THE REVOLUTION HAS BEEN TELEVISED
How Apple’s TV ‘hobby’ went from zero to hero and revolutionised TV
im Cook was somewhat more effusive of Apple TV at Apple’s September 2015 special event. “This is the new Apple TV,” he said, revealing the fourthgeneration Apple TV, “and we believe it is the future of television.”
Through the lens of today, you’d have to agree that Apple was more on the mark: the newest Apple TV then was not only powerful enough to support 1080p content at 60fps, it brought with it a proper App Store, built on top of Apple’s newly ‘split off from iOS’ tvOS operating system. Third-party apps were available and encouraged, as long as they interfaced with another new feature: the touchpad-equipped Siri Remote, which brought voice search to Apple TV for the first time.
This wasn’t just a box for playing media: it was, at last, a TV computer, extensible and expandable, playing nicely with most streaming services, acting as a HomeKit hub, and supporting 7.1-channel audio. As the landscape changed, Apple continued to change with it.
Siri integration even earned Apple its second Apple TV-related Emmy, the first of which came in 2011 for developing FireWire.
In 2017, Apple rebranded the 32GB fourthgen as the Apple TV HD to make room for the new Apple TV 4K – something Tim Cook called TV’s “next major inflection point”, likening it to the jump between black-and-white and colour TV. Perhaps that was typical keynote bravado, given that 4K streamers had been on the market (and growing in popularity) for a couple of years by the time the Apple TV 4K hit – but there’s no doubt that it was a huge step up. 3GB of LDDR4 tied to Apple’s A10X processor made the Apple TV 4K really fly, easily chewing through 4K footage, supporting HDR10 and Dolby Vision for the first time, and building in Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 audio output. This was now a state-of-the-art streamer. And in May this year, following Apple’s mid-term launch of its own Apple TV+ streaming service, it was superceded again by a second-generation Apple TV 4K both
complementary to the company’s growing content offering and ready for the next generation of home viewing. Sporting an A12 Bionic chip with HDMI 2.1 support, it’s able to deal with high frame rate footage streamed over Wi-Fi 6. It integrates with the iPhone in unique ways, using its built-in light sensor as a calibration tool. It is super cool – a streamer capable of things which are not yet the norm.
Apple TV is on less of a definite cycle than some other products; you’ll see a new iPhone generally once every 18 months, but the gaps between Apple TVs have been between 18 months and, in this latest cycle, almost four years. The next version is likely some way away – which isn’t a problem, because the Apple TV has hit its groove. But it’s a safe bet to suggest that 8K support is in the pipeline somewhere. And might Apple include its own picture processing tech, taking the function away from the TV to give maximum quality to any screen? It might. We’ll have to watch and see.