Whoever is logged into the Storehouse app on the Apple TV is the owner of the story. But the TV of the future should make all of that content available to you, seamlessly and with such a consistent interface and streaming quality that it doesn’t matter where a show or movie is hosted. It could still happen (likely through a partnership) but I don’t envision it anytime soon.
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For Apple, this type of reaction to Apple TV is important.
It all leads up to a good product that will especially appeal to those invested in the Apple ecosystem. But with this new Apple TV things have changed. I wish it were cheaper.
The $99 Roku 4 set-top box competes with Apple TV, as do Amazon’s $99 Fire TV 2 and Google’s $99 Nexus Player.
Holding the remote sideways, I steered a auto (badly) through the Asphalt 8 racing game app from Gameloft.
“I don’t know when, if ever, Apple will reinvent TV”, Mossberg says. “I’ve seen remotes with 51 buttons, magic wands you end up waving around in the air like you just don’t care, even coffee table mouse-and-keyboard rigs”. Apple TV supports Bluetooth wireless headphones but they need to be purchased separately.
Pre-order for the fourth generation Apple TV has started, and the price starts at $149 for the 32 GB model and $199 for the 64 GB variant. At this stage, music appears to be the remaining piece of the puzzle.
Still, Siri can be very helpful.
Using Siri, one can control playback asking to rewind or forward accordingly.
Siri users have recently discovered that if you ask certain music questions, she gives you kind of a passive aggressive answer. It’s still early days, but access to more apps has the potential to overcome numerous limitations of the old Apple TV3 as well as bringing casual gaming to the big screen. That may sound trivial, but other efforts to make apps work on TVs have been comically complex.
Networks like CNN and ESPN are also updating their existing apps for the new box.
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It should be noted that Apple has never created an app that can play content purchased in its iTunes store. There isn’t a single place to get all of the movies and shows you want, and you can’t watch everything you want without signing up for at least a handful of accounts and subscriptions. Even your own iPhone is turning against you…until you pay up. Alas, major apps such as Amazon, Facebook and Instagram are among the missing, for now. When you install streaming apps like Hulu and Netflix from the App Store, you type in your login credentials by swiping left and right with the remote to select letters of the alphabet one at a time – you have no option to do this by speaking into the microphone or using a keyboard on a smartphone.
