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Developers Now Receiving Apple TV Units for App Testing Purposes

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Earlier this week, Apple began allowing developers who won the lottery for an Apple TV Developer Kit to place orders for the devices, and shortly after, Apple began shipping Apple TVs out around the world. As of today, a large number of developers have begun receiving the Apple TVs according to reports on Twitter and images shared with MacRumors.

appletvdeveloperkits-800x516.jpg

Developers were selected to receive an Apple TV using a lottery process that started shortly after the Apple TV was introduced on September 9, which has now wrapped up. Developers who won were able to obtain Apple TV Developer Kits at no cost, with a $1 fee being charged to verify billing and shipping addresses.

Apple TV Developer kit just arrived in the mail. Pretty. Will play with it this weekend. pic.twitter.com/xKL8bXcTST - Mark Lassoff (@mlassoff) September 17, 2015
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With Apple TVs in the hands of hundreds of developers, we may be able to learn a lot more about the device and how it works ahead of its official late October launch date, and we'll be able to get a closer look at what kind of apps we can expect on it. Last week, there was an unboxing of the Apple TV, which gave us a first glimpse at the new set-top box and the touch-based remote out in the wild.

The new Apple TV includes a powerful A8 processor, 2GB RAM, and a new operating system, tvOS, which supports Siri voice control and a full App Store, allowing games and apps to be played on the device.

(Thanks, Tom!)

Article Link: Developers Now Receiving Apple TV Units for App Testing Purposes
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/17/developers-receiving-apple-tv-units/
I wonder why they are making us wait so long for this. Do they need more time to make enough to fulfill demand? Or do they want to wait until a few good apps are available at launch?
 
Sonmi451 said:
why would anyone post such nonsense? You read a blog about 4K 3 years ago that called it a fad so you jumped on the bandwagon?
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4K TV is still nowhere near mainstream. No contents, and panels are generally crap for consumer level price tag.
Looking at 1080p content on 4k TV is just blurry and weird. On top of that, the network bandwidth on average is still far behind streaming for 4K contents.
 
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zorinlynx said:
I wonder why they are making us wait so long for this. Do they need more time to make enough to fulfill demand? Or do they want to wait until a few good apps are available at launch?
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I'm pretty sure it's the second reason. It may also be that tvOS is not fully polished yet. But most likely they don't want the launch to only have a handful of apps so Apple is waiting for there to be more apps before launching
 
would the consumer version ship with the USB-C cable? i doubt it, but it would be useful to have, especially if the Apple TVs could be used in a need-to-be-configured-for-deployment scenario! Can't wait to get mine!
 
Sonmi451 said:
why would anyone post such nonsense? You read a blog about 4K 3 years ago that called it a fad so you jumped on the bandwagon?
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I think Weston was referring to the fact that at anything close to normal viewing distances, it's impossible to tell whether the TV is 4K/UHD unless the TV is bigger than 60 inches. Having richer blacks and more dynamic range is much more important for what most people will see.

EDIT: BTW, I don't think 4K is as bad as 3D television because some people do sit really close or have really huge TVs. Also, sometimes, it's fun to just get up close to see some detail.
 
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Sonmi451 said:
why would anyone post such nonsense? You read a blog about 4K 3 years ago that called it a fad so you jumped on the bandwagon?
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To be fair, there are quite a few TV reviews from respected magazines in which they say they can't tell the difference between a 1080p Blu-Ray and 4k footage. Certainly not on anything less than 65" from an unreasonably close viewing distance too.

And for some reason people want 4k in their 5" phone displays?!?!
 
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No 4K is simple that is a lot of pixels to push that no one needs. At 1080 you can do smooth gaming at 4K you might get video. So apple decided to push a mass consumption device with a toe in the game world. Expect this to grow over the coming years and 4K will come when the chip supports 60 frames of 4K gaming.
 
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realeric said:
but no 4k support. :p
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Ok with me. I'm not buying a 4K tv until my 1080p one dies. I can't tell the difference unless I put on reading glasses and get a whole lot closer than my living room couch. A pair of 4K desktop monitors, now that's on my shopping list first. And I won't be hooking them up to an Apple TV.
 
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Chupa Chupa said:
Wrong. 4K doesn't require cumbersome, expensive "special" glasses to view or get you dizzy or nauseous when watching. Maybe both are impractical on a small screen but no way is higher resolution media "sillier" than 3D.
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What killed me about the 3DTV B.S.: It didn't seem at all like a natural progression. Some would say the same about 4k right now....and of HDTV in the late 90's....but those seem like natural progressions of a technology evolving over time. HD did and 4k will re-define standards given enough time. Thats the key factor.

3DTV just felt like some junk that large companies tried to tell us we would like.....and well look how well that plan worked out.

Edit: Look back over the course of time....3D in movie theaters (multiple times over the decades) and this past time with 3DTV....each time has been met by the general public with a lukewarm "meh." Just saying. The history is there....maybe we can try smell o' vision in theaters again and see how well that goes this time too :)

4k will actually stay around.
 
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It's probably just the developer kit boxes, but they seem similar to the old Apple boxes in which the AirPort Extreme came, for example.
 
To be fair, all 4k tv's I am aware of can upscale 1080p content :)
Also, with 4K and HDR still being ironed out I would rather buy a $150 device this year, and another $150 device in a year or two that has 4k support, instead of them working to add 4k and HDR for $200-250, and then finding out it only works with 50% of produced content.
And to be completely honest, I can't afford a 4K tv for at least another year, possibly two. Because let's be honest, I am not going to spend $1000 on an LCD 4k tv, when I can wait a year or two and spend $2000 for a top of the line OLED HDR tv. After all, we buy Apple products because they tend to be the best products in their categories, so why would you want to pair an Apple TV with a sub-par 4k TV?
 
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