Apple TV 2015 Review

Apple have released it’s fourth generation of the Apple TV. If you have used either of the two prior models of the Apple TV (the second generation came out in 2010; the third generation in 2012), there is much that is similar. You still have a home screen with icons, and you scroll down to see more icons. Some features have barely changed at all from the prior model except for an updated interface, such as the ability to use Home Sharing to stream your music, photos and videos from a Mac on your home network that is running iTunes. But one thing is very different, and it has the potential to make the Apple TV infinitely better than prior models: the ability to download apps.

Third Party Apps

When the iPhone App Store was introduced on July 10, 2008, there were 500 apps available. A year later, there were 65,000 apps, and today there are well over a million apps. But even on day 1, many recognized that the true value of the iPhone App Store was its potential. Developers could create apps to give the iPhone, and then the iPad, capabilities that their creators at Apple probably never dreamed of. For example, we now have a large number of fantastic legal-specific apps.

Apps on the Apple TV have the same potential. There are a limited set of TV apps available today, and some of them — like Netflix and YouTube — provide the same capabilities that that had been baked-in to previous versions of the Apple TV. But already we are seeing some pretty neat TV apps. Games were a popular app category on the iPhone, and I’m sure that the same will be true on the TV.

But again, what really interests me is not what is there today, but the idea that the App Store can grow in quantity and quality.

Siri remote

Another new feature of the fourth generation Apple TV is the Siri Remote. As the name implies, you can press a button on the remote to activate Siri and ask it to play movies or TV shows, or even search for specific episodes. This is nice because the alternative way of entering input into a TV device — using a small remote to select letters, one letter at a time — is slow and maddening.

Unfortunately, right now Siri is mostly limited to videos, although there are a few other questions that it can now handle (and I’m sure that this will improve in the future). For now, you sometimes need to provide other text to the Apple TV, such as a username or password, and you have to use the old, slow and maddening method. Fortunately the Apple TV removes a little of that misery by offering to connect to your iPhone and learn some basic information from it, such as your WiFi network and password. Every little bit helps.

The Siri remote also has a touch surface at the top where you can swipe and click to navigate the Apple TV. I find this much easier to use than the old Apple TV remote.

The Siri remote can also measure movement, so you can use it to play Wii-style games on your Apple TV.

Volume buttons on the remote can control the volume on your TV or even on your receiver. There is a fantastic interface for learning your receiver without having to type in four digit codes or anything like that. Just follow the instructions and hold the volume up and down buttons on your receiver’s remote when asked.

Speed and Responsiveness

The new Apple TV uses a much faster processor inside. This is important because the unit is very quick to respond to your controls, which makes the experience of using the Apple TV much better.

Apple also did a nice job with the user interface, with all sorts of little touches that make it super easy to move around the screen. The nice interface makes the Apple TV seem easier to use.

Responsiveness is especially nice when you are watching a video and want to move forward or backward (scrubbing). You can tap the left or right side of the touch pad to jump forward or backward 10 seconds, and doing so is incredibly fast. Or you can slide your finger across the touch pad to move through the video timeline. On many other TV-connected devices, scrubbing is so difficult that I often just don’t do it. But on the new Apple TV, this feature works amazingly well.

Note that Apple sells both a (BHD 60) 32 GB version and a (BHD 80) 64 GB version. The more expensive version has the potential to be even faster because it can store more data locally without the need to stream it. Apple says that the 64 GB version is recommended if you plan to download and play a lot of games. I opted for the 64 GB version just in case it is noticeably better and because the $50 difference is not large, but at this point I have no idea whether the extra memory makes a big difference.

4th generation = 1.0

Apple calls this the fourth generation of the Apple TV, but because this is the first version to run the tvOS system, a close cousin to iOS, in many ways Apple TV has the hiccups of a new version 1.0 product — even when it comes to technology that is under Apple’s own control. For example, Apple TV doesn’t work with Apple’s own Remote app on the iPhone, which is a huge surprise and disappointment because it means that for those times when you need to enter text on the Apple TV, you cannot just use the familiar keyboard on your iPhone.

Another noticeable omission: iCloud Photo Library. My iPhone and iPad now have access to every single one of my almost 50,000 digital photographs because they are stored on iCloud. But this feature doesn’t exist yet on Apple TV. For now, there is a workaround that I noted above — make sure that your computer is on the same network and running iTunes, and use Home Sharing. But the Apple TV would work better with the same full photo access that exists on iOS devices. I’m sure that this is coming in an update, but I was surprised that it wasn’t ready on Day 1.

I’m sure that Apple was eager to get something on the market in time for the holidays and had to leave a few unfinished features for a future update. Nevertheless, it is a shame that the device has some missing pieces. Fortunately, other functions on the Apple TV work great, and I have no doubt that Apple will soon release software updates to address these and other initial limitations.

Conclusion

The 2015 version of the Apple TV has a few missing features, but it is still an amazing device today and will get even better with a few updates. It is clearly the first step towards a much better TV experience. It will be great fun to see what developers come up now that they can create apps.