Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

While Apple had plenty of iPhones and iPad Pros for us to play with yesterday, it was being more reserved with the Apple TV demos—most of its booths were just mini-demonstrations of things that had been shown off onstage. We were able to spend a little bit of time with its new remote, but if you watched the onstage demo you already know most of what there is to know.

The box itself is small and nondescript, and aside from the missing optical audio port (and the addition of USB Type-C as a service port, making it Apple's second official USB Type-C device) there's not a lot to say. You'll be able to tuck it anywhere you can fit a current Apple TV, as long as you have an extra 12mm of height in your TV stand.

The improvements are all on the inside. It has an A8 SoC like the one in the iPhone 6 and sixth-generation iPod Touch, with one key difference: it includes 2GB of RAM instead of 1GB (the same is true of the A8 in the iPad Mini 4). It has 32GB or 64GB of storage for apps and media, and it's been upgraded to 802.11ac Wi-Fi from 802.11n. The old Apple TV really couldn't handle much more than video streaming, but in a lot of ways the new model is just a tiny ARM-based desktop computer.

The UI is similar to the interface on the existing Apple TV, but the faster chip allows for more eye-catching animations and transitions. The whole interface has a lot of "whoosh" to it—whooshing when you enter into an app, whooshing as you swipe through lists of things, whooshing as you bring up and dismiss Siri. More than anything, it's reminiscent of the media browsing experience on modern game consoles, which use their relatively powerful CPUs and GPUs to drive similarly smooth interfaces.

There's a lot about how the Apple TV works that we just can't evaluate right now (the App Store is the biggest), but, if you're watching a demo, it's easy to appreciate how well Siri is implemented here. Unlike on the iPhone and iPad, there's not a wait between hitting the button and waiting for Siri to come up, and, if you're watching something, Siri doesn't automatically pause it. As in the onstage demo yesterday, you can also bring up a small strip of Siri information across the bottom of the screen if you want to look up sports scores or weather or other contextual information about what you're watching. The Apple TV only pauses if you maximize Siri to use the full screen.

This takes the "natural language" and contextual search features that Apple has been working on in iOS and OS X and brings it to a platform where the benefits are more apparent. Your voice is the Apple TV's primary input mechanism, so better understanding of things actual humans would say is a bonus. The ability to quickly view other information without stopping what you're watching is an antidote to picking up your phone or computer to look things up while you're watching TV. We'll need more time to use it before we can declare a final verdict, but Siri is a feature that demoes well.

The Siri Remote, navigation, and gaming

We got just a couple of minutes of time with the new Siri Remote, but at first blush it seems like a big improvement over the current Apple TV remote. The old UI required endless clicking—clicking to navigate, clicking to select, clicking to return to the Home screen. The small touch-enabled strip at the top of the remote is a significant improvement, since so much of the Apple TV UI still involves scrolling horizontally or vertically through lists of items. Bluetooth connectivity is also a nice touch, eliminating the need to maintain line of sight between the remote and the box.

As a game controller, the Siri Remote comes across as a more limited version of the Wii Remote. It can detect tilting and gestures thanks to its built-in sensors, but without the IR sensor bar of the Wii Remote you can't use it to point-and-click things. Apple was demoing Crossy Road and Beat Sports backstage, and these kinds of iOS ports and Wii Sports-esque experiences are probably the best suited to this relatively simple remote.

An Apple rep told us that you couldn't pair multiple Siri Remotes to a single Apple TV for gameplay, but there are other options—any "Made for iPhone" (MFi) game controllers will work with the Apple TV since it's using the same APIs as other iDevices. And some games appear to support using iPhones and other iDevices as secondary controllers, though this seems to be up to the developer.

Those MFi controllers will likely be possible if developers want to bring more console-esque games to the Apple TV, but they've got the same problem as other console accessories do. Developers can assume that every Apple TV includes a Siri Remote, but they can't assume that every Apple TV owner will have an MFi controller. Aiming for the largest possible audience makes the most financial sense, so until there's a proven market there it might be difficult for developers to justify Apple TV console ports.

What about the old Apple TV?

While Apple is still selling the third-generation Apple TV for $69, it seems like it's being left out in the cold. An Apple rep told us that the box would probably still receive "curated" channels occasionally, but there's no Apple TV software update among the iOS 9 GM builds released yesterday, nor is there a tvOS beta for the old box. Apple's comparison page for the products doesn't list Apple Music as a feature of the third-generation Apple TV.

There's nothing stopping the old box from streaming Netflix just as well as it currently does, and its old hardware was never going to be able to handle all of the new stuff the fourth-generation box is bringing to the table. It's just too bad to see it being mostly abandoned—you can still buy it, but it's pretty obvious that you're getting a basic box without much of a future.

Though I came away generally impressed by what the new Apple TV does well, it's not an obvious slam dunk for Apple or consumers just yet. Apple is pushing apps as the future of TV, but while it builds on the Apple TV product line, this new box is essentially an entirely new platform starting from an install base of zero. Support from heavyweights like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO is going to help, but Apple will need to sell a bunch of these to attract sustained interest from developers.

We'll be giving the box and tvOS a full review when they're released in October.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham