Apple is fond of babble out about its four platforms : iOS , macOS , watchOS , and tvOS . But not all four get equal attending . At the company ’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June , Tim Cook and friends enjoin comparatively lilliputian about the next version of tvOS — in fact , somewhat much the only relevant announcement was that Amazon would be bringing its Prime Video app to the platform at some undisclosed sentence in the future .
Those concerned in the Apple TV have thus resort to pull meager selective information from the company ’s tvOS 11 beta . And even what changes have been uncovered there have been passably meager : home screen sync , Night - Shift - esque robotlike light / dark mode switching , and betterment to notice . Meanwhile , even some of the major improvements anticipate by Apple duringlastyear ’s September event have yet to come to fruition : unmarried sign - on , for model , uphold to miss support from the major cable television companies .
As the fourth - multiplication Apple TV approach the two - year mark , perhaps it ’s time for Apple to take another flavor at its localise - top box .
Not all apps are created equal
The big merchandising push for the fourth - generation Apple TV was the declaration that the future tense of TV was apps . Apple was both veracious and wrong in that estimation : yes , accessing content via apps is something that we ’ve all gotten used to over the last several old age . And picking a channel via an icon on a screen is at least marginally more intuitive than cause to remember a number and stop up that into your remote .
But where Apple missed the soft touch was on the potential of apps outside of deplete video content . There really has n’t been a single non - video app on the Apple TV to hit it enceinte . It grow out — surprise!—that what hoi polloi want to do on their TV , primarily , is watch TV .
The one exceptionmightbe plot , but even there , I do n’t think there are many championship that have regain blockbuster success on the Apple TV , especially with gravid competition from people playing game on their iOS devices or on consecrate game consoles .
The innovation of the idea was square : after all , Apple has found capital winner in opening up its other platforms to apps . And it ’s not that it did any harm in letting developer create apps for tvOS ; perchance at some point in the future there will be a killer app . But for the second , tvOS remain a niche platform .
Storage wars
But that presumptuousness that apps would be a big thing on Apple TV also precede Apple to make some other miscalculations . For example , the companycontinues to offer the Apple TVin two model : a 32 GB manakin for $ 149 and a 64 GB exemplar for $ 199 . The troupe seemed to think that it could offer the same specialisation between models as it did with the iPhone or the iPad . The ship’s company ’s explainer says that you should choose the 64 GB form if “ you design to download and apply lots of apps and games , ” but given how flat the app and game market fell , it ’s become jolly clear-cut that 32 GB is more than enough for most people . ( As it twist out , there ’s actually no easygoing room to tally your full store on an Apple TV , but I went through and add up up all my third - party apps and got … under 400 Mbit . Or about half a gigabyte . )
The increase in flash storage on the equipment also helped elicit the price well beyond the price of compete equipment . The most current version ofAmazon ’s Fire TVgoes for $ 90;Roku ’s most expensive set - top boxful , which declare oneself 4 K and HDR , costs $ 110 . for sure , there are advantage to corrupt into Apple ’s ecosystem , but as the owner of a still dead functional first - generation Fire television , I ’d have bother articulating $ 60 worth of benefits .
That Leontyne Price divergence was compounded by the other major “ feature article ” of the quaternary - generation Apple TV : the Siri Remote . As always with Apple , it ’s hard to isolate just how much any particular components cost , but replacing a Siri Remote carries a hefty $ 79 price ticket — and given that it ’s easy to lose the svelte remote in your sofa cushions or break its deoxyephedrine touchscreen , that ’s quite a possibility . And while the Siri Remote does have some good qualities — I like the multi - touch pad when it fall to scrubbing through videos — it ’s just as often a foiling . I ’ve finish up using my Harmony cosmopolitan remote and rarely pretermit Apple ’s own offering .
Single serving
So , where to go from here ? I ’m doubting we ’ll see any major changes to the Apple TV line this spill , but what I’mhopingfor is this : a return to a lower cost Apple TV , somewhere in the $ 70-$99 reach , with a modicum of entrepot , and perhaps a traditional remote control with button . alternatively of building Siri functionality into the remote , the Apple TV should have built - in mics that support “ Hey Siri ” ( or , if you favor to avoid collisions , “ Hey Apple TV ” ) . The Amazon Echo , Google Home , and yes , HomePod , have turn out that both technology and multitude can handle this kind of functionality . If you prefer the Siri Remote , no problem : just buy it as an add - on .
countenance ’s be frank : the awful winner of iOS apps is not going to be repeated on the Apple TV . The fact that we already have portable powerful devices that we can take with us anywhere means that we do n’t need that same functionality on a equipment tied to one room of our house . People do n’t want to read Twitter on their television , or make their shopping inclination , or even order pizza . What they do want is a smart , fast , high - timbre way to watch over telecasting content .
Mono - tasking devices have fallen out of style , but I call back there ’s a unattackable contention for designing to a individual goal when the circumstance is limited , as it is with the TV . The example for the living room is n’t the do - everything nature of the iPhone or iPad , but the focal point of the original iPod . Do one thing , but do it extremely well .
