Apple TV

As demoed by Apple on stage, the latest instalment of Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero Live, is now available on Apple TV. It’s just like classic Guitar Hero, a three-lane rhythm based game, but modernised with better visuals, ‘real’ band members, enhanced crowd reactions, and more.

On the iPhone and iPad version, you can play two trial songs for free or pay $50 via In-App Purchase to unlock the full game with 38 additional songs. However, on Apple TV, the game is completely non-functional without the controller accessory. You have to buy the controller for the game to work at all. Incidentally, you can buy the full game and controller on Amazon as a $99 bundle, for both iOS and tvOS.

Requiring a game controller peripheral is a controversial move, as it goes against Apple’s normal App Store policy for Apple TV games. In fact, it appears to defy the rules about game controllers laid out by Apple.

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Apple typically holds a single developer event each year, WWDC in San Francisco around June, but sometimes uses Tech Talks to bring developer events around the world at other parts of the year. With Apple TV’s App Store launching several months after WWDC 2015 and long before WWDC 2016, Apple has announced that it will host 11 Tech Talk sessions across 10 different cities around the world. Apple describes the sessions as a way to “Get in-depth guidance from Apple experts on developing and designing for tvOS, in a city near you.”
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One week after the first tvOS 9.1 beta for Apple TV, developers now have access to an updated build of the software update to test. While the initial tvOS 9.1 beta contained no visual changes for users yet, Siri has since been enabled to work with Apple Music on the beta version of the software. Non-developer Apple TV users also recently saw the very first software update for Apple TV yesterday with the release of tvOS 9.0.1, which likely focused on stability and bug fixes as no visual changes were discovered. tvOS 9.1 beta 2 for developers and available to download from Apple’s developer center.
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Feature Request is a new regular 9to5Mac series where authors offer their opinions on how to improve popular hardware or software products.

Apple’s AirPort wireless routers aren’t cheap, but many people — including me — keep buying them because they “just work” most of the time. Connect an AirPort Extreme or AirPort Express to your cable modem and you’ll get a consistently great wireless connection across all of your Macs, iPads, iPhones, iPod touches, and accessories, as well as non-Apple products. But the AirPorts could do more, and Apple knows it. Four years ago, the company was openly working on some cool next-generation router features that apparently didn’t wind up in its devices. These days, with Apple TVs and AirPlay streaming at the peak of their popularity, Apple’s routers need to be smarter about streaming high-bitrate video and audio. Here’s how AirPort routers should take the next steps forward…

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Apple recently confirmed that the Apple TV will get Siri support for Apple Music from the beginning of next year, and iDownloadBlog‘s Jeff Benjamin found that it’s already present in the beta of tvOS 9.1.

You can now direct the remote assistant to play any song or album directly from Apple Music, even if the song or album isn’t in your library. Siri can even search for songs on Apple Music, play Play Beats 1 radio, and more.

Benjamin demo’d the functionality in a video (below) … 
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In a wide-ranging interview with the Telegraph, Apple CEO Tim Cook has hinted that the company may launch more health-focused products in future – but will keep those separate from the Apple Watch. The reason, he says, is that the FDA approval needed for full-on health devices would slow down the pace of innovation of the Watch.

Cook hints that Apple may have more plans for the health sphere, in a revelation which will intrigue Wall Street, but he doesn’t want the watch itself to become a regulated, government-licensed health product. “We don’t want to put the watch through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) process. I wouldn’t mind putting something adjacent to the watch through it, but not the watch, because it would hold us back from innovating too much, the cycles are too long. But you can begin to envision other things that might be adjacent to it — maybe an app, maybe something else.” 

This represents a significant change from expectations …

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Just a week after Plex released its official app for the fourth-generation Apple TV, popular media player VLC has today announced that it is looking for beta testers for its app. Details on the app’s features are still sparse, but we can only assume that it will let you play all sorts of media formats on the device.

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Just days after its initial release, Apple has already prepared a software update for the new Apple TV. tvOS 9.0.1 is now available for the fourth-gen Apple TV as an over-the-air update through the Settings app. Most Apple TV users will have automatic updates enabled, but you can manually download the update by going to Settings, System, and Software Updates.
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Today we’re comparing the forth generation Apple TV to the NVIDIA Shield. These are quite possibly the two best set top boxes out right now. I won’t be going into every little detail here, but instead the things that are most important for myself. But before we get in-depth with either option, let’s take a look at specifications between the two…

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CNN Money has today shared the second part of its interview with Apple SVP Eddy Cue. In the first part of the interview, shared last week, Cue noted of how the Apple TV has graduated from the “hobby” stage and sold more than 20 million units. While sales of the new fourth-gen box are unclear at this point, Cue did hint at some future features come to the device in part two of the interview, as well as  Apple’s ultimate goal with the tvOS platform.

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While the new fourth-generation Apple TV advances Apple’s entertainment box in many areas including universal search, Siri  input and a whole App Store for the first time, much of week one with Apple TV 4 has been about what you lose when moving from Apple TV 2 or 3.

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A new YouTube video (embedded below) showing the first browser designed for the new Apple TV has been published. The app uses a private API to render web content, so it’s not likely you’ll be seeing it on the App Store any time soon, but the project is open source and can be downloaded by anyone.

The browser takes advantage of the Siri Remote bundled with the new Apple TV hardware to navigate websites. Pressing the glass surface on the remote switches between two modes.

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The Apple TV has been available for a week now and the tvOS App Store is estimated to include over 1,000 apps, with more coming online every day. There’s a pretty good selection of titles, with a heavy focus on gaming. Developers are still figuring out how to use the touchpad Siri Remote in interesting and new ways but the initial launch is promising for sure. We’ve rounded up our favourite apps and games for the new Apple TV so far …

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Apple released the first tvOS 9.1 beta to developers earlier this week, but it lacked the addition of one major feature many have been calling for: folder support on the homepage. Now, well-known developer Steve Troughton-Smith has discovered that out of the box, the tvOS user interface features “pretty complete” folder support…

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Image via @stroughtonsmith

After some complaints about app discoverability for the new Apple TV App Store that launched late last month, Apple appears to be rolling out curated categories for the storefront not unlike its App Store on iPhone and iPad.
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Feature Request is a new regular 9to5Mac series where authors offer their opinion on how to improve popular hardware or software products.

A lot of the apps on the new Apple TV bring similar experiences as on iOS to the big screen, but we’re bound to see some unique apps designed specifically for the living room that perhaps didn’t make a lot of sense on smaller or mobile devices. One example of this and my first Feature Request: Airbnb should add a concierge-style experience for guests through its new Apple TV app.
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This week, we’re talking about the new Apple TV and everything you need to know about it. We’ve been using It for a little while now and have a lot to discuss. Big thanks to Audible and Bushel for sponsoring this week’s episode. The Happy Hour podcast is available for download on iTunes and through our dedicated RSS feed.Thanks to Audible.com, get your free 30 day trial at audible.com/happyhour and Jamf Now (formerly Bushel) for sponsoring this week’s episode. To find out what awesome cloud-based mobile device management can do for you, check out https://www.jamf.com/happyhour.

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While Siri voice search is a core feature of the new Apple TV, right now it’s limited to only eight countries: UK, US, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Spain and Japan. In other regions, the Siri Remote is simply called the Apple TV Remote (not to be confused with the old Apple TV Remote) and pressing the mic button just opens the Search app.

This is despite the fact Siri on iPhone is actually available in 30 countries, so it wasn’t clear why Apple had pinpointed only a subset of those. It turns out, according to a chat with Apple by MacPrime, that there are some clever optimizations Apple makes with Apple TV Siri to improve speech recognition.

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Just a few days after the retail launch of the fourth-generation Apple TV set-top-box, Apple has seeded the first beta of the device’s first software update to developers. The new version, labeled tvOS 9.1, is available for download via the developer center, much like iOS and OS X betas have been seeded. The release notes for tvOS 9.1 indicate improvements coming to WiFi network compatibility, in-app-purchases for App Store apps, and improved scrolling. This update needs to be downloaded to a computer and then installed to the set-top-box via a USB Type-C cable. Apple today also seeded the second betas of iOS 9.2 and OS X 10.11.2 to developers.

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When the new Apple TV launched last week, one notable omission in the tvOS App Store were Top Charts like we are used to seeing on iOS devices. The obvious reason for this omission seemed to be that Apple didn’t have enough data collected to populate top charts, but now that appears to have changed…

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The official Plex app for Apple TV is now available in the App Store. Plex is a media server for video, TV shows, music and photos. The app is fully featured, with quick access to search, playlists and more from the top bar. It also tracks your currently playing items so you can quickly pick up with a show or film from where you left off. The app incorporates channel streaming of content like TED, Revision3 and more as well as video queues from YouTube and Vimeo.
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