New Apple TV Hacked to Run Native tvOS Web Browser

[Gregintosh]

i think that's called a "mac mini?"

Except the Mac Mini is $500 and this is $150.

WebTV failed. Why would Apple want to copy a failed product?

Why not let 3rd parties submit browsers? There's a difference between Apple not wanting to make one of their own and them prohibiting developers from doing so. If they don't wanna be webTV fine, but let users decide if they want to buy an app for that.

If Apple doesn't like racing games, should they ban all of them from the store too? No, if users don't like their experience they won't download and use them.

In other words, there's no good reason for Apple to deny browser apps.

 

[X38]

Have you tried a browser on a TV? It's not a particularly enjoyable experience. Both the Wii and Wii U have a browser... but I rarely use it because most websites just don't work well on a TV with a controller/remote?

Even this browser looks like a miserable experience.

Maybe for you. I miss my WebTV.

 

[X38]

Very cool. Now if Apple will just release it, along with Mail and iMessages apps, they'd be on to something. Really nice would be to open up the USB interface (or better yet, make it Thunderbolt) so that one can add a web cam and do FaceTime through the TV.

 

[X38]

Why? Who wants a browser on a TV?

me

 

[Spock]

What you think has been tried by several start-up companies. All failed.

I think that Apple is not a start-up. Tablets were failing before the iPad.

 

[Tech198]

That didn't take long.. How long as the new Apple TV been out...

The problem not just with tvOS, but with Apple in general is their in a corner.... the "private API's" is not something people should use, but by the same token they don't exactly remove, or firewall them off either...

All developers have to do is use undocumented API's and/or strings that used to appear, but no longer and u'r in the in..

Besides Ninteno Wii has a browser whats the big deal? only difference is this one is native.

 

[dumastudetto]

Pretty disgusting to see people already trying to hack the new Apple TV. And nobody wants or needs a web browser on a low resolution tv screen.

 

[garylapointe]

i think that's called a "mac mini?"

I'll take a mac mini for $149!

G

 

[Jonny1989]

I assumed ATV would have come with Safari and pretty bummed when I couldn't use my tv as a browser when I needed it to.

 

[mkldev]

Have you tried a browser on a TV? It's not a particularly enjoyable experience.

I do it all the time. And you're right; it is a terrible experience. However, it opens up content that isn't available in any other way.

Also, UIWebView classes aren't just used for viewing web pages. They're used for things like:

• Showing a service's Terms of Service
  
• Providing flexible user interfaces that can be updated without recompiling the app
• Showing many types of mobile advertisements
• Executing JavaScript code for providing an updatable glue layer between your UI and the underlying code, or for supporting custom plug-ins.

and so on, depending on the app. It is quite possible to design a remarkably native-looking user interface in a browser view. The apps that are most likely to need this are things like Netflix and Amazon apps, where they need to be able to update categories, provide new custom artwork, new types of pages, etc. on the fly based on content provided by servers. You can kind of do that without using a web interface, but it is a lot more work, a lot less flexible, and provides no real benefit other than satisfying the whims of purists.

No, removing UIWebView was IMO a big mistake, and I very much hope Apple will fix it in a subsequent software update. It makes porting of some apps unnecessarily complex, and could also be seen as an anticompetitive move because of its impact on mobile advertising. It just doesn't make sense unless you're stuck in the 1990s mindset of a web view being used only for viewing web pages.

And even if it were used exclusively for web pages, the sensibility of the decision would still be arguable. After all, there are plenty of great opportunities for integration between TV content and the web, such as providing links from a movie description to the IMDB page for the movie. If done correctly (with appropriate CSS and layouts designed specifically for viewing on a TV), such features would be eminently usable, and they are basically impossible without web views.

 

[mkldev]

That tvOS doesn't allow apps to display content is a different story. Would we really need Twitter and Facebook with their respective web linked content on the TV?

Absolutely. Lots of folks put all their videos up on Facebook. Want to watch those videos on grandma's Apple TV? Oh, that's too bad. Hope your phone is charged.

You can already do that with AirPlay. This is about websites looking and acting terrible on a TV. Everything's too small, interaction requires a mouse or touch, typing urls is a chore, websites are generally not optimised for 16:9 viewing, reading articles on a screen 10 feet away isn't comfortable, and neither is it compelling viewing for anyone else in the room.

Eight years ago, when Apple came out with the first iPhone, websites weren't optimized for viewing on mobile devices, either. It isn't exactly hard to add appropriate CSS to style a website for a different category of reading device, and if Apple made a browser available on the Apple TV, I have no doubt that a significant percentage of websites would do so within the first couple of years, just as they did when....

Ah, who am I kidding. I can't finish that paragraph with a straight face. It'll probably take five years to get past the 30% mark, and the major airlines still won't support it after fifteen.

 

[Vjosullivan]

Why? Who wants a browser on a TV?

Here's a (admittedly very un-Apple) thought. Let's make it available and let people decide for themselves.

 

[Vjosullivan]

Apple has proven many times that customers (in aggregate) often do not know what they want.

Customers have also proved, many times, that Apple doesn't always know what they want. You may think that Apple think that their own customers are too stupid to make decisions for themselves, hopefully that isn't really the case.

 

[Benjamin Frost]

It would be useful to have for a very few people in a very few situations. But the vast majority of people would never have a need for an awkward, keyboardless, giant browser (that takes the TV away from other uses) instead of the better browsers all around them that they're already used to. And for the vast majority of people who (think they) would use it, it would turn out to be terrible and they'd end up not using it anyway. And they'd blame Apple for remote-control web browsing being poor, and the media would run with it.

Plus, it would let developers deliver additional awful experiences to users: apps could launch out to the web browser for certain things; or even just not MAKE an app and decide AppleTV users can just go to the site.

I think Apple made the right call. Tech nerds like me want a bullet list of "everything a person can think of," but some things are just poor, and not worth the complexity of including. Every feature has a cost—skip this one.

It's also possible Apple has a browser coming... but I really hope not!

And yet, Tim Cook himself specifically highlighted the emphasis Apple pays to the blind, stating that profits don't matter when it comes to catering for minorities like the blind:

"It's not about the bloody ROI."

 

[alvindarkness]

Pretty disgusting to see people already trying to hack the new Apple TV. And nobody wants or needs a web browser on a low resolution tv screen.

Really? The AppleTV being hacked has actually made me want to buy it. I have HTPC's that I use all the time for browsing and general things. Sometimes it's just nicer to stay on the couch and get a few things done on the big screen rather than using another device. To each their own.

 

[JAT]

Well, let's see: Let us start with the visually impaired who might appreciate the big screen. And why wouldn't it be possible to use Siri to direct actions in the browser? Most of the arguments against browsing in tvOS are about performance. Apple supposedly have great engineers, so why haven't they engineered in the performance?

This is not about the consumer experience. It is about profit making. Apple used to stand for enabling people to do things. Now they seem to be focused on telling users what they cannot do....

Spoken like someone who has never attempted to use a "tv" browser. It's not about whether someone should be able to browse on their TV screen, it's about the interface. ATV4, and all similar devices that came before it, are not a good interface for a browser. It's stupid.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

i think that's called a "mac mini?"

Given a Mac Mini does NOT come with a keyboard, that's a pretty absurd comment....

Have you tried a browser on a TV? It's not a particularly enjoyable experience. Both the Wii and Wii U have a browser... but I rarely use it because most websites just don't work well on a TV with a controller/remote?

Even this browser looks like a miserable experience.

Running a browser at 1080p on a computer monitor quality display is a hell of a different experience than running it on a Nintendo Wii at 480p (NTSC). It's not even comparable. 1080p is a computer monitor resolution used by many monitors in the 18"-22, even 24" range. Being able to browse from the couch would be very handy at times.

Do we have a ios app for Kodi/XBMC so that we can sideload it using Xcode?

KODI has been forked to accommodate removing a ton of features to keep Apple happy (they would not approve the full version).

WebTV failed. Why would Apple want to copy a failed product?

See the 480p comment. Times have changed. I guess some people are still living in 1999.

They said the future of TV is apps, not browsing. They want all advertising, content consumption and gaming done through apps. Allowing a browser on a TV is not a great experience and it also just lines Google's pockets with money that Apple could've had from ad revenue.

WHO said that? Companies that want you to use their exclusive App so you buy everything only from them? Because that is what Apps do, after all. I personally get massively annoyed by all these sites that want you to download an App just to view their site. What? Am I supposed to have 500 Apps to view 500 "glorified" web sites? Give me a break. It's not that hard to make a mobile web page that works great (clogging it with 200 ads per page is how you should NOT do it; most crash my 4th Gen iPod Touch because of things like that).

I'm sure most corporations would LOVE to tell you how to live your life, what products to buy, when to buy them and how often. They want people to be lemmings. I don't want to be a freaking lemming.

 

[_Refurbished_]

"If there’s going to be a third category of device, it’s going to have to be better at these kinds of tasks than a laptop or a smartphone. Otherwise, it has no reason for being."
- Steve Jobs on the iPad release

If you can't create a great experience for browsing, don't do it.

 

[Benjamin Frost]

"If there’s going to be a third category of device, it’s going to have to be better at these kinds of tasks than a laptop or a smartphone. Otherwise, it has no reason for being."
- Steve Jobs on the iPad release

If you can't create a great experience for browsing, don't do it.

Quite so.

If only they had heeded those words before making the Apple Watch.

 

[H2SO4]

Apple has proven many times that customers (in aggregate) often do not know what they want.

A browser is a faster horse (but cars will sell much better throughout the next century). An Apple may even be looking at doing more in the car business. Note that there are no Apple horse ranches or breeders rumored (even though the daughters of a small number of rich parents want one).

You have truly, and I mean truly, taken their marketing and hyperbole hook, line, sinker, waders tacklebox, bait……….

-to prevent the lazy developers just throwing web content onto the screen, which would be ugly and unreadable for many users, and would reflect very badly on the platform as a whole.

Fail. My old Mac Pro is connected to the TV and I have a BT trackpad and keyboard on the table for when I want to do something proper on the web while browsing. Works great, looks great.

You can already do that with AirPlay. This is about websites looking and acting terrible on a TV. Everything's too small, interaction requires a mouse or touch, typing urls is a chore, websites are generally not optimised for 16:9 viewing, reading articles on a screen 10 feet away isn't comfortable, and neither is it compelling viewing for anyone else in the room.

It isn't worth it, and giving developers the option of presenting web content in their apps would be too tempting a shortcut for many and would result in some very poor experiences for users.

If Apple were truly about experience the Apple TV would have had a properly functional interface from day one. Navigating with the remote is a truly crappy experience.

 

[Smith288]

Sorry, that's why company execs get paid the big bucks; to make what they feel are the right decisions to deliver a superior user experience. Obviously Apple decided (correctly in my opinion) that browsing websites on a TV is not a great user experience. If you have an issue with that then I guess Apple TV is not for you.



Do you have an example? Why wouldn't they be able to deliver a native app?

I side loaded the browser and found it to be handy and an acceptable usage experience. There were a few issues like the cursor being a little erratic and the video not being able to go full screen but things an official app could resolve if given a chance.

 

[VulchR]

Spoken like someone who has never attempted to use a "tv" browser. It's not about whether someone should be able to browse on their TV screen, it's about the interface. ATV4, and all similar devices that came before it, are not a good interface for a browser. It's stupid.

To all of you talking about the 'crappy' TV browser experience. In what way is it crappy? Large LCD TV screens are fine as displays. As for your experience of TV browsers, well let's just say that my bet is Apple engineers could do better than others, provided they were allowed to. Like I said, everybody will talk about how crappy browsing is on a TV and then makes apps that essentially do the equivalent of browse one web site.

 

[firewood]

You have truly, and I mean truly, taken their marketing and hyperbole hook, line, sinker, waders tacklebox, bait……….

If you think what customers ask for is always better than Apple's marketing spin, please tell me how much better you find using Flash plug-in content on your mobile devices compared to native apps. Customers here absolutely demanded it, so it must have completely won in the mobile device marketplace, right? And only companies supporting Flash are highly profitable due to how much customers value the product, right?

Not.

 

[firewood]

Large LCD TV screens are fine as displays.

There's a reason why people don't normally browse the web using their laptops or desktop computers, but sitting 10 feet or more away from a very large monitor. How often do you do that? If it's so fine, why not more often?

And how often do you browse the web on your laptop or desktop computer using a tiny 1 inch touchpad and no keyboard. What a great UI! Not.

 

[heimo]

Does this browser come with a private anniversary gift planning mode? I'd love to plan gifts on a large screen. In private. Gifts.