One of the unique announcements Apple made at its WWDC, 2014 was the new Continuity suite of features for iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, which will enable users to easily switch between any of their Apple devices. For instance, you could start typing an email on your iPhone and just open your Mac and continue typing there, right from where you left. And as it turns out, Apple TV will also receive a piece of this innovation just like we predicted.

As reported by 9to5Mac, notifications like below are popping up on Macs of developers who are connected to the same network as Apple TV running the latest 7.0 beta firmware. Hence it’s been confirmed that Apple TV will carry a portion of the Continuity suite in the next major public update, but it’s still unclear as to what features are being introduced.

At this time, only speculations and guesses by developers are out in the web and they expect Continuity on Apple TV to be AirPlay taken to the next level. No need for manually connecting to your set top box every-time you need to airplay; Apple TV could sense whenever you’re in the vicinity and if you’re watching a video or listening to a song or viewing some pics, “Presto!”, its now showing on your HDTV. Even Apple TV channels may be able to work along side their corresponding iOS apps, like Netflix. Start watching Breaking Bad on iPad in your bedroom and walk into the living room only to see that it automatically pops up on your TV. Sounds exciting!

The fact that Continuity needs Bluetooth 4.0 to work with and that the latest Apple TV 7.0 beta has dropped support for Apple TV 2 (no Bluetooth 4.0) also reinforces our assumptions. Anyway, Apple is always full of surprises and only a couple of months through the calendar will tell us what they’re actually planning.

Read more on the other new iOS 8 features for Apple TV – Peer-to-peer AirPlay and iCoud Family Sharing
So what do you guys thinks about Continuity on Apple TV? Let us know in the comments section below. And be sure to follow Apple TV Hacks on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ for all the latest Apple TV-related news.

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WWDC 2014 is over, and noticeably absent from last week’s keynote and sessions was any mention of the Apple TV. For a billion dollar product, this silence from Apple means one of two things: it could mean the business isn’t important, or more likely, it could mean that there are big things coming that aren’t ready for public consumption. Taking the assumption for the moment that a mere billion dollars is important to Apple, let’s review the announcements made last week and see how they may apply to the Apple TV product line.

(Reading between the lines of Apple’s announcements is often very telling. For example, prior to the iPhone 5 announcement, at WWDC Apple announced “auto layout” for iOS apps. On its own, it was a well-received feature, but in light of different screen sizes of the rumored new iPhone models, that feature took on a whole new perspective.)

Announcements last week that show promise:

Metal

Possibly the most interesting announcement for future Apple TV potential is the announcement of Metal. Metal is a set of developer API’s that allow “bare metal” access to the full graphics capabilities of the underlying hardware.

The game demos that were shown were fairly incredible for an iPad, and showed the hardware that Apple ships is getting closer and closer to “console-level” graphics capabilities. Granted, the demo was shown on an iPad Air, which greatly out-performs the current Apple TV products, but the Apple TV is overdue for a hardware refresh.

With most consumer televisions supporting 1080 resolution, an Apple TV with equivalent hardware specs as the iPad Air would outperform the Air. Not until TV’s reach 4k resolution does a television surpass the Air’s resolution.

HomeKit

There was a fair amount of unsubstantiated rumor and buzz around HomeKit prior to the announcement, with some proclaiming that Apple would “own” the home automation market. Instead, what Apple did is much more powerful – they have created an underlying architecture and set of API’s that enable developers to standardize the interaction of their devices and integrate different vendors seamlessly.

The ability to control home alarms, thermostats, and lights is very powerful. Having the ability to leverage this information in your home from the largest screen you own would hopefully be an area of expansion as this technology is adopted, and combined with Siri would be an even more powerful offering.

Siri

There are a couple of interesting tidbits surrounding Siri. Obviously, expansions in supported languages and overall capabilities is always interesting, but also fairly expected. Song recognition would be a feature that could be interesting for home use, and the ability to purchase content via iTunes store lays even more groundwork.

But there is one feature that would be essential to have Siri become a core part of Apple TV. The announced “always on” feature is the one. “Hey Siri, let’s watch some football” would seem to be a very Apple-ish way of approaching the living room. It will be interesting to see if this feature moves to the TV.

Continuity and indoor location API’s

This announcement has the most “start into my crystal ball to see the future” around it. With Continuity, Apple is likely using Bluetooth LE (think iBeacon) capabilities in their devices to determine when you are typing an email on your iPad and walk up to your Mac, and transfer the document and state of one device to another.

Obviously this is a “cool” technology, but if you apply it to the Apple TV, the feature takes on a whole new perspective. Apple could expand this capability to allow you to transfer the viewing of a YouTube or iTunes video directly to the Apple TV rather than AirPlay it.

But even more interesting is the overall concept of location-awareness. If the Apple TV knew that your iPhone was in the room, when you launched the “Remote” app on your iPhone, it would pick the appropriate Apple TV rather than making you select.

AirPlay could default to the nearest device. Content on the TV could automatically be selected based on the current user. Age restrictions could be automatic based on the devices in range. Many, many possibilities.

Photos

Apple has “upgraded” their photos support from iOS devices, allowing photos to be hidden, storing all photos in the cloud, and streamlining the uploading and editing of cloud-based photos. As photos are already supported on the Apple TV using the current iCloud services, we can safely assume that the new capabilities will likely be supported as well.

Family Sharing that allows family members to share purchases from iTunes (music, movies, tv shows) and the App Store (games!), as well as a family calendar and photos looks very promising, too.

And let’s not forget that in iOS 8, AirPlay will use peer-to-peer to connect to the Apple TV, letting us share the content from the iOS device on the big screen much easier and faster.

Another WWDC, another year, and no Apple TV public API support. Yet Apple has continued to lay more and more groundwork so that if, and hopefully when, they do open up the Apple TV to developers, it will be with a set of mature and extensive capabilities.

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

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The last thing to pop up between you and that awesome presentation you’ve been working on for months, should be the inability to find the local WiFi password at the correct time. However, that seems to happen frequently enough as to warranted a response from Apple. One of the new iOS 8 features which Apple failed to mention during the WWDC keynote is the new peer-to-peer connection for AirPlaying to Apple TV.

Till now, you needed to connect both your Apple TV and your iPhone or iPad to the same WiFi network to AirPlay content, but now is Apple is changing the way AirPlay works in iOS 8 by adding peer-to-peer, the same protocol which it used in AirDrop to share files.

Though Apple din’t brag about it in the WWDC, this new addition is featured in the Enterprise section of the iOS 8 microsite of the website.

Peer-to-peer AirPlay discovery and playback.
With iOS 8, you can wirelessly connect iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch to Apple TV without first connecting to the organization’s network. Which means you can present or share your work even if you’re offline or the organization has a complex network.

So now you can just hang around your Apple TV and it will automatically show up on your AirPlay menu without the need of any setup – it just works out of the box.

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

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WWDC 2014 keynote kicks off  in less that one hour and Apple will be streaming it live on the Apple TV via a temporary Apple Events channel that should have appeared on your Apple TV’s main menu earlier today. Tune in at 10 am PST/1 pm EST/7 pm CET.

Last-minute predictions from John Gruber: “An updated Apple TV seems like a possibility.”

Stick around here at Apple TV Hacks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+) as we’ll be following the event live reporting on all Apple TV-related announcements.

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Usually well informed John Gruber of Daring Fireball gives his predictions for today’s WWDC keynote:

An updated Apple TV seems like a possibility, even though there don’t seem to be any rumors to that effect. I say maybe because I’m hoping that whatever form the next major release of Apple TV takes, that it will be a developer platform with an App Store of its own. That would make sense for a WWDC introduction.

Right, an Apple TV SDK rather than a new tiny black box.

WWDC 2014 keynote begins today at 10 AM Pacific/1 PM Eastern/7 PM CET. We’ll be following it live reporting on all Apple TV-related announcements.

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No one really knows how Apple chooses which of the keynotes they’ll be streaming live and which not. I still remember tuning into the live blogging articles on various tech blogs for iPhone 5S and iPad Air launches. 6 months later, Apple announced that they’ll be broadcasting the WWDC 2014 keynote live for everyone. You can find the announcement on their website with the image above and a prompt on some “exciting announcements”.

As usual, the event can be streamed from Apple.com on any iOS device running iOS 4.2 or up, Macs with OS X 10.6 and above, and on Windows PCs with Quicktime installed. Also via a temporary “Apple Events” channel on Apple TV 2nd and 3rd gen. running 5.0.2 or newer, just like last year’s WWDC.

At this WWDC, we’re expecting the iOS 8 with the rumored Healthbook app, a redesigned OS X 10.10 and the refreshed Macbook Air and cheaper iMacs. Though not very compelling, some rumors of the next Apple TV announcement (not launch) has also been humming around. Read on: What does WWDC 2014 have in store for Apple TV?

The event starts on Monday, June 2nd at 10am Pacific Time. Be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ for all the latest news from this year’s WWDC.

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The WWDC 2014 is scheduled to be held a month from now in San Francisco and as usual, we’re in the dark as to what Apple is planning to show off. However, 9to5Mac seems to have caught with some sources with knowledge of the plans and brings the first glimpse of what we can expect. Though iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 would take the major flash, Apple TV is also on the agenda.

The major news is kind of disappointing as it says that the next Apple TV won’t be announced in the conference. Based on the recent rumors, we were expecting a refreshed Apple TV with new interface, SDK for third party channels, a standalone App Store and support for games and controller. It is reported that though Apple initially had plans of the same, the Apple TV 4 won’t be quite baked yet for the June event.

However, sources say that Cupertino is now planning separate launches for the Apple TV 4 software and hardware and that the WWDC may witness the former – meaning, the revamped firmware for the Apple TV and SDK for developers may be released at the event.

This also reinforces the earlier reports that the new software will be backward compatible and support at least the 2nd and 3rd generations of the Apple TV. So if things go as we hope, your old cluttered Apple TV might be running games, apps and new third party channels in a couple of months.

The other report is about a new feature in iOS 8 called multi-resolution support, which would help developers to adapt their games easily to the variety of screen resolutions of new iPhones and iPads. Analysts believe that if the rumored iOS sibling of Apple TV inherits this feature, many of the iOS games and apps will seamlessly start working with Apple TV with just few tweaks. And if that happens, the Apple TV App Store would gain millions of apps, within a matter of months.

But in the end, only June 2 will tell what Apple really has in those keynote slides. So what is that you are expecting the most from WWDC 2014? Let us know in comments below.

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

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