“Apple has always been different. Its smartphones and tablets have far more properly good apps than rival systems,” Craig Grannell writes for Stuff Magazine. “Our hope was Apple’s future for the telly would at least involve some we actually wanted to use.”
Grannell writes, “As it turns out, there’s a lot of junk to fish through on the Apple TV App Store, but plenty of gems, too.”
Grannell writes, “Here are our favorites.”
• With its 1TB of free storage and optional automatic back-up of your photos, Flickr for iPhone is a must-have download. On Apple TV, it’s more of a sit-back experience, enabling you to enjoy your photos on the big screen, and to browse uploads by other users.
• Infuse/Infuse Pro (£Free/£7.99) FireCore’s gone all-in with Apple TV, releasing its latest Infuse update for Apple’s black box months before iOS. Whether you grab the free or paid version, you’ll be able to stream video from network storage, re-encoded on-the-fly. Artwork, catalogue sorting and metadata is all automatic, making for a gorgeous browsing experience. Pro users also get trakt.tv support, syncing progress across devices.
17 more Apple TV apps you’ll actually use here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’d trade them all for an Amazon Prime app.
I really don’t get the apps for ATV. If you have an iphone, ipad or Mac, and airplay, what is the actual point of suffering with the ATV remote to navigate this? Seems like overkill, IMHO.
Many apps seems to be garbage when it comes to using Airplay. The BT sport app had an update recently and ever since I seem to be disconnected from Airplay every thirty seconds and then it times out because it says too many streams are active.
Using Airplay also means you can’t do anything on your phone that might hijack the Airplay stream. I was watching something on Amazon, went to check twitter and a short video (which I wanted to watch) popped up on my screen disrupting Amazon and meaning I had to go back in and resume it.
You are right, as long as you don’t care about your video stopping when your iPhone goes to sleep, or when you get a phone call, or a message. You obviously haven’t experienced the new Apple TV. Using AirPlay doesn’t compare with the convenience of using a native app with universal search. My family’s favorite app is VidAngel. Too bad they are going to lose in court but for now I’m watching all the movies I can.,
For me, the only ones I use regularly are the ones that play video – more importantly, video I want to watch. As such I use BBC iPlayer, Netflix, and iTunes (streamed from my library of 3TB). In the UK there aren’t a huge number of services that are available on a catch up basis which is the main thing it’s for because live stuff is either available on Freeview (built into basically every TV capable of having an Apple TV plugged into it) or through the box of its respective service. Most other apps are typically things I prefer to use on an iOS device or on my Mac.
I use the Playstation Vue app and the NBAtv app, a lot. For $35 a month(packages range from $30 to $65, or alacarte like HBO), I cut the cord and get all the channels I want, mostly live sports, since the $35 package includes ESPN1, 2, U and News, FS1, FS2, NBATV, NBCSN, NFLNetwork, BeinSports, Big10Network, SECnetwork, Golf, and my local ComcastSportsNet. And with my PlaystationVue credentials, I can use the NBCsportsnet app, etc and watch replays of events, like EPL soccer or F1 races.
Anyhow, I’m not sure people realize that cord cutting is a reality for some of us. I’m sure you can do it with other sticks and boxes besides the AppleTV, but the AppleTV works great for me. I used to pay $140 to TimeWarner, and now I’m paying $35 and you can stream on up to 5 devices simultaneously, and register as many devices you like, TVs, computers and iPhones, iPads, etc. Saving over $100 a month, without all the indecipherable gov’t fees, and convoluted bills is great. On the downside, I had to put up an antenna for my local broadcast stations, but it wasn’t that hard.