It looks like the Apple TV just became more than a “hobby” over at 1 Infinite Loop.
Over at today’s media event, Apple announced the fourth-generation Apple TV. The new unit, which appears to be measurably thicker than the previous generations, sports a new user interface, an operating system written for it (known as “tvOS”), a Touch surface to its new remote control, A8 processor, Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Lightning connector at the bottom of the remote and full Siri connectivity capable of searching across multiple apps such as Hulu, Netflix, HBO and Showtime to find content via criteria such as cast, director, movie name and age rating.
Other nifty bits of the new hardware included a Lightning connector at the bottom of the remote, Apple stating the remote could run up to three months on a single charge, full App Store access and a drive to create universal apps between the Apple TV and Apple’s other iOS devices. Some impressive game demos showed that this could function as Apple’s foray into a game console of sorts, the demos bringing up long-forgotten ideas of the Apple Pippen of the mid-90’s…
The new Apple TV is slated for release in late October and will retail for US$149 for the 32GB model and US$199 for the 64GB model.
Let us know what you make of the new Apple TV in the comments and it’ll be interesting to see what comes of this late next month.