The BBC has confirmed that its on-demand “catch-up” iPlayer service is coming to the new Apple TV for the first time.
Despite being available on other platforms including Roku, Google Chromecast, Amazon’s Fire TV, Sky’s Now TV and various video game consoles, iPlayer has not previously been available through Apple TV — although it was possible to use the BBC’s free iPlayer app for the iPad or iPhone via Airplay.
The new Apple TV looks like the old one, but it’s a complete overhaul of the little black puck. It now comes with a full-blown App Store, a touch-sensitive remote and voice controls via Siri.
You can preorder it now, and it’ll ship Friday.
We got our hands on a developer model and have been playing around with it. We like it a lot. Setup is fun, the interface looks stunning, and the touch remote works beautifully. If the Music app is any indication, apps on this thing are going to be great. There’s just one little thing wrong. And it’s not little, actually. It’s big.
Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly about the 4th-generation Apple TV.
Apple made its refreshed Apple TV available for pre-order earlier this week, and now Best Buy is also accepting pre-orders for the next-gen streaming set-top box.
As with Apple’s official pricing, the 32GB model will set customers back $149.99, while the 64GB version costs $199.99. Best Buy notes that the product will be available for in-store pickup from November 4.
Apple is scheduled to reveal its earnings for the final fiscal quarter of 2015 on Tuesday, October 27, and investors are expecting monstrous results.
Sales of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus should boost revenues to new heights after Apple announced that it sold a record 13 million units of the new devices during launch weekend alone. Exactly how many iPhones Apple sold won’t be revealed until the bell closes, but Tim Cook seemed pretty optimistic in a recent interview.
Cook told The Wall Street Journal that Apple Watch shipped even more watches last quarter than in the first quarter. It’s unlikely Apple will give us the actual Apple Watch sales figures during the earnings call, but there should be a lot of juicy Apple bits.
Here’s everything to expect from Apple’s Q4 2015 earnings:
One of the coolest features of the new Apple TV is its absolutely stunning new screensavers, which fly you through some of the most gorgeous locations in the world.
Apple hasn’t announced any plans to bring the screensavers over to the Mac yet, but they’re such a perfect fit that developer John Coates created a new Swift app that lets anyone get the beautiful backdrops on their desktop.
Here’s how to do it:
Apple has just made its new Apple TV refresh available for pre-order from its online store in 80 countries — with orders with one day shipping set to ship from October 30.
What a way to kick start the week!
This week on The CultCast: our hands-on first impressions of the new Apple TV! Plus: the new and notable in OS X 10.11.1 and iOS 9.1. And if you want to hear why a half-cyborg Woz might one day lead the AI armies of Armageddon, stick around till the end for an all new (and totally ridiculous) Get To Know Your Cultist, #FutureDay edition. Because quite frankly, your life might. Just. DEPEND on it…
Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. Build a beautiful website quick at Squarespace.com, and enter offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10% off.
If you’re a developer eager to take advantage of the new Apple TV App Store, today’s your lucky day — because Apple just opened up its submission process for tvOS apps.
The first big updates for iOS 9 and El Capitan were released by Apple this morning, but the company has some smaller updates for the Apple Watch and Apple TV 4, too.
The GM for tvOS was seeded today to developers who already got their hands on the early release Apple TV 4 units. That software will be the final version the new set-top box ships with next week. Apple Watch owners also received an update in the form of watchOS 2.0.1.
The Apple Watch update contains the following fixes:
A ton of new emoji land on iOS devices today with the public launch of iOS 9.1.
Apple released iOS 9.1 this morning to users after five beta builds of the first big iOS 9 update were tested by developers. Among the new features: dozens of new emoji for everything from tacos, burritos, unicorns — and even a middle finger.
iOS users currently running iOS 9.0.2 can grab the new software via an over-the-air update or download it directly from iTunes.
Here’s everything that’s new in the update:
Apple TV has locked up some fancy, exclusive content ahead of the launch of its new set-top hardware next week.
M2M, which is a really chic way of saying “Made to Measure,” will air content devoted to the fashion world and its icons. It comes courtesy of a partnership between Apple and sports/fashion titan WME/IMG, and you’ll only be able to see it through Apple.
Here’s what you can expect your Apple TV to be wearing when the channel launches Tuesday.
The eagerly-anticipated Apple TV refresh will be available for pre-orders next Monday, said Tim Cook during his on-stage appearance at the Wall Street Journal Digital Live conference.
Customers won’t have to hang about, either, as shipments are likely to be sent out by the end of that week.
Another week, another fantastic Cult of Mac Magazine ripe for your perusal! We’ve got a ton of stuff on the latest iPhone 6s controversy, unfortunately dubbed “Chipgate,” as well as a deep dive into OS X El Capitan with a tour and some great tips, a head-to-head comparison of Apple TV versus its next big rival, Roku 4, some fear and loathing over the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic, and a sexy (?) power strip and some other fantastic product reviews.
Check it all out in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, available for download at the incredibly low price of free!
Here’s the rundown for this week’s issue:
Those on the lookout for a new streaming box this fall will have a tough decision to make when the fourth-generation models of both Apple TV and Roku hit the market. And while they both have some solid features, which one you end up buying depends a lot on what you already own.
Here’s how the two streamers measure up.
A new study puts Apple TV at the top of the streaming-box charts, but it’s faring less well in public perception on social media.
Adobe draws data for its quarterly survey, Digital Video Benchmark, from hundreds of apps and billions of online views. And the second chunk of 2015 had some surprises.
From a gamer’s point of view, if not a developer’s, the ultimate metric of a new device is its TTD, or Time To Doom. Ever since the source code to the classic first-person shooter was released over a decade ago, it has been used as the standard measurement of a new device’s capabilities.
Now, Doom has been ported to the new Apple TV and watchOS 2.
The most popular online retailer in the world, Amazon, is using its e-commerce powers to put the hurt on Apple and Google’s streaming devices in order to prop-up the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV stick.
In an email sent to marketplace sellers, Amazon told employees it will stop selling Apple TV and Google Chromecast. No new listings for the devices are allowed, and all other existing inventory is scheduled to be removed by October 29th.
The new, fourth-generation Apple TV and its smart remote could be among the most repairable Apple devices in history, according to a new teardown carried out by our friends over at iFixit.
Disappointed the new Apple TV doesn’t support 4K? Then get Amazon’s new Fire TV instead.
Two new versions of the device — Fire TV and Fire TV Gaming Edition — are here with updated internals that make them 75 percent faster than their predecessor, plus Alexa, Amazon’s own virtual assistant that is the brains behind the Echo speaker.
There’s also a new Fire TV Stick that promises the best Wi-Fi performance in a media-streaming dongle.
The sweatiness of your hands may no longer be a concern when you upgrade to a new Apple TV this fall. A newly announced cover for the Siri Remote claims it will provide grip and comfort while you play iOS games on the big screen.
The accessory is called Survivor Play for Siri Remote, and it comes courtesy of Griffin Technology, known for its rugged and durable phone and tablet cases.
Apple’s flip-flop on game controllers for Apple TV might be bad news for developers, but it’s great news for gamers.
It’s a virtual guarantee that all games will work better out of the box when running on the refreshed Apple TV, which will have its own App Store for the first time.
Just a few days after they were offered the opportunity to buy a unit early, at least one developer has already received a new Apple TV dev kit in the mail.
If you’re worried for some reason that the new Apple TV might not have strong enough video chops with all those apps and games, good news: Plex and VLC, two of the best video apps around, are coming to Apple’s new set-top box.
In what appears to be a first, Apple is providing free hardware for software developers.
Monday could be the lucky day for a limited number of developers who signed up for the Apple TV Developer Kit.
Not only will they get the new hardware six weeks in advance of it going on sale, they’ll get it for free, Apple has confirmed.
One of the biggest video gaming companies ever has just affirmed its support for the new Apple TV, itself just revealed this week by Apple.
Activision wrote a blog post detailing the games it will bring Skylanders SuperChargers, Guitar Hero Live, and Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved to Apple TV, which shows a confidence in Apple’s ability to create yet another fantastic home for gaming as it did with iOS.
These aren’t casual like Crossy Road (though those types of games will do well on the big screen, too), but full console versions of popular titles.