“A fully operational Apple TV that showcases third-party applications is coming, with details likely to be revealed as soon as next week during the annual Worldwide Developers Conference,” Brad Spirrison writes for Appolicious. “Yet while the economic and pop-cultural impact of an Apple TV app ecosystem has the potential to exceed (if not dwarf) what exists for iPhones and iPads, don’t expect a rerun of 2008 and the early days of the App Store.”
How Apple TV apps will compare to the first wave of iOS hits:
• There will be fewer apps with higher production values
• Entertainment and video discovery apps will flourish
• Look at existing video discovery apps for guidance
• Context is king
Spirrison writes, “A new generation of app developers use Apple TV as a new hub of innovation. From controlling home appliances to turning off the upstairs air conditioning to performing home services we cannot yet fathom, independent developers have a new sandbox in which to create and innovate. Stay tuned and witness what is possible.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Ellis D.” for the heads up.]
Yes, very good in theory. But it’s all bullshit at the end of the day because Apple has intentionally crippled its hobbyist product.
Riddle me this. How are apps going to run without RAM?
You’ve never heard of a floppy disk?
…connected to the Apple TV how?
…and so what? How does a floppy support random access processing?? Are we building a Turing machine here? (Great in theory, but a few dozen orders of magnitude light.)
Floppy disks can be plugged in to the ADB port normally occupied by the punch card reader.
The original AppleTV supports 8-inch or 5 1⁄4-inch floppy disks. The 2nd gen added support for 3 1⁄2-inch floppy disks.
You can have my punch card reader if you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Plenty of apps can run in the 512MB of RAM that the latest AppleTV has. I seem to recall apps running on my iPhone 3 which only had 128MB. And the iPhone 3GS which only had 256MB.
So what is the problem?
Apple TV has 512MB RAM????
Yep.
I looked at Apple’s web page and didn’t see any RAM. Then I did some research on s tear down and it does have 512MB RAM.
Yeah, they don’t list the RAM in the specs for the iPhone either. Apple doesn’t think consumers should have to worry about that – just know that they are going to have a great experience. It is a great approach to tech, and no need for silly “spec wars” with competitors.
Yes, sir. Indeed.
Yes, you’re right. It does.
so – let me understand here with 512 Mb of Ram, a game can cache portions required as we play. It is suggested that a external floppy with the game on disc could be accessed.
1) could wifi and a Mac not provide this also – accessing game apps from your Mac – no need for a floppy disc silly
2) could a new device (iPodTouch new) the so called iPod Mini not house these GAMES and also FUNCTION as the game controller as well
I don’t read any irony. I can only presume you are an idiot.
Apparently, you are not a ‘computer person’ and have little or no training in computer hardware or software. All modern computing devices have to have some form of memory storage to function. Some may be in the form of read only memory and some must be in the form of a scratch pad memory and there must be some storage for the programs that run on it.
Try reading this to enlighten yourself on the Apple TV:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/29/apple-tv-teardown-reveals-8gb-flash-storage-256mb-ram/
So it has 256 Mb – not 512 Mb of Ram.
What about the 8 Gb of NAND – flash space?
Can this not hold the few apps one wishes to play games with.
Movies rented are streamed on the AppleTV, the cache needs to be saved somewhere, 256 Mb is efficient for a 4 Gb movie. Games could be streamed in packets,
Unicorn tears, man.
Same way apps currently run on the Apple TV, with the 512MB of RAM and 8GB of storage. Jailbreakers have been doing this for a long time now.
And maybe there will be new Apple TVs with more storage.
…CLOUD GAMING
I would like to see OnLive on Apple TV, with a Bluetooth controller.
I’d still like to see OnLive on the iPad. It is a shame that Apple wouldn’t approve the app. I understand why they wouldn’t from a business perspective, but it would have been nice to have.
I’d like to see OnTV. Remember that one?
Which is what Samsung just announced they were bringing to their “smart” TV platform.
Intelivision games were playable from the cable provider.
Cloud Gaming makes sense to me.
I think this has more potential than people realize.
First, I think people are selling the Apple TV idea short. Don’t look for an expansion of the current AppleTV, think of a TV with an AppleTV, iPad, or a full iMac in it, with plenty of ram and storage to run apps. Think of the possibilities of a gaming console system without the console, with iPads and iPhones as controllers, and cloud-based social services. Think of streaming content and subscription media services and a la carte channel purchasing. There’s huge potential there.
I would also not be surprised to see Apple be a LOT pickier about the applications they approve for this. There will be a lot fewer crap apps, simply because a fart app makes no sense for a tv. I expect a fair amount of controversy over their iTV app approval process.
Still, I am excited by the potential, and look forward to seeing what Steve meant by “cracking tv”!
Apple TV has Bluetooth built in, so we could have the option of using Bluetooth controllers and keyboard like the ones used by the PS3.
yes, your bluetooth keyboard from the iMac works better to enter the passwords needs for iTune rentals
How much ram does the ps3 or Xbox 360 have?
PS3 has 256MB of system RAM and 256MB of GPU RAM.
Xbox 360 has 512MB of memory shared with the GPU.
The 360 and PS3 are both getting pretty old at this point hardware-wise. The newer revisions are smaller, cooler, and lower-power than their predecessors, but the performance targets were still designed 5-7 years ago. All the optimization since has been to reduce cost, size, power consumption, and heat dissipation.
So, the ATV3 is surprisingly close to the consoles in some areas of performance. That’s how far things have come in the last 5-7 years.
I dont know about the ATV3 but the ATV2 has plenty of options already. Just jailbreak and add XBMC. then add all the tv plug ins. Some are not that great but having hulu with no commercials and amazon prime on my ATV along with the ability to play any movie in any format plus auto scrapping of movies and tv shows vs with itunes i have manually add info on each one.
I have people who drop their cable for just the jailbroken apple tv.
ANd im hoping with the apple tv 3 will be even greater with its faster chip and more memory
Apple has been closely watching these jailbreaks and learning from adding XBMC no doubt.
WWDC 2012 will not see the light of a 30, 40, 50, 50 or 72 inch television… we shall see the end of the hobbyist product and a much more serious clear vision as to where AppleTV will go. Consider this a glimpse of whats to come with Apples’ plans for iTV.
I don’t understand. There already is a third version of the Apple TV.
WWDC 2012 will mark the end
of the hobbyist product AppleTV.
Apple TV goes Prime Time.
Games • APPS • Dead of Cable