for those who write what THEY actually think... those more objective people in the middle who are doing nothing more than just "thinking different"? Wishing that a new product had some feature- fringe or not- doesn't affect the God or Devil at all. It just is fellow consumers expressing how they wish that this new product had this new feature too.
Relative to this particular device, it's basically the lone product in the core Apple lines that is NOT embracing 4K yet. I wouldn't call 4K "fringe" when the rest of the lineup is touting 4K, shooting it, editing it, displaying it, etc. Apple is marketing 4K to sell 5K iMacs and new iPhones and iPad Pros. I doubt that Apple sees it as "fringe". They just didn't adopt it in this ONE product. And as such, the ADF needs to rationalize Apple's choice to delay the one remaining link in the chain from iPhone->iMovie->Quicktime->iTunes->AppleTV->4K TV. Why? I don't know. Apparently the supreme rule is to never want what Apple is not selling right now. But these same passionate posters won't be calling Apple stupid when they roll out the "5" "now with 4K". How do I know that?..
This is simply 1080p again, where all of the same arguments were used against those who wished for a 1080p
This was a long post.
I like to think I am probably a part of the 3rd segment of people you mentioned. I am a fan of Apple products and have been since the 90s, but I certainly voice my opinion when I think Apple has done things wrong.
I think lately it is getting harder and harder to be an advocate for Apple products like I was in the past due to many things that they have been doing lately, a few being some issues on the latest iMac, 16GB on the iPhone, and it seems like the Mac OS has been more buggy than I ever remember it.
That said, I don't think that the lack of 4K is going to impact very many users. The lack of 1080p on the ATV2 was more impactful due to the fact that over 50% of the US market had 1080p TVs at the time of the release. It is going to take over 2 years for 4K to reach 10% of US households and another 6 after that for 50%. Right now, I would consider it fringe, although you do not. 4K is definitely more fringe than 1080p was in Sept. 2010.
I wish it had 4K for future proofing, but it doesn't. Considering over 90% of US households do not have 4K, I doubt this will be a deciding factor on whether they will get the ATV4 or not.
I agree with this.
I would have rather seen the ATV4 $50 cheaper than have 4k on it at the current price. I assume the higher price also includes the higher costs for the new remote.
I still bought it because I am a fan of the ATV3, but it would have been nice to be a little cheaper.
From the discussion section of the polygon.com article (Comment from Aero Leviathan):
"confused about what ‘persistent local storage’ means. This refers to user-created data, such as saved game progress. This data must be stored in iCloud (...) Apps on tvOS are not allowed to write anything directly to the local storage, which is what this limitation refers to"
And Apple themselves:
"there is no guarantee that information stored on the device will be available the next time a user opens your app. Also, in order to share the user’s data across multiple devices, you need to store the user’s information somewhere other than the Apple TV. Apple provides two shared storage options for Apple TV: iCloud Key-Value Storage (KVS) and CloudKit.
For small storage needs, under 1 MB, your app can use iCloud KVS"
So am I right in thinking that there's absolutely no way of storing any user data (at all) on the Apple TV - without it being pushed to iCloud?
As an example, let's say I have/make an app to access confidential files on my own personal (and potentially highly-secured) file server, any saved login credentials will be inevitably stored in iCloud?
"confused about what ‘persistent local storage’ means. This refers to user-created data, such as saved game progress. This data must be stored in iCloud (...) Apps on tvOS are not allowed to write anything directly to the local storage, which is what this limitation refers to"
And Apple themselves:
"there is no guarantee that information stored on the device will be available the next time a user opens your app. Also, in order to share the user’s data across multiple devices, you need to store the user’s information somewhere other than the Apple TV. Apple provides two shared storage options for Apple TV: iCloud Key-Value Storage (KVS) and CloudKit.
For small storage needs, under 1 MB, your app can use iCloud KVS"
So am I right in thinking that there's absolutely no way of storing any user data (at all) on the Apple TV - without it being pushed to iCloud?
As an example, let's say I have/make an app to access confidential files on my own personal (and potentially highly-secured) file server, any saved login credentials will be inevitably stored in iCloud?
I'm hoping you're right, because I'm throttled for my bandwidth on the internet, and sometimes we have a bad connection, I would much rather download the whole game to my computer that is providing the music, TV Shows and Movies I am watching on the Apple TV rather then it download the same content multiple times from Apple.
-Tig
Alert the Media!
Apple memory is expensive! Also,
Alert the Media!
No path to upgrade memory after the initial purchase, so it's just like every other Apple product on the market!
Hey kongerror, it's Apple. its expensive.
I've just submitted my tvOS app that uses this on-demand resource mechanism extensively, and I love it. Because I moved all the media resources (video, audio, music, image, ...), the core application size is only 7.7MB. This is a VERY GOOD move by Apple, and I strongly encourage other developers to use this mechanism, not only for tvOS apps but also iPhone apps.
If you are interested in looking at the actual code dealing with on-demand resources, I have just open-sourced my code at http://www.swipe.net/what-is-swipe/. Feel free to take a look.
If you are interested in looking at the actual code dealing with on-demand resources, I have just open-sourced my code at http://www.swipe.net/what-is-swipe/. Feel free to take a look.
Thanks for commenting,
Not too many people commenting that actually write the code for these apps. I am happy to hear your experience with it.
SO.... Apple includes 5400 RPM rotational drives with the 4K iMac (and even a Fusion version for the 5K iMac) as the DEFAULT but here on the AppleTV where the extra cheap storage could be useful (i.e. a "perfect" place to use a 1TB Fusion Drive), they include a TINY TINY 32GB or 64GB drive for nearly the same price to them on a non-mobile platform that will always be plugged in (i.e. extra power draw not an issue). It seems like it should have been the other way around (i.e. iMacs that are supposed to be high-end and performance based should have all SSD and cheap AppleTV unit should have a Fusion unit and game controller so the system could be all that it could be rather than the JOKE that it is).
Apple really really seems to be making bad decisions these days. I'd be firing people left and right. But then I'm not Mr. Cook who is too busy plotting more stock buy-backs and other greed profit agendas to pay ANY attention to the quality of the products Apple is putting out other than to make sure he can personally get an expensive leather band for his Apple Watch.
Apple really really seems to be making bad decisions these days. I'd be firing people left and right. But then I'm not Mr. Cook who is too busy plotting more stock buy-backs and other greed profit agendas to pay ANY attention to the quality of the products Apple is putting out other than to make sure he can personally get an expensive leather band for his Apple Watch.
There are certainly more than the 3 segments he describes. For one there are undoubtedly whatever you want to call the Android and Windows devotees. But there are also people who are unreachable and no amount of explaining or discussing seems to have an effect.
On this page in this thread is someone talking about how no "4K" standard exists. I responded to him in other threads. He and others just want something. Is it unreasonable and impractical - yes. But he wants it. He keeps talking about how people at Best Buy are buying tvs that almost certainly won't fully utilize the next standard that is coming very soon. All that matters is "4K."
If you wanted Apple to future proof for the changes in color, contrast and audio handling as well as 4K, you are wishing for magic. If you wanted them to up the resolution that it can handle, yes they could do that. But don't forget that doesn't mean being able to handle the variety of delivery systems set up by individual companies.
And I'd add that the changes in color and contrast are expected to be much more radical visual improvement than better resolution.
Thank you so much for sharing the code, its always interesting to get a look at how others are implementing things on new products.
-Tig