Finally, we have some reliable info on the next Apple TV. Reputed blogger John Paczkowski (formerly Re/code and AllThingsD) posted today on BuzzFeed some authoritative details on the specs, new features and release date of the much-awaited Apple TV 4.

According to “sources familiar with the company’s plans”,  Apple “intends to show the device off” at the World Wide Developer Conference, expected to be held in early June.

There is a reason Apple chose the developer’s arena. The new Apple TV will sport a redesigned operating system with support for third party apps and of course, have a separate App Store for them. So Apple wants its developer community to get to work as early as June and populate the App Store by the time Apple TV 4 reaches the hands of users.

Hardware wise, the refreshed Apple TV will reportedly pack an A8 chip or at least a variant of it, making it much more powerful and a huge improvement over the current single-core A5 ones.

New Apple TV will also harbor a better flash drive with much larger capacity than the present 8 GB ones. The set-top box is said to come with a redesigned, tactile remote too.

The Apple TV 4 will also bear an intuitive user-interface and voice navigation feature like the Amazon Fire TV, thanks to Siri integration.

And as we heard before, the new Apple TV will also be instrumental in remotely controlling your HomeKit smart devices via Siri.

Paczkowski reports:

Sources say Apple’s new Apple TV is a significant overhaul of the device, one intended to undergird Apple’s vision of what the TV viewing experience should be […]

If I’m understanding the company’s strategy correctly, the new Apple TV isn’t just a play for a stake of the streaming TV market, but for the mythical digital living room. Think TV, music, apps and a little bit of home automation as well.

Reading along the other recent rumors, the video content available on the Apple TV 4 will be more appreciable to cord cutters too, as it will come with Apple’s own streaming service and the HBO NOW service.

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9to5Mac’s Senior Editor, Mark Gurman is riding a high tide now, as most of his predictions regarding the Apple Watch and the new ultra-thin MacBook were proven right. In an interview given to CNBC, Gurman shares his views on where Apple TV is going and the possibility of an Apple television set.

Along with other Apple stuff, the CNBC reporter asked Gurman about his thoughts on the $30 price cut for Apple TV 3 and the 3 month exclusivity of HBO NOW for Apple TV. This is what he had to say:

I think this $69 price point ($30 price drop) is a big deal because it indicates that they try to make room for something. They are trying to sell a lot of these Apple TVs. They are trying to use it as a marketing tool to really allow for customer discovery of these living room solutions. So I think it is a big deal in getting the Apple TV out there.[..]

Even bigger is the HBO exclusivity deal because it represents that the Apple TV with the cable networks and show providers have the technology to do a subscription service without the cable box. And I think HBO is just the first of many.

And I think the overall solution Apple has in the works is just a bunch of different programs and apps, that are not on a pay-per-view subscription but like perhaps a weekly, monthly or yearly plans.

Gurman was also asked about the possibility of a standalone Apple TV set:

I don’t think [Apple TV set] is currently in the works or is currently the plan. I think the plan is to make a groundbreaking new set-top box that really changes the model path of how people get TV. I think more services-backed model is where they are headed instead of screen-based hardware.

I think the next version of Apple TV, in terms of appearance, will look really a lot like the current one. It probably will be thinner, have a larger more tactile remote control. But in terms of a screen-based set, I don’t think that is happening in the near future.

You can catch the whole 5 minute interview here.

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For the past half a year, rumors had been continuously pointing towards a March, 2015 launch of the much awaited Apple TV 4. And when the Spring Forward event was announced to be held on March 9th, many of us hoped the revolutionary new Apple TV to be Tim Cook’s One more thing for this event.

Althought 9to5Mac’s Mark Gurman reports that the refreshed Apple TV won’t make an appearance on the Monday’s event, the good news is that according to his sources, “Apple is finishing up work on a slimmer Apple TV set-top-box with a more capable and tactile remote control and a redesigned operating system bundled with an App Store.”

Though the launch date for Apple TV 4 is not available, Gurman expects it to be released in Q4, judging by other products in Apple’s 2015 pipeline.

The reason for this delay remains the same as before – “the content roadblocks”, as Apple is struggling to obtain rights from multiple content owners and broadcasters.

Except for the release dates, his report on the next Apple TV is consistent with what we’ve heard before. The new Apple TV will sport a new design and come packed with its own App Store.

The Apple TV 4 will have a thinner footprint and the remote will be more capable and tactile, sources say.

The next Apple TV will also have the current Beats Music channel replaced by a standalone Beats streaming service too.

The new iTunes music streaming service is based on technology acquired from Beats Music, including curated playlists, cloud-based libraries, and offerings customized to the musical tastes of individual users. The service will be priced as high as $7.99 per month, which is less expensive than current $9.99 pricing for Beats Music, Spotify, and Rdio.

Despite all these reports, if you’re feeling really optimistic about the March 9 event, you can catch it live directly on your Apple TV.

Even if the Apple TV 4 isn’t announced, there’s enough reasons for us to celebrate the Apple Watch launch as I have discussed in this post.

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There is no doubt Apple will release a new Apple TV model sooner or later, the only question is when. According to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, the Apple TV 4 could be launched this fall:

With WWDC just four months away (likely June 2015), we believe talk about an update to Apple TV (not a television) could pick up over the next few months. Despite our belief in an actual television being unrealized so far, we continue to believe that TV is an area of focus for Apple and the most likely area for innovation now that the Apple Watch has been announced. We believe the most likely path to a TV would be an update to the Apple TV hardware and software that potentially integrates content, gaming, and HomeKit in the fall of 2015 and a television at least a year later. As we move toward the Apple Watch launch in April, we believe investors will be looking for the next big new product for Apple, which we believe will be focused around the TV.

Gene Munster is known for his predictions on Apple’s television set. Well, failed predictions, to be exact. But reading together with other rumors we’ve been hearing about the new Apple TV, we can be sure of one thing – the Apple TV 4 is real and is coming out for sure.

Also read:

• New beta turns Apple TV into the master of HomeKit

• Forbes: Apple TV will be the center of Apple’s smart home

• After Apple Watch, the next big thing is Apple TV

• Apple Watch and AirPlay: what Apple’s smartwatch means to Apple TV users

Be sure to follow Apple TV Hacks on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ for all the latest Apple TV-related news.

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Remember that Add Site hack described by the iOS hacker David Schuetz, last fall? It was a quick trick in 5.x that enabled an Add site button on your home-screen which could be pointed to a media server and the content viewed in an Apple TV styled menu. As it turned out, the hack was revealed a bit a too late, as Apple had already patched it then in the 6.0 update. You can read more about the hack here. After a long research, Schuetz has finally found a way to make ‘Add Site’ work under Apple TV 6.x (details below), what made him wonder: Is this a prelude to wider availability of Apple TV app development? 

[…] If Apple were to open up Apple TV to general development (and they’ve certainly been fielding a lot of new applications lately), then they certainly couldn’t have done that without some kind of control in place.

That’s what I’m kind of hoping: That we’ll see, in the near future, an official way for “everyday” Apple developers to build Apple TV apps, and to distribute them via a new “Channel Store.” Maybe this will even be unveiled with the next major Apple TV update (currently rumored for April).

If Apple wanted, they could’ve completely closed down this bridge, but apparently they didn’t. Instead they made a security booth in the route which opens only to Apple’s approval. Also it is worth noting that this hack was patched even before getting exposed by the hacker. So Apple didn’t patch it to prevent its misuse but was an event already in its roadmap.

As Schuetz suggests, this might be a clue to what we can expect from Apple TV in the future. Any developer could register with Apple, upload a set of videos and start his own channel. In fact, he says that he wouldn’t be surprised to see this feature in the next Apple TV itself. With circulating rumors of a completely revamped iOS-based Apple TV 4 with a new interface, games and its own App Store, we couldn’t help but agree with him.

How to get Add Site hack working under Apple TV 6.x

After Apple patched the hack in the 6.0 software update, everyone was busy trying to find a way around this patch and to get back the Add Site button. It was found that if you add the profile in 5.3 and then update to 6.0, the profile setting would indeed be preserved. However Apple seems to check for additional icons on home-screen and hide them automatically, thereby making the provision unusable.

Schuetz is back to the rescue. He has done a deep exploration into the patch and here is the conclusion:

So the only way to make ‘Add Site’ work under Apple TV 6.x (ignoring any unfortunately-still-speculative jailbreaks) is to:

1. Retrieve the target Apple TV’s unique device identifier (udid)
2. Using your app’s Merchant ID, create the string “”
3. Get Apple to sign that string with the appropriate private key
4. Include that signature in a configuration profile that enables the Add Site application
5. Get Apple to sign the profile
6. Install the profile on the Apple TV from step 1

If you’re a developer or a coding nerd, you can see the details here.

Stick around here at Apple TV Hacks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+) for more coverage on the new Apple TV.

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We’ve been waiting for the fourth generation Apple TV for quite sometime now. Initially we thought it would be announced in the iPad event in October, 2013. Later it was speculated that Apple will hold a separate event for the next Apple TV in November. And after the acquisition of PrimeSense, it was deemed that Apple will come up with gesture-recognizing control system for the same. Now, iLounge has learned something exciting and believable from their reliable source. Wait for it.. the next Apple TV will support native gaming!

Yeah, looks like another Christmas is upon us, Apple TV lovers.

According to the report, the Apple TV 4th gen. is already past the development phase and can hit the shelves as early as this March. We’re unaware of any changes in the pricing, design or 4K support but we’re told that it will ship with a revamped iOS-based firmware. An Apple TV App Store will be set up and will include native games.

Apple still seems to be working on Bluetooth controllers for the same but that doesn’t seem to be a great challenge as newer iOS 7 devices already support MFi controllers. And here is the best part for all you current Apple TV owners: the new OS is said to be backward compatible and that means your device can also be upgraded to access the App Store and all its goodies.

So here is what we think.

Unlike many of the previous Apple TV rumors (which we were a little skeptical about), this one seems close to true. Gaming on Apple TV has been rumored for a number of years and it’s become necessary for Apple to finally come up with an Apple TV App Store. However we’re not so positive about the backward compatibility part. In order to play the games on Apple TV you’d need to download them into the device first. The Apple TV 4 will probably come with 40GB or 160GB capacities like the first gen. and wouldn’t have much trouble dealing with this. But how this problem is tackled by the 2nd and 3rd ones has not been proposed by the reports. However, Apple may be preparing a cloud-based gaming system with iCloud, similar to Sony’s PlayStation Now or OnLive – we never know.

Anyway, only time will tell what Apple truly intends to do with their set-top box and hopefully, we needn’t rely on AirPlay mirroring anymore to play Asphalt 8 on the 40-inch screen. Vote below to let us know what you guys think.

Stick around here at Apple TV Hacks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+) for more coverage on the new Apple TV.

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