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Posts tagged with "tvOS"

TV App Review

Today Apple released tvOS 10.1 and iOS 10.2, both of which bring several additions to the operating systems. Chief among all additions, the clear centerpiece of these updates is a brand new app called TV. When Tim Cook announced this app onstage earlier this fall, he plainly stated its purpose: TV exists to create a unified TV experience, one place to access all TV shows and movies.

Does it succeed? Is this the best television experience available today?

Before answering those questions, it’s important to consider the history of underwhelming television endeavors that brought Apple to this point.

Steve Jobs introduced the first Apple TV set-top box over ten years ago, in September 2006. That product unveiling came at the tail end of a keynote focused on the iPod and iTunes, where Jobs announced the additions of Movies and TV Shows to the iTunes Store. At its birth, the Apple TV was not meant to revolutionize television; it was made to support the iTunes ecosystem Apple was building.

Throughout its first three iterations, the Apple TV was never a hallmark product like the iPod, Mac, or iPhone; it was simply a hobby for the company. It was Apple dipping its toes in the TV market. But the fourth generation Apple TV represented a shift. With modern hardware, a new operating system dubbed tvOS, and a vision that the future of TV is apps, Apple dove full force into the television market. It set out to create the best TV experience possible.

The newly released TV app is a significant step forward in realizing that goal.

TV is intended to address a modern issue. While the future of television may be apps, up until now Apple’s implementation of that vision has been lacking; it’s been lacking because the more video apps you have, the more navigating it requires to find the content you love. More time navigating means less time watching. TV was built to solve this problem.

The TV app on tvOS and iOS centralizes content from a wide array of video apps in one place, presenting that content in a simple and familiar interface. No one wants to juggle an assortment of video apps, jumping from one app to another to find the content they’re looking for. We’ve all learned to tolerate it, but none of us wants it. So Apple built TV to be the new hub of our video-watching life.

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Single Sign-on Launches for tvOS and iOS

Today Apple launched its new Single Sign-on feature to all devices running version 10 or later of tvOS and iOS. The feature requires no software update or any other user action to get it.

Announced at this year’s WWDC, Single Sign-on was originally intended to ship with tvOS 10 in September, but ended up being delayed to later in the fall. The feature, which is available only in the U.S., allows users to enter their TV credentials once to gain access to content their TV plan entitles them to from a variety of video apps like NBC or USA NOW. Its delay was a disappointment to anyone who has experienced the annoyance of repeatedly proving that they pay for cable or satellite service. Now that Single Sign-on has officially arrived, its usefulness depends entirely on whether your TV provider is a launch partner.

Apple has a support page listing the details of which TV providers currently support Single Sign-on, and also which apps support the feature.

TV Providers:

  • CenturyLink Prism
  • DirecTV
  • Dish
  • GVTC
  • GTA
  • Hawaiian Telcom
  • Hotwire
  • MetroCast
  • Sling

Apps:

  • A&E (iOS only)
  • Bravo Now (tvOS only)
  • E! Now (tvOS only)
  • Hallmark Channel Everywhere (iOS and tvOS)
  • History (iOS only)
  • Lifetime (iOS only)
  • NBC (tvOS only)
  • Syfy Now (tvOS only)
  • Telemundo Now (tvOS only)
  • USA NOW (tvOS only)
  • Watch HGTV (iOS and tvOS)
  • Watch Food Network (iOS and tvOS)
  • Watch Cooking Channel (iOS and tvOS)
  • Watch DIY (iOS and tvOS)
  • Watch Travel Channel (iOS and tvOS)

Look for Apple to update these lists in the weeks and months to come as more TV providers and apps come on board.

tvOS Apps Can Now Be Purchased on iOS Devices and Macs

When the fourth generation Apple TV was introduced, Apple proclaimed that the future of TV is apps. tvOS debuted complete with its own App Store. The trouble was, though, there was no way to link to tvOS apps or buy them anywhere other than on your Apple TV. All developers could do was ask potential customers to search for their app on the Apple TV App Store, a cumbersome process that made it difficult to acquire new customers.

Apple has been chipping away at the problem all year. In April, it introduced the ability to link to web previews of tvOS apps. The previews didn’t include buttons to buy or download tvOS apps, but it did allow potential customers to read app descriptions and view screenshots. Then in September with tvOS 10, Apple added an automatic downloads option to tvOS. That meant that if a tvOS app was associate with an iOS app, it could be installed automatically on your Apple TV if you bought or downloaded the related iOS app, effectively making the link to the iOS app a proxy for its tvOS counterpart.

Apple TV-only apps can be purchased on the iOS App Store and automatically downloaded to your Apple TV.

Apple TV-only apps can be purchased on the iOS App Store and automatically downloaded to your Apple TV.

Today, Apple added tvOS apps to its iTunes Link Maker web app and enabled tvOS app purchases on iOS devices, even if the tvOS app is available only on the Apple TV. iTunes Link Maker lets you search for and generate links to iTunes content. tvOS app links generated by the iTunes Link Maker open in iTunes on macOS and the App Store app on iOS where the apps can be purchased or downloaded. If automatic downloads are enabled on your Apple TV, any apps acquired this way should show up on your Apple TV the next time you turn it on. Links generated with the iTunes Link Maker also work with the iTunes Affiliate Linking program. This means that for the first time a customer can click or tap a link and purchase a tvOS app without leaving their Mac or iOS device and have it waiting for them they sit down in front of the TV.

This is a welcome change for tvOS-only apps that greatly expands developers’ ability to reach potential customers. The change is not, however, without limits. As of the publication of this article, tvOS apps do not appear to be searchable from the iOS App Store’s Search tab. In addition, tvOS app results are not currently returned when the iTunes Search API is queried, though there seem to have been changes made to the API in anticipation of adding tvOS apps. Notwithstanding those limits, the changes today should help make tvOS-only apps a more viable option for developers.

The TV App as a Supporting Actor

Joe Steel makes a good point in his look at this week’s Apple TV announcements:

Why is TV the app an app and not the Home screen on the device? It’s obviously modeled after the same ideas that go into other streaming devices that expose content rather than app icons, so why is this a siloed launcher I have to navigate into and out of? Why is this bolted on to the bizarre springboard-like interface of tvOS when it reproduces so much of it?

You could argue that people want to have access to apps that are not for movies or TV shows, but I would suggest that that probably occurs less often and would be satisfied by a button in the TV app that showed you the inane grid of application tiles if you wanted to get at something else.

As I argued yesterday on Connected, I think the new TV app should be the main interface of tvOS – the first thing you see when you turn on the Apple TV. Not a grid of app icons (a vestige of the iPhone), but a collection of content you can watch next.

It’s safe to assume that the majority of Apple TV owners turn on the device to watch something. But instead of being presented with a launch interface that highlights video content, tvOS focuses on icons. As someone who loves the simplicity of his Chromecast, and after having seen what Amazon is doing with the Fire TV’s Home screen, the tvOS Home screen looks genuinely dated and not built for a modern TV experience.

I think Apple has almost figured this out – the TV app looks like the kind of simplification and content-first approach tvOS needs. But by keeping it a separate app, and by restricting it to US-only at launch, Apple is continuing to enforce the iPhone’s Home screen model on every device they make (except the Mac).

That’s something the iPad, the Watch1, and the Apple TV all have in common – Home screen UIs lazily adapted from the iPhone. I wish Apple spent more time optimizing the Home screens of their devices for their different experiences.

  1. The Watch is doing slightly better than the other ones thanks to watchOS 3 and its Dock, but the odd honeycomb Home screen is still around, and it doesn’t make much sense on the device’s tiny screen. ↩︎

iOS 10.1 Stands Out Among Updates to All Apple OSes

Apple updated iOS, watchOS, macOS, and tvOS all at once today. Most of the changes consist of bug fixes, security enhancements, and similar updates, but there are also a handful of new features concentrated in iOS 10.1.

iOS 10.1 adds Portrait Mode to the Camera app for iPhone 7 Plus users. Portrait Mode simulates shallow depth of field photos taken by DSLR cameras by creating a depth map using the dual cameras of the 7 Plus. The result is a foreground image in sharp focus with a blurred background.

In the Photos app, iOS 10.1 improves the display of wide color gamut photos when viewed in the app’s preview grid. In addition, the names of people associated with photos are now included in iCloud backups.

Maps added transit support for the cities of Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya in Japan. Sign-based transit navigation, including the layout of underground structures and walkways in large transit stations, and fare comparisons when viewing alternate transit routes were also added to Maps.

iMessage bubble effects, including ‘slam’ and ‘gentle,’ as well as full-screen effects like ‘balloons,’ ‘confetti,’ and ‘lasers’ can now be replayed in Messages. When you receive a message with effects, iOS 10.1 displays a little replay button below the message. With bubble effects the replay button appears regardless of whether the message you receive is text or a photo. iOS 10.1 also allows users to play effects if Reduce Motion is turned on in the Accessibility settings. In addition, the iMessage app browser has replaced page indicators with a scroll bar so users with lots of sticker packs and iMessage apps no longer have page indicators spilling outside the bounds of the controls below the browser.

In the Activity app, iOS 10.1 adds distance and average pace to workout summaries for outdoor wheelchair run pace and outdoor wheelchair walk pace activities.

Similar to changes to Messages in iOS 10.1, watchOS 3.1 adds the ability to replay messages received with bubble and full screen effects and play effects with Reduce Motion enabled. watchOS 3.1 also includes a handful of bug fixes.

Version 10.12.1 of macOS Sierra primarily improves the ‘stability, compatibility, and and security’ of Macs running Sierra. The update adds a new smart album to the Photos app that collects ‘Depth Effect’ photos taken in Portrait Mode using an iPhone 7 Plus. Sierra also includes improved compatibility with Microsoft’s Office Suite when iCloud Desktop and Documents is turned on.

tvOS received a minor update that fixes unspecified bugs and improves security.

tvOS Adds Dark Mode, Siri Enhancements, and More

The fourth generation Apple TV was introduced almost exactly one year ago. Since then, Apple has continued to incrementally improve tvOS, the iOS-based operating system that controls the Apple TV. With the release of tvOS 10 today, Apple has extended the capabilities of features like Siri, added functionality to apps like Photos and Music that bring those apps in line with iOS 10, and improved the user experience with new features like a dark mode and single sign-on. Together, these features make for a more polished tvOS experience that should enhance customers’ enjoyment of the Apple TV without introducing radical changes to how the device works.

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Joe Steel’s tvOS Wish List→

I haven’t read many tvOS wish lists this year (primarily because I don’t use my Apple TV very often), but I found Joe Steel’s tvOS wish list to offer a lot of interesting ideas, such as a UI for live programming:

Apple could offer a mechanism for an installed app to register that it offers live video, and to detail what the programming for that live video is. Only the applications that are installed would be present, and their programming viewable while watching another video stream. Potentially you could even ask Siri “What’s on?” to pull up the guide. Or ask “When are the Oscars on?” and get that familiar, linear bar of what’s available.

Let’s not forget that “live TV” isn’t typically live, it’s just an linear stream of shows and ads set to play at given times. That linear stream is a useful way (but not the only way) for people to find new shows thanks to the serendipity of turning on a TV during a certain time slot. Techies might scoff at such notions, but … like it’s a thing.

His thoughts on backups, App Store, and the Remote app are also spot-on.

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Apple Posts Apple TV Tech Talks Videos→

Apple:

Over the past few months, developers around the world learned how to design and develop apps and games for Apple TV directly from Apple experts. Now you can share in the experience by watching all the session videos from the Apple TV Tech Talks.

Good starting point for developers who are considering tvOS apps, and useful for
those who have already launched TV apps, too. You can watch the videos here.

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