The newest 9to5Mac scoop, if true, is really disappointing. 8GB RAM and an A8 chip means Apple is not going to go hard on games at all. This device seems to be a continuation of current AppleTV strategy with some iOS-esque casual games and other apps thrown in. After all this time, I expected something much more groundbreaking.
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New Apple TV to Start at $149, Feature Universal Search With Siri
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There is no 4K because this is a product release for today's masses. When 4K is commonplace, you will get a 4K Apple TV. Apple will not limit the sales potential of a future Apple TV tomorrow in order to futureproof you today.
I agree. We have an ATV and Roku in the house to make sure most of the bases are covered, but I wish there was one device that "does it all". There's no way iTunes is going to appear on a competing device, so hopefully with 3rd party app support, the new ATV will (eventually) cover most of it.
I hope they have an TV app that allows me to operate the TV soley from my iPhone or iPad. That way I could operate it through my audio system wirelessly for music and without turning on the TV.
Read the 9to5Mac post properly. It says that all apps would be streamed to the Apple TV. This means that every time you start a game, it is cached on the Apple TV and then gets deleted after. Unfortunately, you better hope to have a good internet connection with a highbandwith cap. If I was in charge, one or two most frequently/recently used apps would be stored for a longer period of time to minimize the need to download things over and over.
If they deliver on universal search rumor then this could replace cable. Apple is not going to allow search for anything only to send users to dead ends or direct them to competing services. They want to keep everything in the ATV experience which means apps, live TV, movies, episodes, etc. should be found and available to stream, buy or view on demand in some other way. That might not include all 1000 cable channels that I have but it might include 75% of them which is enough for me to compare Apple bundle vs. cable bundle pricing.
Now read the line before that one that says "all content outside of applications will be streamed directly from the Internet." To me that says everything except for apps will stream. Why else would there be 8-16GB storage. The OS cannot be more than 1-2GB.
I hope so, because current Apple TV is pretty much useless - in Europe it's just a AirPlay device, but I have Airplay in my Denon amplituner, so there's nothing that ATV can offer me. The channels are a joke: http://www.apple.com/pl/appletv/whats-on/. Basically what every Smart TV offers.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
That's a disappointing prediction for the crowd wanting this
TV to have a 4K playback option... even more so considering that he is also predicting the new iPhones to be announced will record 4K video: http://9to5mac.com/2015/08/27/iphone-6s-camera-12-megapixels-4k-selfies/ So, if that prediction is true, we'll have Apple hardware that can shoot 4K but this brand new TV will then be the weak link in the chain for pushing that 4K to anyone's 4K TV.I suspected that if they announced 4K-capable iPhones at this event, a 4K
TV would go right with it. Else, looking back at the prior time when iDevices took a step forward (to 1080p recording), an TV 5 (or maybe TV 4K) is probably 6-12 months away.Oh well, if that plays out, it will be fun watching the "4K is a gimmick", "until there is tons of 4K content" crowd gushing with love for iDevice 4K recording (and thus a huge reason to upgrade iPhones) while continuing to rationalize it's uselessness in
TV (a repeat of the exact same split sentiment when Apple rolled out 1080p recording on iDevices while TV still maxed out at 720p).
Doesn't the current TiVo do that? I don't have any streaming services connected so it's not something I use, but when I set up OnePass (their new "season pass") it seems like it wants to search other services. I just don't have any connected.
Gary
I hate to tell you this, but this has been a standard feature of the Roku for at least 2-3 years. It's right there on the home screen, under the channel list. It searches every provider who agrees to give access to their content database for pricing/availability/metadata. That means Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, RedBox, Google Play, Crackle, etc. All of the bigger names.
Apple's version will have at most, the same providers, plus Apple's own store. But, they probably won't have Amazon or Crackle or any service that allows renting or buying content, since Apple demands a 30% cut of anything purchased through that app, and at the same time demands equal retail price points.
So on a Roku, Amazon can sell a movie with 1 click for $9.99 and put it in your Amazon content library, permanently. They take all $9.99 of it, and give some to the rights holder, as required by their own contracts. If they put an app on the Apple TV, they could only charge $9.99 for the same movie, and would have to pay the same amount to the rights holder, but also give $3 to Apple, just because. You can assume that there is a 50% markup, or less. That means Amazon takes $5 when they sell a movie on a Roku, or on their own site. That pays for their CDN expenses, storage, streaming, content management, metadata tagging (have you seen their in-content tagging? It's dynamic and interactive and really quite cool), and includes whatever profit they make. If they sell the same movie through an AppleTV, their baseline drops from $5 to $2, and they still have to do all the same work, and pay all of the same distribution costs. All they gain is Apple TV viewers, which let's face it, isn't that much of an audience. It would only ever be viable for Amazon-exclusive content.
There's no way the Apple TV will ever have Amazon Prime Video. The problem with the Apple TV, iPhone and iPad has long been iTunes. iTunes is a pile of steaming crap, and the fact that you have to do everything through it is a major flaw. It's confusing, unintuitive and nobody wants it. If you're a windows user you could care less (which I am not). Why you can't just plug these devices in to have them mount on the desktop is beyond me. And Apple continues to make iTunes and it's whole app/music store world more confusing. Just have ONE store, get rid of iTunes and solve a lot of problems. And don't get me started on the apple music/beats mess.
The Apple TV is just an extension of iTunes, and that's it. The only thing good about the Apple TV is airplay. $149 and up for airplay is not a good deal. Apple should just make the airplay stick, a device dedicated to airplay and nothing else. I would buy that in a heartbeat.
The Apple TV is just an extension of iTunes, and that's it. The only thing good about the Apple TV is airplay. $149 and up for airplay is not a good deal. Apple should just make the airplay stick, a device dedicated to airplay and nothing else. I would buy that in a heartbeat.
Wow that's all? I'll wait till next week to fully cast judgement but even the latest round of rumors is making me go.. ahh pass on this one! My AP3 is running just fine and had Apple got their butts in gear they could have had an app store on there already.
Here's to hoping our personal movies on our computers get included in the search capabilities. It would be nice to search for Directors, Actors, Genres, etc with our movies we're streaming from our PC's. Another thing I'm hopeful for is the ability to add multiple genres to my movies. I use the "comments" section and then make smart playlists, but a naive solution would be idea.
My father in law just bought a 50 inch 4K Visio TV because he saw it on Woot.com, and that it would fit in his entertainment center. His old TV had broken, and he asked me if this one was a good TV. For $500, it certainly was. He hooked up his SD(!) DishNetwork box to it, and was perfectly happy with the picture. Then I showed him that the TV comes with Netflix/Amazon/YouTube/Hulu/etc apps, and pulled up a 4K show on Netflix.
It's pretty satisfying seeing someone's jaw drop through the floor. You can opine all you want about how 4k is not a target market for today, but if my 60 year old father in law has one, and it ships with multiple apps that support 4k content (which I can pull up after a 5 second search), then it IS today's technology. If Apple isn't offering 4K content, and everyone else is, then why would you buy/rent content from Apple that's also available everywhere else in better quality for the same price or less?
If true then it's not a Day1 purchase for me, but it all depends on the App Store. Amazon Prime Video and a DLNA Client (and not f*****g Plex) would get my attention.
All very interesting but I'll keep my excitement down until the actual announcement. I'm in the market for something like this now and if it can provide me with catchup services from the likes of BBC, ITV and Channel 4 then I'm in. Live TV would be a bonus, but I'm not sure how they'd arrange that via an Internet service (licence fee and all that).
What exactly does that mean? If the key selling point of a new $150 Apple product is something you could get on a $50 competitor device 3 years ago, doesn't that tell you something?