Apple TV Comes with Dedicated tvOS App Store, Siri and Touch Remote

Apple is finally unveiling their 4th generation of the Apple TV at the event today. As expected the device comes with a much powerful hardware. Rather Tim Cook starts of the Apple TV unveiling by highliting the key features of the new gen TV as a Powerful hardware, Modern OS, New User Experience, and Developer Tools and guess what an App store!

Coming to the remote the TV comes with a remote that has a touchpad! A really modern TV remote to say the least. Further the remote doubles up as a game controller when turned sideways. The buttons located on the remote include a Menu, Display, Siri, Play/Pause and a Volume button. But did one thing worth noting is that the remote doesn't come with a power button.

Enough of the remote now, let's move to the software is what Tim Cook is trying to hint at. The Apple TV now comes with a universal voice search across the platform. At present the voice search feature supports iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Showtime. Further Apple aims to add the support to more apps with time.

The UI of the new Apple TV looks a way more cleaner than the existing version, simply because it comes with a white background in place of black. Apple's impetus on search is seen in the UI too. One can now search of TV show via Siri. Just speak out the show name, and Siri will do the rest. For fast forwarding the show use the touchpad of the remote. Simple! Further in case you want to back track the show, just say out loud "What did she say?" and the show will go back by 15 secs.

Apple also intregrates some of the nice touches of the iOS into their new TV - say for example the Weather and Sport score. In fact Siri can do all these for you. Hence you pretty easily understand that Apple has done everything to induct Siri everywhere!

But seems like Apple has something special for us. The new gen TV instead of running on the iOS will run on a new custom OS dubbed the TV OS which Apple specifically designed for the living room. The App store for the TV comes with a number of entertainment apps along with games. The touchpad remote make TV gaming a breeze. Further one can play multiplayer using the upto 4 iPod touch/iPhones at a time.

Coming back to the hardware the Apple TV sports a 64 bit A8 Chip alongwith Bluetooh 4.0, 802.11ac WiFi with MIMO and IR Reciever. In term of ports the Apple TV features a Power, HDMI and Ethernet - pretty standard. However the remote comes with Bluetooth built in. This will stop users from fusing over pointing the remote to the TV while move around the interface - the Bluetooth will now do the stuff in place of the InfraRed! The remote comes with accelerometer and gyroscope too. Add to these Apple's claim of 3 months of charge less usability. And whenever you need to charge it back, Apple's lightning connector will get the thing done in a flash.

Apple has priced the 32GB variant of the 4th gen TV at $149 while the 64GB costs $199. This is in line with the previous leaks we have received. Apple put in a much of an effort though to launch this all new Apple TV. Their impetus on remote is worth mentioning too. But what do you think about the all new Apple TV?