If it's October, it must be pumpkin spice everything time, and Apple release season. Unsurprisingly (given the preponderance of rumors) Apple released a new version of the Apple TV this year, and it started shipping today. This new generation of Apple TV doesn't yet have a unified TV subscription service, but it does have Apple's A8 processor, and a new TV-specific app ecosystem. We gave it to our
resident Apple TV fiend to beat on in his living room -- read on for his first impressions of the new set top.
The Apple TV is very much a product that requires the user to live with it for a while, before making any declarations on the true suitability of it. Thus, this feature is just an overview of it, compared to previous models in the living room, and not in a showroom or as an Apple demonstration in controlled circumstances. We'll be publishing a more in-depth review of it in about a month, after its been broken in, and the application ecosystem evolves a bit.
Setup and very first impressions
Yup, its an Apple TV -- and that's a compliment. It fits in the same planar space on an entertainment center as the old one did, and is a drop-in for cabling, assuming that you didn't have an optical audio cable attached. Setup is as easy as it ever was -- when the box is plugged in, it automatically powers up, and syncs with the television or receiver. Our initial setup was with a wired connection, so all we had to do is enter our Apple ID info, and off we went.
We're pleased to report, as we did before, that our initial fears of no iTunes local library streaming were unfounded. It located our iTunes installs fine, and streamed as seamlessly as ever from them. It has simply made the process less obvious and more automatic.
Is it any faster?
As far as performance goes, we ran the AppleTV up against a second- and third-generation Apple TV. On a 802.11n wireless network, the new Apple TV starts playing nearly twice as fast (2 seconds) as the third generation (four seconds), and almost five times as fast as the second generation (9.5 seconds).
On a gigabit wired network, the numbers are even farther apart. While the second generation shaves just half a second off by starting playing after 9 seconds and the third generation saves a whole second, the fourth is also faster. The fourth generation unit takes less than one second to buffer enough to start playing. On a network with an 802.11ac wireless connection, the numbers are very similar -- but remember, the second and third generation units are bound to 802.11n speeds.
We've been testing the unit for a few hours now, and aren't seeing any significant quality differences in image quality -- but we weren't expecting to.
Hey, Siri. Siri? Helloooo? You know what? Forget it.
Siri is one of the keys to the Apple TV, or so says Cupertino. Our primary tester is relatively un-accented, with nothing more distinct than a non-Bostonian New England accent. Think a combination of David Hyde Pierce from
Frasier and Kurt Russell from
Escape from New York. We've got no issues with voice recognition on the iPhone.
We're not thrilled about Siri right now on the Apple TV. It misses more often than it hits, and that's even after repetition several times. We've tried both a living room environment, as well as a quiet office, and both situations are problematic. Microphone, or Siri? Don't know. We'll work a bit more on this going forward -- we suspect that this may be something addressed by Apple in a software patch.
Now featuring tvOS apps
Apple CEO Tim Cook says that the future of TV is apps. Maybe, maybe not. That said, we did test a number of streaming ones, from Netflix to the rest of the available major broadcast channels with our Verizon login information. Here's the first indication that there's no revolution in the living room going on -- sign in to each app, independently. This isn't Apple's fault, really, but there needs to be a unified process here, and we assume Apple's working on such a thing.
We didn't do a lot of game testing (yet) but so far, we aren't thrilled with the Siri Remote or the iPhone as game controllers. We syncronized an older Stratus controller with no issues, and there's a model of it for the Apple TV itself. If you're going to do any significant gaming on it, get a controller is our early advice.
Apps aren't the future of TV, but they are the future of this Apple TV
The new Apple TV is a far cry from evolving the living room right now. The evolution may take place in the fifth generation, with 4K and pass-through HDMI like on the Xbox One, or with Internet-based television subscription service. Until then, its just a nicer Apple TV that can play games.
Should you buy it? The improvement on the Apple TV is warranted, if you've bought into Apple's ecosystem and want the new remote and other new features. We have, obviously, or we wouldn't be working at a journalistic venue with "Mac" in its name. However, if the app ecosystem doesn't shake out well for the new Apple TV, then there's absolutely no compelling reason to get the latest model. So, we'll wait and see how this goes.
The new Apple TV is just an evolution of the Apple TV itself, and little else -- but this isn't a bad thing. It's not going to tip the tables of the living room to Apple's control -- at least not yet. It's a start, though. We'll see what happens throughout the course of the year.
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