Apple has published a Knowledge Base article that shows how to arrange the Apple TV app icons on the main screen. The update, 5.1, also added Shared Photo Streams, AirPlay Send audio, iTunes account switching, Trailer searching, new Screen Savers, support for Subtitles, more advanced Networking options, and the standard stability and performance enhancements.
Arranging the app icons is really very simple, and Apple’s post shows us how it’s done.
Apple just released a new software update for the second and third generation Apple TV. The 5.1 update doesn’t include any major changes, but it does add support for Shared Photo Streams, search movie trailers, multiple iTunes account support, the ability to send audio from the Apple TV to AirPlay enabled speakers, and a few other minor improvements.
Here are the full release details from Apple:
While Apple still hasn’t released a full-fledged television, rumors have been circulating that they might be working on a cable set-top box for cable providers as well. The big question has been whether or not cable providers would allow Apple to come in and take control of the TV experience.
According to Time Warner Cable’s COO, they’d be more than happy to let Apple come in and have control of the TV interface if it makes the customers’ experience better.
With the 30-pin dock connector on the brink of extinction, you’re probably wandering how you’re going to hook your iOS devices up to your TV without the help of an Apple TV. Your old HDMI and VGA adapters won’t work, and Apple didn’t announce any new ones at its iPhone 5 event. So does that mean AirPlay is the only option?
Thankfully, it does not. Apple has confirmed that Lightning-compatible HDMI and VGA adapters will be arriving for your new iOS devices “in the coming months.”
FireCore today released aTV Flash (black) 2.0, the highly-anticipated update to its flagship software for the jailbroken Apple TV. Version 2.0 brings a number of enhancements, including a Library View for browsing media content by category (TV, movie, etc.), integrated search, and trakt.tv support for keeping content wirelessly synced between multiple Apple TVs.
Sadly, aTV Flash (black) still doesn’t support the third-gen Apple TV, as a jailbreak for Apple’s latest set-top box has not yet been released. But second-gen Apple TV owners can grab today’s 2.0 update now.
Apple’s been working to make the Apple TV “more than a hobby” for a long, long time now, but it looks like it won’t happen this year, with a new report saying that a new Apple TV — whether a full HDTV or a new set-top box with content deals from the cable system — definitely won’t happen this year.
After nearly a decade, my iTunes library weighs in at almost ninety-four gigabytes. A lot of serious music nerds would sneeze derisively at that, but it still represents over 13,000 songs that would take me, from start to finish, a full 48 days to listen to back to back.
I’d be lying if I said most of these had been acquired legally. Most of these albums were acquired on Bittorrent in my twenties. Many more were ripped from CDs lent to me by friends and family, or slurped up from Usenet to satisfy my obscure yet surface-thin musical fixations. Some were purchased through iTunes or other sources online, but truthfully, if you stripped everything out of my iTunes library that I’d acquired legally, I’d probably have a digital music library that could fit on a first generation iPod.
Over the course of the last two years, though, something interesting has happened. I’ve grown a conscience. These days, all of the music I listen to is listened to legally. But iTunes not only has no part in it. In fact, for the past two years, my iTunes library has just been collecting dust: a graveyard to the music piracy of my youth.
I’m ashamed of it. I want to try to explain things. Both why I started pirating music, why I stopped, and how, in fits and starts, being a music pirate helped transform me into someone who cared enough about music to buy it.
One of the first thoughts I had when Apple announced AirPlay Mirroring as a feature in Mountain Lion was that it would make an excellent mobile presentation tool and one that would be far easier to bring to business meetings, trade shows, or client-site training events than hauling a projector. With just a MacBook Air and Apple TV, you can plug into any HDTV, display, or projector that supports HDMI and be ready to go. That’s a great combination for any business traveler.
If Apple does announce AirPlay Direct, a new version of AirPlay that doesn’t require a Wi-Fi network, the company will have made the lives of business travelers, trainers, and educators even easier. It will probably also make network administrators in both business and education a bit happier as well.
iOS is the gaming platform of the future. Just ask Nintendo, who this year posted its first annual loss (nearly half a billion dollars). And while Game Boy-esque portable playing is good enough most of the time, you only need to add a few accessories to turn the iPhone into a full-on be-buttoned handheld, and the iPad into the center of a big-screen home gaming system. Read on to find out our picks for the best iOS gaming accessories.
Information about the fabled iTV has been bouncing around the rumor-mill for a few years now. Supposedly, Apple is going to build an HDTV that has a ton of cool features, such as Siri, FaceTime, iTunes Streaming, iCloud and the works. It’s a dream device. Like a big ass iPad you can mount on your wall to watch the series finale of Breaking Bad on.
The iTV was supposed to launch at some point this year, but we haven’t seen any hardware leaks for it, and now the rumor is that Apple won’t launch it until 2013. But does Apple really need to make an HDTV? Would a really awesome Apple TV style set-top box for cable companies be a better, cheaper, option than trying to get an iTV into every home? We can see the benefits on both side of the coin, but we’re really curious to hear what you guys think. Should Apple just come out with an improved Apple TV instead of an iTV? Or do something else entirely?
Click here to go to the Cult of Mac forums and share your thoughts on the rumored Apple HDTV
There’s a new icon on the Apple TV tonight, and it’s kind of a sweet surprise. The 2012 iTunes Festival will be in London, with apps available on iPhones, iPads and Macs for free streaming of the event.
Looks like Apple decided to get an app onto the Apple TV as well, ahead of the September 1st launch date.
While we’re almost certain Apple is working on its own television set, when it will launch is a complete mystery. Initially it seemed the set could make its debut before the end of 2012, and then reports pushed the release date back until 2013. Now according to a new analyst report, it’s unlikely won’t be adding an Apple HDTV to your credit card bill any time soon.
Why? Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services Eddy Cue has reportedly indicated to analysts that there’s still a lot of work to be done with content providers.
It’s been relatively quiet on the Apple TV jailbreak front since the untethered jailbreak was released for iOS 5.0.1. The only thing we really know about the third-gen Apple TV jailbreak is that it won’t be released for awhile. An untethered jailbreak is being worked on for new Apple TV owners behind the scenes, but no ETA has been given.
A lot is still happening in the Apple TV jailbreak community, however. FireCore today announced a huge update to the popular aTV Flash (black) software. Version 2.0 will supercharge a jailbroken Apple TV with even more features and improvements. A short beta period for aTV Flash (black) 2.0 will be offered before the final release, and there’s a limited number of spots available for those interested.
In an investor note today, Barclays investment analyst Ben Reitzes comes down squarely on the side of many others who believe a set top box is the way Apple has “cracked” the TV scene, rather than with an integrated television set created by Apple hardware designers. His opinion is that Apple is more likely to create a TV product that focuses on the software and not the hardware.
“We believe consumers would welcome such a product from Apple,” wrote Rietzes, “as well given that many younger customers seem to be watching content on demand on smaller screens (iPads, laptops) in private places – and only Apple seems to be the company that can redirect that content back to the big screen.”
When the burglar who robbed Steve Jobs’ house walked out with jewelry, computers, and Steve’s old wallet, I doubt he could have imagined one of his heisted Macs would call in the coppers. But he learned that you don’t mess with a Mountain Lion. We’ll tell you the tale on our all-new CultCast—and don’t worry—all mock turtlenecks have been returned to their proper place.
We talk rumor control, iPhone 5 design, the Olympics, and more. Then, by popular request, it’s a battle of the browsers! We’ll tell you which web-ware we love the most, and why Apple’s own app still has a big issue to fix.
Subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new episodes right on your iPhone or iPad with Apple’s newly updated and freshly debugged Podcasts App.
Show notes ahead!
In a series of tweets summarizing a new (and still unpublished on the Internet) report by Jefferies, Apple’s forthcoming HDTV is said to already be in full production, and will be sold with a carrier subsidy from AT&T and Verizon. They estimate that two million will be sold in 2013.
Yesterday The Wall Street Journal shed some light on Apple’s future plans for the TV, noting that the company was in talks with cable providers to offer live broadcasts through an Apple set-top box. The report also alluded to the possibility of an Apple-branded HDTV.
Tonight The Journal published a follow-up report that adds more details to yesterday’s story, including the not-so-surprising revelation that Apple wants to greatly simplify the overall TV viewing experience.
The iPhone 5 and iPad mini sections of the rumor mill have been churning nonstop as of late, but there hasn’t been any rumors surrounding the future of the Apple TV for quite some time.
Today a report sheds more light on the future of the Apple TV by noting that Apple is in talks with major cable providers to stream live television to a set-top box.
Lots of people love to jailbreak the Apple TV, but the process of unlocking the little hockey puck’s full potential can be a pain. When you want to jailbreak an iPhone or iPad, it’s as easy as downloading the free Absinthe tool, plugging your device into your Mac, and clicking a button. Once you’re jailbroken, Cydia is automatically installed as an alternative App Store for finding tweaks and apps.
On the Apple TV, it’s not so easy. Sure, the actual process of jailbreaking isn’t that difficult, but aside from staple packages like aTV Flash (black), you have to manually install third-party Apple TV apps via a command line interface on a connected desktop computer.
A new installer app for the Mac called Nito makes it much easier to install third-party apps on a jailbroken Apple TV.
There are many premium content services that use DRM to limit where and how you can watch videos. iOS apps like HBOGO, DirecTV, and Amazon Instant Video will all let you watch content on your device, but you’re blocked from streaming via AirPlay or through an HDMI cable. We know, it’s silly. It’s all because of the contacts and licensing deals Hollywood makes with digital distributors.
What if there was a world in which no DRM could keep your content shackled to an iOS device? A new jailbreak tweak makes it possible to stream what you’re watching—no matter what the source—to your TV through the magic of AirPlay.
If you’ve been browsing the Internet every day in the hope that someone’s going to announce a jailbreak for the third-generation Apple TV you bought back in March, then look away now. iOS hacker Pod2g has confirmed that neither he, nor any other hacker he knows of, is working on an exploit for the Apple’s latest set-top box.
An online petition has been created to try to convince Apple to make changes to its Bonjour network discovery service and related technologies including AirPlay and AirPrint. The petition is asking Apple to redesign Bonjour and other services to deliver a better fit with education and enterprise networks. It was started by Lee Badman, wireless network architect for Syracuse University, on behalf of the Higher Ed Wireless Networking Admin Group at Educause, a non-profit resource organization for IT staff working in higher education.
Hulu Plus has long been a curious omission on the Apple TV’s list of channels, but it now appears that Apple has quietly added it this morning to its supported steaming services. If you don’t see it, try rebooting your Apple TV. About time!
Source: Macrumors
Apple CEO TIm Cook announced some interesting numbers during today’s Q3 earnings call. Apple’s “hobby” the Apple TV, sold a surprising 1.3M units just last quarter, totaling 4M so far this fiscal year.
With all this growth, Apple is still calling the Apple TV a hobby, although Tim Cook hinted at future plans, saying that Apple will “continue to pull the string and see where it takes them.”
Apple has stuck in the Apple TV game for quite a while, and it looks like it is starting to finally pay off for them.
According to a report issued by the World Bank this week, there are now six billion mobile device subscriptions worldwide and the number of phones, tablets, personal hotspots, and other mobile devices continues to grow and unprecedented rates. The report noted that the number of active mobile devices and mobile carrier subscriptions/accounts “will soon exceed that of the human population.”
That raises some interesting implications for a world mobile market in which Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android are expected to dominate for the immediate and foreseeable future.