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Apple Announces New Apple TV With Siri, App Store, New User Interface and Remote
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Apple today announced the much-anticipated fourth-generation Apple TV at its "Hey Siri" media event in San Francisco, California. The new Apple TV was constructed on a foundation encompassing powerful hardware, a modern operating system, a new user experience with deep Siri integration, tools for developers, and most importantly, an App Store.
The Apple TV runs "tvOS," with a revamped iOS 9-style interface. Design wise, it looks similar to the existing set-top box, but it's thicker and ships with a much more advanced touch-based remote that Apple's calling the "Siri Remote." The top of the remote includes a glass touch surface for swiping through content as you would on an iPhone, and there's a built-in button for calling up Siri.
Siri integration is a key part of the new Apple TV interface, as it lets users ask Siri to bring up content. It's possible to search through multiple apps to find a TV show or movie, and at launch, supported apps include Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, HBO, and Showtime. Siri can answer questions about who's starring in a movie, bring up extraneous information like the weather outside, and ask Siri to replay parts of a movie that were missed or fast forward through content. For example, asking Siri "What did she say?" will rewind a movie 15 seconds and temporarily bring up subtitles.
Siri has a wide range of commands that will make searching for content on the Apple TV simple. You can ask Siri to "Show me New Girl," or "Find the best funny movies from the '80s."In addition to Siri integration, the other major software improvement to the Apple TV is a full App Store that includes games and popular apps. To facilitate gameplay on the Apple TV, the new remote includes an accelerometer and a gyroscope that can detect motion, much like a Wii Remote for the Nintendo Wii platform.
On stage at the event, a multiplayer version of Crossy Road was demonstrated, with one player using the Apple TV remote and another player using an iPhone as an input device. The Apple TV will support both the iPhone and the iPod touch as an input device. Apple TV and iPhone games are going to be available universally, meaning you can start a game on the iPhone and then pick it up on the Apple TV.
On stage, some upcoming apps for the Apple TV were shown off, including Netflix, HBONow, and Hulu. Game developers like Disney Interactive and Activision are working on games for the device that include "Disney Infinity 3.0" and "Guitar Hero." Harmonix is also developing a rhythm-based Wii Sports-style game that will be available exclusively on the Apple TV.
The new Apple TV also comes with brand new screen savers featuring high definition footage shot by Apple. The screen savers show off cities in slow motion video and will showcase footage based on the time of day.
Starting today, developers can access the tvOS SDK via a new Xcode beta to begin creating games and apps for the Apple TV.
Internally, the Apple TV includes a 64-bit A8 chip, with support for key iOS technologies like Metal, GameKit, and UIKit, all of which will allow developers to bring console-quality games to the device. The Apple TV is available with either 32GB or 64GB of storage, which will be used for downloading apps, and it includes Bluetooth 4.0, 801.11ac Wi-Fi with MIMO and an IR receiver. The remote works over Bluetooth 4.0, so line of sight is not required, and its battery will last for up to three months on a single charge. Recharging the remote is done through a built-in Lightning connector.
The Apple TV will begin shipping at the end of October in nearly 80 countries. It is priced at $149 for the 32GB version and $199 for the 64GB version. Apple will continue selling the existing Apple TV for $69, but that device will not support the new App Store.
Article Link: Apple Announces New Apple TV With Siri, App Store, New User Interface and Remote
I hope it has AcornTV and Amazon Video apps. AirPlay is fine, but not as good as having a built-in app.
I think he has a point. What if you have a large house and your computer is on the other side of it, but you have AppleTV units in a lot of other rooms. You simply should NOT have to take your remotes to other rooms in the house in order to charge them or have to buy extra equipment (i.e. a wall outlet USB charger kit) in order to charge a remote that Apple SHOULD have provided an all-in-on solution for. In other words, they either should provide the charger kit with the AppleTV or have a USB outlet on the AppleTV to charge it.
They are making huge assumptions about the layouts of people's houses and the unit is too expensive as it is already (most charging kits are another $20 and you need a free outlet whereas putting the USB port on the ATV itself would not only provide a charging solution, but it could have been used to connect external storage, etc. which for things like Kodi would be very useful (since after ove a decade, Apple REFUSES to provide industry STANDARDS on their hardware like (like DLNA) for NO REASON other than to try and push you to use their iTunes store. Frankly, I'm shocked they would even have an App Store for this thing because that means you might be able to use an NAS with the thing and buy your media from Amazon instead or whomever.
This remote supposedly has a lightning connector. I'm not sure how I feel about that either. I've bought an expensive extra cable already for my newer iPod Touch so I can charge/connect it at home and charge it at work and frankly, I need a 3rd cable so I can charge it while I'm on trips (I always forget to bring one of the cables with me). I had plenty of cables for the previous generation iOS devices, but those are useless (for hotels too). What I'm getting at is the rumor is that USB-C is going to make Lighting MOOT real fast. Not only does Lightning NOT support USB 3.x speeds (a horrific mistake as it makes for slow data transfers an in age when NAND memory is about to become 1000x faster), so your cables are already going to need to be replaced with an updated version at the very least (whereas the latest USB-C already supports even Thunderbolt 3 speeds), but Apple already has USB-C on one Macbook already, which is already creating a rift. Apple needs to either change to USB-C connectors completely or not at all. Lightning is already dead and just doesn't know it.
If normal apple apps run on the TVOS (or they're easy to port) and there are no restrictions, there would be are a lot of DLNA clients soon or at launch. Any of them could be used to stream content to the TV, that's how I stream content to the phone or Ipads already. I use Serviio as my DLNA server for my own content.
Smart TV'S are expensive (that's where the makers make money) and mostly garbage (the "smart" part, not the panel itself). So, how is it playing catchup?
With the AppleTV you can buy the best panel you can afford with none of this so called smart stuff and just plug the $150 AppleTV and your set. That would be a lot less expensive that what currently on offer, more expandable and more powerful.
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I don't have an Apple TV so I didn't know that Stream to Me had airplay capabilities, it never occurred to me to check into it lol.
BUT I will verify that Stream to me is a GREAT app with pretty frequent updates (I'd say 2 or 3 a year). I've been using it for about 5 years now and it's let me stream stuff from my Mac Mini and my Windows computer. Haven't had it directly get stuff from my NAS but I assume if you can access it's file system through a computer it can handle it.
The new AppleTV doesn't support just any controllers. It supports MFi controllers. A standard which Apple itself created a couple years ago.
This cable hell continues. I need to start using one of my semi-retired mini USB devices a few days ago-- luckily I could find a mini cable in my cable box, among all the micro cables. I still have an iPhone that uses the old Apple cable in the house, along with the new Lightning connector. Everything was going USB SuperSpeed to the host-- now we have USB-C to deal with-- which will add another annoying set of combinations. It is boring to have to deal with all these different cable types. Apple should realize that all these cables and chargers make something that should be fun-- boring.
