Apple TV

Alongside updates to iOS and OS X, Apple has released watchOS 2.0.1 with a whole host of changes and bug fixes. As well as including the new emoji character set like Apple’s other operating systems, watchOS 2.0.1 includes bug fixes for poor battery life, stalling software updates, Calendar event syncing and much more.

It has also seeded developers with the Gold Master release of tvOS for Apple TV. We’ll update with any changes …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Hinting at the sea change that will come to the television and movie industries after the launch of the fourth-generation Apple TV, Disney today announced DisneyLife, a £9.99 ($15.43) per month subscription video, music, and book service that will include Pixar’s entire catalog and classic films such as Snow White and The Jungle Book, report The Financial Times (sub. req.) and Variety. Beyond films, DisneyLife will feature thousands of Disney TV episodes, plus hundreds of books and albums, with new content being added as it’s released. The multilingual service will launch November in the United Kingdom, and is planned for a 2016 rollout across France, Spain, Italy and Germany.

While a U.S. launch has not been ruled out by the company, it’s not imminent, as existing contracts limit what can be offered in Disney’s largest market. As one example, Disney’s upcoming theatrical releases will hit Netflix under previously announced deals for the United States and Canada. According to the report, Marvel movies and Star Wars movies will not be a part of DisneyLife, but could be launched as separate subscription services…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Compared with the runaway successes of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, the Apple TV living room media player hasn’t had a stellar track record. Despite considerable hype leading up to its early 2007 release, Apple declared the first Apple TV “a hobby” shortly after it hit stores, then began a seemingly endless campaign to figure out what people actually wanted it to do. Three years later, a second-gen version refocused on video rentals and added one major feature — AirPlay — to stream and mirror content from iOS devices and Macs. A tweaked third-gen model added 1080p support after less than two years. The modest changes led Apple TV sales to resemble a bunny hill; even Apple’s atypically aggressive price points couldn’t help the devices match the popularity of Roku, Amazon, and Google rivals.

Next week, pre-orders will start for the fourth-generation Apple TV, and it would be easy to say “pass:” none of the prior versions has been fantastic, and once again, Apple deliberately left out an arguably major feature — 4K Ultra HD support — that competitors jumped on, and will probably topline the inevitable fifth-generation Apple TV. But I’d personally suggest that you consider ordering the new $149 Apple TV anyway. Even though its potential won’t really be tapped until (at least) next year, early adopters are about to have a fun ride as it develops into an amazing new living room entertainment platform…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Current Apple TV customers are getting at least one more new wave of channel additions before the focus completely means to the new App Store-based Apple TV on Monday. New channels from CBS, NBC, and the fashion-focused M2M arrived on current Apple TV home screens today, bringing CBS’s subscription service, full episodes of NBC shows, and exclusive fashion videos to the streaming box.
Expand
Expanding
Close

As expected, Tim Cook today took the stage at the Wall Street Journal Digital Live conference for an interview. During his time on stage, Cook discussed a variety of topics, ranging from iPhone to Apple Watch and to Apple Music. The main points are below:

1. New Apple TV available next Monday, Oct. 26, shipping later that week
2. 6.5 million paying Apple Music customers, 15 million total subscribers
3. A focus on CarPlay in the short-term, but the car industry is at an “inflection point for massive change”

Expand
Expanding
Close

I knew Celluon had something special on its hands when I reviewed the $349 pocket-sized video projector PicoPro earlier this year: the Korean company known for laser-projecting keyboards released an iPhone 6 Plus-sized HD projector, capable of simulating a TV using lasers, a speaker, and a rechargeable battery. PicoPro’s projection system was MicroVision-developed and laser-sharp, requiring no manual focus knob — an advantage over rival projectors such as the otherwise more powerful AAXA P700 and ST200, which I subsequently reviewed and liked.

This week, Sony is entering the pico projector market with MP-CL1 ($350), which uses the same MicroVision laser projector found in PicoPro. Sporting the same 1920×720 resolution and putative 32-lumen brightness/80,000:1 contrast ratio as PicoPro, MP-CL1 promises to create a 40-inch TV image at 4-foot distances, an 80-inch image at 8-foot distances, or a (very dim) 120-inch image at 12-foot distances. Sony has pitched it as a “take it anywhere” big screen display for the iPad, iPhone, and PlayStation 4; it’s equally viable for Apple TVs and HDMI-ready Macs. So which is the better value: MP-CL1 or PicoPro?…

Expand
Expanding
Close

After debuting the Apple TV 4 with San Francisco-themed video screensavers, Apple has added some new videos to the queue, including flyover footage of central London (above) and the Great Wall of China (below). Both are found within the Aerial screensavers section, but you can’t specifically choose them, the device just loops the ones Apple pushes to it … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

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, according to reliable sources. It is also likely that the first online orders of both products will reach customers in early November.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple has pushed out the fourth beta version of the iOS 9.1 mobile OS update. The software is designed to fix bugs that appeared in the public build of 9.1 and introduce a few new features, like a larger emoji set and an option to disable contact photos in the Messages app.

Expand
Expanding
Close

The Apple TV is launching later in October but many of the details about the device remain under wraps. At the announcement, Apple announced that the Apple TV Siri universal search feature will include data from iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, Showtime and HBO. Many had hoped that Apple would be more open with this feature, allowing Siri to incorporate data from third-party services without requiring a special Apple partnership. In a move that will please many, Tim Cook has announced that Apple will offer an API for universal search, after all, via an interview with Buzzfeed.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Citing ‘overwhelming demand’, Apple has expanded the number of Apple TV Developer Kits available for registered developers who applied for a chance to receive the pre-release hardware last month. A number of developers (but not all) who previously missed out on the initial wave of test units have been notified by Apple Developer Relations that more dev kits have been made available for $1 and will be available for ordering through next Friday at 5 pm local on October 9th.

Apple TV 4 launches “toward the end” of this month as Tim Cook mentioned earlier this week and will include deep Siri integration and App Store for the first time. Apple first began notifying developers entering the dev kit lottery of their status in mid-September. With third-party apps and games being a major new feature of the new Apple TV experience, Apple clearly wants to give more developers the chance to create software for the new hardware before its release in a few weeks.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Is Apple considering another round of major changes to iOS’s Home screen? If watchOS and tvOS are any indication, the answer could be “yes.” Earlier this year, Apple launched the Apple Watch with a purely text-free Home screen, requiring users to identify 20-some initial apps (and manually-added third-party apps) by icon designs alone. This month, it will release the fourth-generation Apple TV with a refreshed UI, again almost entirely eliminating below-app text in favor of redesigned icons with 3D depth.

While it would be easy to write off Apple’s changes to text labels as one-off decisions for “really small screen” and “really big screen” devices, they collectively raise an interesting question: if developers properly redesigned their iOS icons, would text labels — a staple of graphical user interfaces for decades — really be necessary any more? I’ll take a look at some of the pros and cons below…

Expand
Expanding
Close

A woman receives a package from Amazon that presumably does not contain an Apple TV

If you’re looking to buy an Apple TV online, you may need to look somewhere other than Amazon in the very near future. A new report from Bloomberg claims that an internal email at indicates the retailer will block sales of Apple’s streaming device because it doesn’t support Amazon Prime Video.

Expand
Expanding
Close

The electronics repair site iFixit says that after it published its detailed teardown of the upcoming Apple TV hardware, Apple reached out to say that the company had violated the developer agreement and revoked the account that was used to obtain the device.

Expand
Expanding
Close

With the Apple TV 4 developer kit in the hands of developers, select software makers are experimenting with different ways to take advantage of the iOS 9-based tvOS operating system. Developer Kevin Smith has created a MAME Emulator for the new Apple TV that is based on a similar port for iPhones and iPads. These special software kits allow users to run vintage video games on their modern devices, such as Frogger and Metal Gear Solid.

The video below shows some of these games in action. As MacRumors notes, the A8 chip in the new Apple TV is able to handle these simulated games fairly well. The developer explains on his YouTube channel how the emulator was developed:

Expand
Expanding
Close

With the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus officially going on sale and delivering to pre-order customers over the weekend, it’s just a matter of time before you smash your display to pieces and drain your battery’s capacity. While some screen breaking and defective batteries might be covered under AppleCare and the 1 year hardware warranty included with all iPhones, otherwise you’ll need to refer to one of these handy guides from our friends at iFixit.
Expand
Expanding
Close

On the eve of this year’s iPhone launch, Apple has pushed out an update to the TestFlight application to enable internal testing of apps on tvOS. The Apple TV operating system has is now in its second beta version for users who have access to pre-release hardware.

Developers have been able to test locally on their devices by plugging them directly into Xcode and building their app, but today’s TestFlight update will allow them to distribute the builds over-the-air to other members of the same development team.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple has officially released iOS 9 and watchOS 2 to the public and today we’re getting into a rundown and our first impressions of the new features that come along with these updates. If you’d like to find out more about the top features in iOS 9 you can check out our full rundown here. The Happy Hour podcast is available for download on iTunes and through our dedicated RSS feed.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/225183932?secret_token=s-wnnMn” params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”150″ iframe=”true” /]

Expand
Expanding
Close

Along with the public release of iOS 9.0.1 and the beta release of iOS 9.1, Apple has seeded a second version of the tvOS beta to developers who are running pre-release hardware that was given out earlier this month.

Expand
Expanding
Close