On the Apple TV app store, entertainment apps, including streaming video from the likes of HBONow and Netflix, are a clear winner, followed next by games.
AppFigures, an app tracking service for publishers and developers, took a look at the trends from Apple TV’s first month out of the gate. Their report also has some interesting insights about each category, and the way the Apple TV’s digital storefront is shaping up to be a fairly viable place to sell apps.
The remote for the new Apple TV can be a bit tricky to master and very easy to break, but help is on the according to Apple media boss Eddy Cue who revealed this morning that an iOS remote app for the new black box is coming soon.
Apple has reportedly suspended plans to add an Internet-based live television service for Apple TV, maintaining its focus on providing media from other companies.
A person familiar with negotiations claims that Apple’s plan to sell a $30-$40 monthly package of exclusive television stations has run into problems — based on the amount of money content creators are asking for for programming.
Apple is pushing its new iteration of Apple TV hard, hoping to move it beyond a “hobby” into a must-have set top box for every living room and television set possible.
Apple’s new ad, “The Future of Television,” is a visual collage of just about everything you can do with the Apple TV, including watching television shows and movies, playing games, and listening to music.
Check it out.
Here’s an amazing factoid: Netflix almost went head-to-head with the Apple TV in 2007, until they realized they were about to pick a fight they would surely lose.
The new, fourth generation Apple TV is still settling into its home next to our television sets, but already Apple is hard at work on its successor, according to a new report.
Apple’s suppliers are said to be putting a limited number of the new Apple TV into limited, small-scale “trial” production, ahead of volume production beginning early in 2016.
Once Apple brought games to the Apple TV, it was a no-brainer that we’d all want to play them together on the couch in our living room.
Apple requires developers to support the new Siri Remote, but they can also allow third-party game controllers to move stuff around on the screen, too.
Crossy Road, the excellent Frogger-like hit iOS game with the seemingly endless supply of cute creatures to play as (that was also an Apple TV launch title), goes one step further. If you want to play with a buddy and don’t have a second gamepad, you can have your pal play Crossy Road on Apple TV with just their iPhone.
Here’s how.
If you’re hoping to stream games from Steam to your new Apple TV, developer Kevin Smith (no, not the Clerks guy) has shown it is possible by modifying the Moonlight iOS project — which lets users stream Steam games from a desktop computer to their iOS device — so that it works with tvOS.
Check out the videos below.
Logging into any service on Apple TV is a pain. The text-entry field is one long line, and if you’ve got a particularly lengthy username or password for apps on the Apple TV, entering them can take much longer than it should.
Twitter-owned Digits is offering its own take on a solution with an SDK that tvOS developers can implement in their apps and let users type in a short string of numbers and letters that they get from their iPhone, rather than the full-on username and password combination.
This could solve the problem altogether, and it’s not much more tricky than using an app for Two-Step Authentication, which we all do now, anyway (or should).
Amazon’s Instant Video service has one of the best libraries in the world, but if you’re an Apple user, it has a crucial weakness: the only way to get it on Apple TV is to AirPlay it from an iOS or OS X device.
AirPlaying can be unreliable at times and you can’t use certain apps without cutting off your Amazon stream. That could change in just a few weeks though, according to an Amazon employee who let it slip that the company is working on an app for the new Apple TV.
You might be sick of the sight of Turkey by now, but you can’t spend enough time being thankful. The big question we have is: Should we be thankful to Apple for the lineup it has delivered in 2015, or was this a year to forget?
Apple certainly hasn’t been slow this year; we’ve had the Apple Watch, Apple Music, iPhone 6s with new technologies like 3D Touch, the new Apple TV, and the giant iPad Pro. But will any of these things stand out as smash-hits in a decade?
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we battle it out over these questions and more!
If any more proof was needed that Apple TV is no longer being considered a “hobby,” check out the massive new billboard ad campaign that has been rolling out for the new fourth-generation Apple TV refresh.
Cleverly playing on a color bars motif which references both the old school Apple logo (with colors fastidiously picked out by Steve Jobs, to boot!) and a television test pattern, the billboards can be seen in both landscape and portrait orientation around the U.S.
The new Apple TV’s Siri Remote is great, except for all of those times that it isn’t.
We’ve run afoul of the remote’s touchpad a few times; it’s fine for navigating (and less fine for entering passwords), but sometimes it does its job too well. For example, we can’t even count the number of times we’ve been watching a movie and accidentally nudged the pad, sending our show scrubbing all willy-nilly into the past or future.
It’s pretty annoying, but luckily, Apple thought so, too, so it gave us a couple ways to fix that mistake when it happens. The company could have just disabled the touchpad while things were playing, but we’re not engineers.
These two fixes are the next best options.
Apple TV owners can watch ABC on their streaming boxes (with a subscription), and the company isn’t afraid to exploit the undying, platonic love between a bear and a frog to make that fact known.
The latest Apple TV ad showcases the Watch ABC app, which lets existing cable subscribers watch full episodes and live broadcasts of the network’s programming, including The Muppets. The puppet-driven show features prominently in the new, 15-second spot which went live today.
Check it out below:
The first major update for the new Apple TV just took one step closer to its public release with the third beta build of tvOS 9.1.
The new Apple TV is all about apps and games, so it makes sense that there are five new ads from Apple on its YouTube channel that are all about specific games and apps.
Check out the videos below for streaming media apps like Netflix and HBO, along with a trio of gaming titles, including Apple TV ads for Asphalt 8 from Gameloft, mega-hit casual Crossy Road from Hipster Whale, and Disney Infinity 3.0 Edition: Star Wars from the House of Mouse.
Not every Apple TV is in a household full of self-realized adults. Apple knows this and has set up some restrictions, similar to the parental controls on iOS.
That way, you can make sure that your kids aren’t purchasing anything (or playing/watching anything) without your consent.
Here’s how to set it all up on your Apple TV.
Developers didn’t get any in-depth coding knowledge for tvOS at WWDC this year, but Apple is making up for it by launching the Apple TV Tech Talks tour that will bring technical information on building and designing great Apple TV apps to developers around the globe.
Registration for the Apple TV Tech Talks opened today with the first event scheduled for December 7th in Toronto, with other events taking place across the globe until February 3rd 2016.
Here’s the full list of locations:
This week: the new Apple TV remote is unnervingly easy to break; home-buttonless iPhone 7s; the UK wants your Apple devices to be less secure; and we pitch our favorite new Apple TV apps!
Our thanks to Lynda for supporting this episode. Lynda is like the Apple Music of online education, with over 3000 expert-taught video courses you can stream straight to computer or mobile device. Learn how to use Logic’s new super powerful Alchemy synth, or develop Mac apps for OS X—learn all you want for free for 10 days at lynda.com/cultcast.
Like all well-designed products from the Apple mothership, the new Apple TV’s remote, also known as the Siri remote, looks simple but contains a surprising amount of depth.
Sure, you might know that one press on the Menu button will take you back one screen, but what about all the other secret moves (like how to restart your Apple TV with the buttons)?
Luckily, we’re here to help you discover all the secrets of the Siri remote. Today, let’s look at the buttons and their hidden features.
Your Apple TV remote is an amazing little device that lets you manage your big TV exerience. There are quite a few little settings you may have missed, though, when you started up your new Apple TV.
You can adjust and tweak your way through the Apple TV settings to make the most of your time with the remote, including monitoring its battery, adjusting accessibility options, and — yes — even figuring out what Siri commands you can use.
Here are five of them, just for you.
The new Apple TV remote is a thing of beauty. It’s got six simple buttons, it’s rechargeable and it features a beautifully simple touchpad at the top to swipe across menus, app icons and letters to enter passwords.
But the simple joy of using the touchpad is very Apple-like. There are hidden secrets to the surface uses, with
Here’s how to get the most out of your Apple TV remote touchpad.
Apple has released its first beta for tvOS 9.1 to developers this morning, marking the first big software update in the pipeline for the fourth generation Apple TV that launched last Friday.
The new Apple TV remote is a wondrous touch- and motion-enabled trackpad with a few simple buttons that lets you do everything on your new black hockey puck of joy, including playing games, swiping through apps, and, well, playing and pausing your movies and TV shows.
What happens when you lose it somewhere in the depths of your couch, though? The iPhone Remote app no longer works with the new Apple TV, and unless you have an Apple Store nearby, you’re gonna want to have a backup plan in place.
Might as well take a couple of minutes and set up your regular old TV remote to work with Apple TV, right?
Here’s how.
The new Apple TV is out and it’s pretty fantastic.
Running through setup is fairly simple, but we all could use a little advice on how best to make our choices along the way.
With that in mind, then, let’s run through the Apple TV arrangements in order.