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Posts tagged with "apple tv"

Apple Airs New ‘The Future of Television’ Apple TV Ad

Apple aired a new one-minute Apple TV ad today, once again highlighting the device’s new Siri features and native app platform.

Your favorite TV shows, movies, games and more are on Apple TV. The future of television is apps.

The commercial – unlike the company’s recent iPhone ads – doesn’t feature any voiceover; instead, it draws from Apple TV’s selection of apps and content to show brief snippets of popular movies and TV shows from Netflix and iTunes, footage from the NBA app, scenes from The Simpsons and Pixar’s Inside Out, and more. As for apps, games such as Asphalt and Guitar Hero Live make an appearance alongside icons of other apps from the Apple TV Home screen.

The commercial is an extended version of Apple’s shorter Apple TV videos and is part of a campaign that also includes billboards reminiscent of the company’s iconic six-color logo. You can watch the video below.

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tvOS 9.1 Brings Remote App Support for Apple TV→

Among the software updates rolled out by Apple today, version 9.1 of tvOS for Apple TV users has also been released with enhancements to navigation and Siri. Most notably, the update restores support for Apple’s Remote app for iOS and it brings Siri integration with Apple Music.

Zac Hall, writing for 9to5Mac:

tvOS 9.1 does indeed add Siri support for Apple Music to all users. Apple’s Remote app also works with the new Apple TV for the first time. Apple released the first software update to the new Apple TV, tvOS 9.0.1, in mid November. The update delivered no new features or visual changes, instead likely focusing on bug fixes and performance improvements.

I was surprised to see that these features weren’t available at launch on the new Apple TV – typing passwords and any other text on tvOS without the Remote app was especially painful. I’m glad tvOS 9.1 has been released before the end of the year.

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Tokens Adds Support for Apple TV Apps→

From the Tokens blog:

Today, we’re proud to launch Tokens 1.5. This update brings support for Apple TV apps and marks an interesting point in the development of the app.

iTunes Connect (iTC) has changed a lot in the years since we first launched Tokens. The first version interacted with iTC entirely by scraping HTML. This technique was inherently slow and fragile. A chain of page requests were required for every query and minor text changes on iTC could break our scraping code. Over the last two years, iTC has improved dramatically in this respect; it is now almost entirely a modern front end web application backed by a JSON API.

If you’re a Mac or iOS developer, Tokens is a must-have. With the latest iTunes Connect changes, the app can even work for users limited to Marketing roles. Tokens is only $29 – a steal considering the time it’ll save you for generating and saving promo codes.

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Apple Debuts Five Short Apple TV Ads Featuring Apps and Games

Apple on Tuesday uploaded the first collection of adverts for the Apple TV since the device was released late last month. Each of the five adverts are short 15 second videos which give a quick introduction to some of the most high profile apps and games that launched with the Apple TV.

The five featured apps are Crossy Road, Asphalt 8, Disney Infinity, Netflix and HBO Now. You can view them all below the break or on Apple’s YouTube account.

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Disney Infinity for Apple TV Offers Nimbus Controller Bundle→

Sarah E. Needleman, reporting for The Wall Street Journal on Disney Infinity 3.0 for Apple TV:

The Apple TV version of Infinity 3.0 includes the pad and the usual figurines but also a wireless controller called Nimbus designed specifically for Apple’s device. It features buttons and analog control sticks that gamers are familiar with, as well as Apple’s Lightning connector. It’s made by SteelSeries, a 14-year-old company that specializes in gear for competitive gamers. The controller also works with games played on iPads and iPhones.

On its own, the Nimbus sells for roughly $50 in Apple’s retail stores. When bought as part of Infinity 3.0, it basically comes at a $15 discount. (The Apple TV version of Infinity 3.0 costs about $100; the console versions run for about $65.)

Obviously, Disney can afford to physically bundle the controller inside the game because it comes with figurines to collect and use. But if I were SteelSeries, I’d be seriously looking at more of these partnerships and discounts for high-profile games coming to tvOS – whether they have a physical counterpart or not.

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Apple Announces Apple TV Tech Talks→

Apple:

The new Apple TV is here, bringing incredible and immersive apps and games to the big screen. Get in-depth technical information on building and designing for tvOS, learn refined coding techniques, and obtain valuable development instruction from Apple experts. Register by November 13, 10:00 a.m. PST for an opportunity to attend a Tech Talk in a city near you.

This year, Tech Talks will be focused on tvOS and will take place in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, Japan, and Australia. Sessions will cover best practices on “designing apps for tvOS, implementing focus-driven user interfaces, integrating the Siri Remote and game controllers, leveraging TVML for media apps, and enabling On-Demand Resources”, plus gaming and graphics, video streaming, and more.

Developers can register here.

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How Apple TV Turned Me Into a Game Developer→

Alexander Repty documents his experience in developing his first game, Cosmos — Infinite Space, which launched last week on iOS and the new Apple TV:

For several reasons, I have never created a game before. This changed on October 30th, 2015, when I released my first one, Cosmos — Infinite Space. In just over seven weeks, I went from not knowing the first thing about making games to having published a complete, viable game on the App Store for two platforms.

This is a great little story, and whilst the app isn’t selling in great quantities, Repty approached the project as a hobby and in that context the result has been terrific. Something that was particularly interesting to me was that Apple’s introduction of Top Charts to the Apple TV’s App Store earlier this week appeared to have quite a meaningful impact on sales of Cosmos. Hopefully yesterday’s introduction of Categories to the Apple TV App Store will be a further boost to Cosmos and other App Store games.

When Apple slowly introduced top charts and categories, the effect on sales was really noticeable. Before the introduction of charts, my sales in Europe were almost double those of the US market. When charts were introduced in the US, sales there started surpassing sales in Europe by over 50%.

After six days on the store now, Cosmos has brought in $463 for us with no sign of slowing down. Even if it were to keep this up, it would not be remotely enough to live off, but it’s nice to see some reward for all the work in addition to all the lessons learned.

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Apple Adds Categories to the Apple TV App Store→

Jeff Benjamin on iDownloadBlog notes that the Apple TV App Store now has a Categories section:

Good news for Apple TV owners looking for better ways to discover new apps on the App Store. After adding Top Charts, Apple has added a new Categories section to the App Store as well. As of now, the Categories section appears to be a bit limited, so far listing only Games and Entertainment.

On Monday it was the introduction of Top Charts to the Apple TV’s App Store, and today it’s the introduction of Categories (albeit limited to just two at the moment). Apple’s listening and (thankfully) moving quickly to address concerns about app discoverability. The next thing that should be on their list, in my opinion, is the ability to link to Apple TV apps and preview them on the web. And whilst we’re on the topic of Apple TV wishes, let’s hope a few developers at Apple have also been re-allocated to quickly update the iOS Remote app to support the new Apple TV.

Although the Categories section appears to be US-only for the moment, this will likely roll-out internationally within a few days. Top Charts was also limited to the US at first, but is now available internationally.

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Plex Now Available on Apple TV, and Apple Adds Top Charts to Apple TV App Store

The highly anticipated official Plex app for the new Apple TV is now available on the App Store as a free download. The Plex Apple TV app can play all of your video, music, TV and photo collections from any computer or NAS device that you install the Plex Media Server on. You can view more screenshots of the Plex Apple TV app on the Plex Blog.

There truly isn’t any other platform we’ve wanted to be on for as long as we have the Apple TV. Today’s the day, and we’re celebrating. The app is free in the app store for everyone, and requires the latest media server.

Meanwhile, Apple appears to have listened to some of the complaints about the lack of discoverability in the Apple TV App Store and added a Top Charts section. Just as it does on iOS, the Top Charts section is broken down into Top Free, Top Paid and Top Grossing lists.

Top Charts is currently limited to the US App Store, but it seems likely that the feature will roll out to international stores over the coming days. Unsurprisingly, the lists for the Top Paid and Top Grossing apps are dominated by games, whilst the Top Free list is mostly occupied by media and entertainment apps. If you don’t have access to an Apple TV or live outside the US, you can see the top 10 apps in each list on MacRumors.

Perhaps in another effort to increase the discoverability of Apple TV apps, Apple has refreshed the App Store Featured page and is now highlighting some new apps. Typically on the iOS App Store they only refresh the App Store Featured page once a week on Thursdays. Hopefully this happens more frequently on the Apple TV App Store, at least until they introduce categories or some other ways to discover apps that aren’t featured or trending.