Posts tagged with "tvOS"

GoodLinks 2.0: The Automation-Focused Read-Later App I’ve Always Wanted

One of my greatest frustrations with read-later apps is how hard most make it to get your data out on your terms. Few allow you to export links using Shortcuts or some other system, and even fewer offer to do the same with highlights – until now. With version 2.0, GoodLinks adds highlighting and note-taking combined with excellent Shortcuts support, giving users full access and flexibility to incorporate saved URLs, highlights, and notes into their workflows however they want.

Thanks to Obsidian’s deep catalog of plugins from third-party developers, it’s been possible to import highlights from read-later apps like Readwise Reader and Amazon’s Kindle app for some time. Those are good solutions when I’m working in Obsidian, but both I and our readers use lots of different apps. That’s why I was so glad to see GoodLinks (available for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac) get this major 2.0 revision that transforms it from a place to save links and articles to a more well-rounded research tool, thanks to highlighting and notes.

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tvOS 18: The MacStories Overview

Yesterday, during its WWDC 2024 opening keynote, Apple officially revealed its latest software story for Apple TV. Coming this fall, tvOS 18 introduces new intelligence-based features such as InSight and on-device Siri, native 21:9 aspect ratio support, new screen savers, and a host of noteworthy additions to enhance the at-home TV viewing experience. Let’s jump into everything new coming to Apple TV.

InSight

Apple’s video player is somewhat of a hidden gem when it comes to playback and controls for audio and captions. A few years ago, the company expanded its functionality with a quick swipe down gesture revealing an Info panel with details of the currently-playing content and quick access to the user’s Up Next queue. Premiering this fall is a new feature nestled between those two elements called InSight.

A new addition to Apple TV+, InSight gives users real-time access to information about the actors and their characters onscreen, as well as the soundtrack in a given scene, allowing viewers to quickly add that song or musical performance to an Apple Music playlist to enjoy later. Much like Amazon Prime Video’s X-Ray feature that came before it, there’s lots of fine granular detail that could be added to InSight before its fall launch, but this is a great start.

In addition to accessing InSight on the big screen, users will also be able to view real-time actor, character, and music information through the Remote app found in Control Center on iOS and iPadOS, allowing access to the same information for a distraction-free experience when watching with friends and family.

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Apple TV Go: How a USB-C Mod Spiraled into an iPad-Based tvOS Workstation

Apple TV Go.

Apple TV Go.

This time of year is one that’s always filled with anticipation for what’s upcoming for both developers and users of Apple’s platforms. And while many traveling to Cupertino will be focused on the iPhone in their pocket or the iPad or MacBook that regularly travels with them, for an Apple TV aficionado, it’s a different story.

As I packed for my first WWDC last year, I had a moment of self-reflection. Did I really need to pack an external display, ATEM switcher, HDMI splitters, HomePod minis, controllers, multiple Apple TVs, and an eight-gang multi-plug extension lead into my carry-on in anticipation of a noteworthy software story for Apple TV?1 After all, the year prior had developers and fans giving their best impersonations of confused John Travolta following a largely absent year for tvOS.

Thankfully, WWDC23 was a different story, with a surprisingly ambitious tvOS 17 release full of improvements and features I couldn’t wait to try. But while other attendees could go hands-on with the first developer betas of their favorite platforms with relative ease, given the nature of Apple TV hardware, I had to head back to the apartment I was staying at whenever I wanted to get hands-on time with tvOS.

Somewhere in the Apple TV multiverse, there was a USB-C powered device that I could carry with me for quick reference, whether at Apple Park or a south London coffee shop during my writing process for last year’s tvOS review. Somewhere, there was an iPad-like device that could run tvOS, offering a superior software alternative to the plentiful supply of affordable, battery-powered Android portable projectors.

Although neither of those products have yet to enter our own Apple TV universe, the introduction of iPadOS 17 and its support for UVC (USB Video Class) devices had my imagination running wild at the possibilities for this year. I needed to become the hero of my own story and create the on-the-go tvOS workstation I envisioned by braving the world of hardware modification and building my very own Apple TV Go.

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Apple Announces Apps of the Year

Today, Apple unveiled the winners of its annual App Store Awards in 10 categories. Earlier this month, Apple revealed almost 40 finalists across its award categories for their innovation and excellence.

As in the past, this year’s winners represent a broad cross-section of the App Store:

Apps

iPhone App of the Year: AllTrails, from AllTrails, Inc.

iPad App of the Year: Prêt-à-Makeup, from Prêt-à-Template. 

Mac App of the Year: Photomator, from UAB Pixelmator Team.

Apple TV App of the Year: MUBI, from MUBI, Inc.

Apple Watch App of the Year: SmartGym, from Mateus Abras.

Games

iPhone Game of the Year: Honkai: Star Rail, from COGNOSPHERE PTE. LTD.

iPad Game of the Year: Lost in Play, from Snapbreak Games.

Mac Game of the Year: Lies of P, from NEOWIZ. 

Apple Arcade Game of the Year: Hello Kitty Island Adventure, from Sunblink.

Cultural Impact

For the App Awards Cultural Impact category, Apple picked five apps and games, which the company chose for their “ability to drive positive change through apps and games:”

Pok Pok from Pok Pok

Proloquo from AssistiveWare*

Too Good To Go from Too Good To Go

Unpacking from Humble Bundle

Finding Hannah from Fein Games GmbH

As always it’s great to see some of the MacStories Team’s favorite apps on this list, including Pok Pok, Photomator, and SmartGym. Congratulations to the developers of all the winning apps and games.

Play 2.0 Adds YouTube Channel Support, Folders, and a New Premium Subscription

Marcos Tanaka’s Play has become the way I watch YouTube, which isn’t something I expected would happen as much as I’ve enjoyed the app since its launch early last year. The app, available on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV, started as a way to save YouTube links to watch later. That made Play indispensable for keeping track of videos in a way that is similar to how I save articles I want to read later in Matter.

With version 2.0, Marcos has transformed Play from a utility where I save links for later to how I find videos and watch them in the first place. The big difference is that Play now allows users to manage YouTube channels inside the app. I still come across YouTube links on social media, iMessage conversations, on the Club MacStories Discord server, and elsewhere that I add to Play using its excellent share sheet integration. However, with support for YouTube channels, I now have a chronological list of everything published by my favorite channels delivered to an inbox where I can quickly pick the ones I want to watch, which is wonderful.

If that sounds a lot like RSS, that’s because it is. That’s how I prefer to scan my favorite websites for articles to read, and now, it’s how I’m watching my favorite YouTube channels.

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A Quietly Big Year for tvOS→

Speaking of catching up on my reading queue: here’s Chris Welch, writing at The Verge last week about tvOS 17:

tvOS 17 isn’t trying to reinvent any of this. There are now six icons in each row, so you can add yet another app to your main “dock” at the top of the screen, but that’s about as exciting as the big interface changes get. Apple no longer seems preoccupied with becoming some all-encompassing aggregation hub for streaming entertainment, and there are good reasons for this. The company’s pipe dream of streaming content from popular third-party subscription services directly from the Apple TV app quickly fell apart. Netflix refuses to play ball with any effort to create a universal watchlist outside of the confines of its own app — whether it’s from Apple, Google, or anyone else — so what’s the point? Things are now more fragmented than I’d like, but it’s the content owners and streaming services putting those walls up for their own self-interest.

So instead, Apple is making improvements and touching up areas of the Apple TV experience that it can fully control. And it’s starting with one of the iPhone’s first major ecosystem tricks.

Chris put together a great list of changes coming to tvOS this year, most of them revolving around the ecosystem advantage Apple has compared to their competitors in this field. Rather than trying to beat Google and Amazon on price, Apple is finally leaning into the unique feature they have: iPhone owners who also have an Apple TV.

My favorite change coming in tvOS 17, however, is something that will allow me to stop using my iPhone when watching TV: VPN apps.

For years I’ve been forced to watch HBO content1 with a fake US account by starting playback on the iPhone and AirPlaying the video stream to my Apple TV. Later this year, I’ll be able to install a VPN app directly on the Apple TV and stream content on it without having to worry about my iPhone and AirPlay. Good riddance.

  1. I refuse to call it “Max” now. Sometimes I wonder how some companies can even come up with some names. ↩︎
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Six 8BitDo Controllers Add Support for Apple Hardware

Source: 8BitDo

Source: 8BitDo

8BitDo, a popular maker of game controllers, announced today that six of its products now officially support Apple hardware:

  • 8BitDo Ultimate Controller 2.4g
  • 8BitDo Pro 2
  • 8BitDo SN30 Pro +
  • 8BitDo Pro
  • 8BitDo SN30 Pro for Android
  • 8Bitdo Lite SE

The controller firmware update, which can be applied using the company’s Upgrade Tool, will allow gamers to use 8BitDo’s supported controllers wirelessly with any iOS, iPadOS, macOS, or tvOS game that has adopted Apple’s game controller APIs. Playing wired is also supported on iPads and Macs with USB-C ports.

According to 8BitDo, up to four controllers can be connected at once for games with multiplayer support, but rumble and motion control are not supported “for the moment,” suggesting that a future update may support those features. Links to detailed directions and illustrations of how to connect 8BitDo’s controllers are available by hovering over the images of the controllers on the company’s dedicated Apple device webpage.

I have a bunch of the controllers for which Apple device support was announced, and I can’t wait to try them. A couple of the controllers I have already have some basic support for Apple devices, thanks to compatibility with Sony and Microsoft controllers. However, the firmware update should extend the functionality of the controllers to the full set of features that Apple now supports.

Apple Releases Betas with Face ID Plus Apple Watch iPhone Unlocking, App Tracking Transparency, and Other New Features

Betas of iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS are out today with some interesting features. Last week on World Privacy Day, Apple announced that App Tracking Transparency is coming in the spring, so it’s no surprise that iOS and iPadOS 14.5 include the feature. However, there are several other features coming in the next round of OS releases, as summarized by Rene Ritchie in this tweet:

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tvOS 14: The MacStories Overview

Apple announced a lot of new software improvements during yesterday’s WWDC keynote, but time was short and one major platform didn’t receive its own segment: tvOS 14. Apple announced new tvOS features as part of its discussion of the home, but fortunately that doesn’t mean the latest Apple TV software release is light on improvements. In addition to features like HomeKit integration, new controller support, and improved Picture in Picture, tvOS 14 will offer a variety of other important updates when it launches this fall.

Here’s my overview of all the best new features.

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