Apple TV 4

Apple begins shipping new Apple TVs, releases final 9.0 build, and launches App Store

Jeff Benjamin ∙ October 29, 2015

Big things are happening with the new Apple TV. Not only have numerous readers received their now shipping notifications, alluding to a Friday arrival, Apple has also made several significant necessary infrastructure changes for tomorrow's big launch.

First and foremost, the App Store is now live for the Apple TV. Twitter is flowing with screenshots and images of the new Apple TV App Store. Although its discovery elements are still questionable, Apple is probably still in the midst of rolling out the categories section and top charts section. Remember, the actual launch isn't until tomorrow, so anything can change between now and then.

Secondly, Apple has released the final build of its tvOS software that powers the new Apple TV. In fact, you can download tvOS 9.0 right now.

Watch Apple’s Cue explaining Apple TV benefits

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 29, 2015

Eddy Cue, Apple's Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services, gave CNN a tour of the new Apple TV, which hits Apple's retail stores tomorrow.

Reiterating that to Apple, television is about apps, Cue called the fourth-generation box “absolutely” more than a hobby project for Apple.

“We have over 20 million Apple TV's in households today,” he said. “We think this is really going to revolutionize television. So this is a big deal for us.”

New Apple TV lacking Siri search for Apple Music and App Store apps

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 29, 2015

As the new Apple TV is scheduled to hit Apple's retail stores tomorrow, first reviews are now in. Journalists who were given a chance to spend some quality time with review units are praising evolutionary improvements to the living room experience while highlighting untapped potential for the refreshed $149 device.

One of the common complaints focuses on Siri and its inability to search apps for the Apple TV in a dedicated App Store. In addition, reports are noting that users won't be able to search Apple Music with their voice at launch, the omission Apple claims will be addressed with a software update due at the beginning of next year.

New Apple TV hitting Apple Stores on Friday

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 13, 2017

After launching online orders for its fourth-generation Apple TV, Apple will start selling the new set-top box at its retail stores on Friday, October 30, 9to5Mac learned from sources close to the matter.

In addition to sales via the Apple Online Store and company-owned retail stores, the new Apple TV is listed for pre-order at other resellers like Best Buy and B&H.

Here’s why you shouldn’t buy an extra Siri Remote at this time

Jeff Benjamin ∙ October 26, 2015

The new Apple TV went on sale today, and Apple is pushing several accessories to go along with the launch. We outlined some of the more interesting accessories in this post, but I wanted to talk a bit more about the Siri Remote.

The Siri Remote is, of course, bundled with all new Apple TVs. When you buy a new Apple TV, you get everything that you need to get started in the box.

Yet, Apple is selling the Siri Remote as a separate purchase as well.

This intrigued me for several reasons—first, the Siri Remote is actually more expensive than a base configuration Apple TV itself. The Siri remote is $79. The new Apple TV with 32GB of storage is $149 and includes a Siri Remote. Simple math says that without the Siri Remote, the new Apple TV is $70. Obviously, the pricing semantics aren't that simple, but you get what I'm trying to say here.

But far more important than price, is the fact that you cannot connect more than one Siri Remote at a time. That's right, only one Siri Remote may be connected to an Apple TV at any given time. That means no multiplayer games using multiple Siri Remotes, or anything else of the sort. For this reason, you should skip the extra Siri Remote purchase at this time.

New Apple TV accessories: which ones should you order?

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

Along with being able to order the new Apple TV, you can also order several new accessories to go along with your shiny new set top box. There aren't a ton of accessories immediately available for the new Apple TV, but some of the ones that are available may be worthy of your consideration.

There are a few key accessories that Apple is promoting on its online store during the new Apple TV checkout process: the Siri Remote, Remote Loop, and the SteelSeries Nimbus Wireless Controller. Should you consider buying any of these in addition to your new Apple TV?

Should you order your new Apple TV with 32GB or 64GB of storage?

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 26, 2015

Apple this morning started accepting pre-orders for its fourth-generation set-top box, the Apple TV, ahead of official launch this coming Friday.

The box comes in two storage flavors: one with thirty-two gigabytes of built-in flash storage, costing $149, and the other featuring double the storage for $199.

There has been some confusion as to how users might benefit from twice the storage, especially in relation to third-party apps and games.

So, should you order a 32 or 64GB Apple TV model?

The Apple TV 4 is now available for sale

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 19, 2018

As promised by Tim Cook, Apple new 4th generation Apple TV just went on sale on Apple's online store. Coming in both 32 and 64 GB flavors, the new Apple TV starts at $149 for the lower storage tier, and caps off at $199 for the higher storage tier.

The new Apple TV 4, which comes bundled with Apple's new Siri Remote, is the first Apple TV to be able to run full-fledged apps from the App Store thanks to its new operating system, tvOS. The ability to run apps and search with Siri are two of the big headlining features for the refresh. Users can also expect a modern looking UI with a familiar, yet refreshed, interface.

Cook on how new Apple TV will fix a ‘terrible, broken’ process of watching television

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 20, 2015

Apple's fourth-generation set-top box, the $149 Apple TV, is launching next week and it won't be just a hardware upgrade. For the first time since the Apple TV's 2007 debut Apple is providing a software platform to enable third-party experiences on your big screen TV.

Discussing the sad state of the television industry and talking about how Apple can improve a “terrible, broken” process of watching television during the Wall Street Journal’s WSJ.D Live conference in Laguna Beach, California last night, Cook said that Apple's new tvOS platform represents a “foundation” for the kinds of experiences his company aims to deliver to consumers.

New Apple TV and iPad Pro launching online in late-October, in-store sales from early-November

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 8, 2015

The fourth-generation Apple TV set-top box and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro tablet with Apple Pencil are due to hit retail tories in the first week of November after launching online toward the end of this month, according to reliable sources who spoke to 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman.

“The revamped Apple TV set top box and iPad Pro will both begin showing up in Apple Retail Stores for sale during the first week of November after going on sale via Apple’s website in late October,” wrote the publication.

Apple promises to open up universal search on Apple TV

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 5, 2015

When the new Apple TV launches toward the end of this month, it will allow viewers to use their voice to search movies and television shows across iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, Showtime and HBO. Fans of the device were initially concerned that the new box would offer preferential treatment to the aforesaid services. Thankfully, that won't be the case.

As CEO Tim Cook noted in an interview this weekend with BuzzFeed News's John Paczkowski, the new box will allow apps beyond launch partners to expose and make their content discoverable and searchable via iOS 9's universal search feature.

It's a crucial confirmation: content from other broadcasters and studios such as NBC, Disney and CNN must be exposed through the Apple TV's Siri-based search if the device is to streamline the user experience.

MAME emulator shown running on an Apple TV dev kit

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 30, 2018

The new Apple TV, which still lacks an official launch date, but is scheduled to touch down sometime in late October, is looking like quite the winner. Not only do the apps look great, but the Siri remote looks lightyears better than its predecessor. Even more exciting, for me however, is the prospect of running old school games by way of emulators.

While it's doubtful that we'll ever see emulators allowed in the App Store, users can now take it upon themselves to side load apps using Xcode 7. With this in mind, several developers have taken the initiative to create Apple TV emulators. One of the latest emulators to be shown off is a MAME emulator by developer Kevin Smith.

MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, and as its name states, it allows gamers to emulate games from a variety of arcade hardware. As first spotted by MacRumors' Juli Clover, Smith has posted a video of the his MAME emulator running on an Apple TV dev kit.