Taking the stage, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook said the following: “It’s the golden age of television. The television experience has been virtually standing still while innovation in the mobile space has been racing ahead. Today, we are going to do something about that. Our vision for TV is simple and perhaps a little provocative. We believe the future of television is apps” He further added: “This transition has already begun. Over 60 percent of pay TV streaming video is consumed on an Apple device, through an app. When you consume this way, you realize just how much better it can be. To deliver on this vision, we need a new foundation for TV, built on powerful hardware, that runs a modern operating system, with a new user experience, great developer tools, and of course an App Store” The new Apple TV, as it was previously believed, comes with a new remote that has a glass touch surface, along with a menu button, display button, Siri button, play/pause and volume. The forward and rewind controls are most likely made possible through the touch-sensitive surface. The inclusion of Siri is also no surprise, as Apple seemingly wants its voice assistant to be profoundly embedded in its products.
Gaming is also a new focus for the Apple TV as the remote can also be turned sideways and used for gaming. With Siri on-board, voice search is primary navigation method for the new Apple TV, which is something that the competition has already deployed in their products. Users will also get universal search across apps, which is a feature that’s been present on TiVo only. Siri gets some nice new commands for the Apple TV, such as quickly rewinding 15 seconds when you ask it “what did she say?” You can also filter movies by genre, your favorite actor and more. Another nice feature is that you can also ask for sports scores and weather while you watch shows, which is pretty neat and lets you follow the movie while getting the needed info. From what we’ve seen on stage, the user interface hasn’t been seriously revamped, but it does seem to be much cleaner and featuring a white background instead of black. The remote is pretty neat, but by the looks of it, it doesn’t have motion controls, so maybe we’ll have to wait for 2016 for that feature to land. The new Apple TV is actually a big thing and an important product for Apple, and proof to that could be the fact that it runs a different OS, called tvOS, which is based on iOS and is said to have been built ‘for the living room’. In order to make apps look synchronized with the new Apple TV, Apple has redesigned all of them. We’ve seen on stage a couple of pretty nice games being demoed, and this is perhaps Apple’s message to the gaming world – they are most likely focus in casual games, which is more of a threat to Nintendo than Microsoft or Sony. You can also use your iPhone or iPod Touch as a controller, and there are up to four players that can play in the same time. Talk about some entertaining gaming sessions among friends. The new Apple TV is powered by a 64-bit A8 processor and supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. The device will launch in late October in two configurations: 32GB for $149 or 64GB for $199.
