Even in the New Year, those iTV rumors just won’t quit. The latest word is that Jony Ive has been working on a 42- to 50-inch Apple television in his secret Cupertino design studio; probably the Siri-controlled Apple HDTV the whole industry has been quaking over for the last few months.
Apple is reportedly gearing up to bid for English Premier League streaming rights that would allow it to show live matches through its Apple TV and iOS devices. The Cupertino company hopes the content will boost sales of its set-top box and the iPad in the U.K.
There’s nothing else quite like the highly sophisticated Real Racing 2 HD on iOS. It’s the platform’s best racing simulator, is one of the best games available for the iPad and may even be one of the most fun racing games on any platform (using the iPad as a steering wheel trumps a console controller any day).
Known developer Steven Troughton-Smith has been able to run iOS App Store apps on the Apple TV fullscreen at the device’s full, 720p resolution. Troughton-Smith also worked on the Siri port that was demoed months ago and made available for jailbroken iOS devices last week.
With the help of another developer by the name of TheMudKip and Grant Paul’s MobileLaunchpad launcher, Troughton-Smith has been able to run iOS apps natively on the Apple TV without using AirPlay.
Like its iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch which utilize the company’s A4 and A5 processors, Apple’s upcoming television set will be powered by a custom-built chip made specifically for the Cupertino company. Sources claim that a number of manufacturers are currently bidding for Apple’s order, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), and Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL).
If Apple got into the TV set business, they could give cable operators a run for their life, right? Probably, but some observers suggest the tech giant should not try to reinvent the wheel – a broken one at that. Instead, any Apple TV set should be based on Internet streaming, making cable television obsolete.
With rumors of a standalone Apple television set ramping up, Digitimes is reporting that Apple has told suppliers to begin prepping for the manufacturing of an Apple TV set in the first business quarter of 2012, with an expected release in the fall.
The TVs in question will only be available in 32-inch and 37-inch flavors initially, according to the report. Rumors have suggested that Apple will eventually abandon the current Apple TV set-top box and focus on an integrated solution with its own television hardware.
So Santa stuffed an Apple TV in your stocking? That’s pretty freaking awesome. We’re jealous. Well actually, we already had one so I guess we’re not that jealous, but congratulations on joining the club of Apple TV owners. We’re stoked to have you with us, and we want you to get the most from your new gagdget so we’re going to help you get it setup the right way so you can skip through all the menus and side features and dive straight into the good stuff.
In this handy guide, we’ll take you through initial setup; show you the best features of Apple TV and teach you some awesome tweaks that will take your television experience to the next level so you can cuddle up in next to your flatscreen wearing those new pajamas your kids bought you and go into a week-long tv-coma.
Here’s our guide to setting up your new Apple TV the right way.
The Wall Street Journal has shed light on Apple’s plans for entering the TV industry. According to the WSJ, Apple is planning to reinvent not only the television itself, but the way we consume media every day.
Apple has been working on its top-secret TV project for quite some time. While the project is still in its early stages, all signs point towards Apple destroying and rebuilding the traditional way we watch movies and TV shows. The company wants to implement a unified experience that extends to the living room.
Apple has released two minor software updates today. A tweaked version of iOS 5.0.1 (Build 9A406) for the iPhone 4S has been pushed for users who haven’t yet upgraded to the latest firmware (essentially replacing the current 5.0.1 build).
The second-generation Apple TV has been updated to version 4.4.4 (Build 9A406a) and features small bug fixes and stability improvements. Both updates can be downloaded now.
9to5Mac’s Mark Gurman has been peeling through the .plist files of the latest iOS 5.1 beta, and it appears that Apple is screwing with bloggers on purpose: weary of people dissecting the iOS files for mention of future iPhones and iPads, iOS 5.1 Beta 2 references the Apple TV 9, iPad 8, and iPhone 10, among others.
We’ve dedicated more than a few posts t0 declaring that a new iPad or iPhone is coming thanks to .plist references, but even so, I think this is pretty funny. Way to screw with a poor tech blogger’s head, Apple! The message is clear from here on out: you can’t trust iOS’s .plist files for a scoop. Well done!
Apple quietly issued an update to its Apple TV earlier this week, which finally introduced TV show streaming from the cloud to users in Australia, Canada, and the U.K. for the first time. However, there may have been a good reason why Apple was so quiet about it.
It would seem that the feature isn’t ready yet — or that it was not meant for certain territories — because just days after being introduced, Apple has removed it again.
Apple has begun issuing an update to its second-generation Apple TV that finally allows users in Australia, Canada, and the U.K. to stream TV shows they’ve purchased on iTunes directly to their television.
This morning we reported that Apple had provided some more details to the Cupertino City Council about their proposed plans to build a new “spaceship” campus, including a render that showed a roof entirely tiled in solar panels.
How much power would that generate, though? Enough to power a million Apple TVs.
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about the so-called iTV, Steve Jobs’s “cracking” of the HDTV problem. But what if the iTV is just a rumor, and Apple instead plans on fixing television by making iMacs into HDTVs?
Ever since Jobs enigmatically said in his bio that he had “cracked” the television problem, people have been going nuts speculating… and Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has gone so far as to say that the iTV will cost twice as much as a regular television set, and come in three different sizes.
Well, looks like Munster’s forecast has some corroborating evidence. A new report not only says that Apple’s iTV will come in three different sizes, but that it will also pack Apple’s next-gen A6 CPU.
The latest iTV rumor is hitting the web today as Gene Munster told the crowd at IGNITION: Future of Media that the new Apple Television Set has been in the works for sometime now but should be released next year.
Munster is so certain that the new device is coming that he told everyone to wait before buying a new TV because Apple’s is going to be awesome.
Following the release of Apple’s iOS 5.1 beta yesterday, developers have been trawling through its code in an attempt to uncover references to upcoming products that Apple didn’t intend for you to see. We’ve already seen references to a next-generation Apple TV and a fourth iPad 2 — believed to be destined for Sprint — and now the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 product identifiers have been discovered.
With rumors suggesting that Apple is preparing to take on the TV market, we all wait with bated breath for what Apple has in store for our living rooms.
Thanks to a finding in the newly-released iOS 5.1 beta, a next generation Apple TV is one step closer to reality. The device has been given the “J33” codename internally by Apple.
It’s a tiny, tiny squidge of an update, but an update nonetheless: Apple has just released version 4.4.3 for the Apple TV, adding support for Netflix in Mexico and resolving an audio issue where sound might not play through the optical port when the attached TV is turned off.
As usual, to grab the update, just hit up Settings > General. Enjoy all those great streaming episodes of Abrázame Muy Fuerte!.
aTV Flash (black) from FireCore has now dropped its beta tag and hit version 1.0. The software package is designed to supercharge your second-generation jailbroken Apple TV, introducing a whole host of functionality that isn’t available from Apple. In addition to a media player which supports a huge variety of formats, aTV Flash will also introduce a web browser, weather and RSS feeds, a Last.fm radio, and more to your set-top box.
Sony CEO Howard Stringer recently revealed the company’s intentions to launch a revolutionary new television before Apple, and according to The Wall Street Journal, it will be a web-based alternative to the traditional set that will allow users to avoid the cable companies.
Great spot by 9to5Mac: Amazon just dropped the price of the Apple TV by $10 to just $89.99; they’ve also rechristened it the ‘2010’ model.
Could Amazon know something the rest of us poor suckers don’t? Is an updated 2011 Apple TV incoming in time for Black Friday? If so, don’t expect much besides a bump to an A5 chip: if Apple were to, say, bring Siri to the Apple TV, they’d definitely make a big fuss over it in an event.
Steve Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson he had “finally cracked” the television set, sparking more rumors his team in Cupertino are on the cusp of launching a revolutionary new television that will change home entertainment forever.
Apple won’t be the first to attempt this, however. Sony’s CEO Sir Howard Stringer says he is competing against Steve Jobs to change the traditional television set.
Since the unveiling of its iPhone 4S back in October, Apple has received heaps of praise for one of its new features in particular: Siri. The digital assistant is by far the most impressive voice recognition service built into a mobile device, and it seems everyone has been blown away by it.
What many of you may not know, however, is that Siri is one of the few Apple products that wasn’t created by the team in Cupertino. Instead, Siri was created by Dag Kittlaus, a 34-year-old man from Norway, and it has made him a multimillionaire.