Apple's Latest "Apple TV 2015" With Siri Remote : Price Starts from 149$ , Launching in October

While Apple had plenty of iPhones and iPad Pros for us to play, it was being more reserved with the Apple TV demos—most of its booths were just mini-demonstrations of things that had been shown off onstage. We were able to spend a little bit of time with its new remote, but if you watched the onstage demo you already know most of what there is to know.

The box itself is small and nondescript, and aside from the missing optical audio port (and the addition of USB Type-C as a service port, making it Apple's second official USB Type-C device) there's not a lot to say. You'll be able to tuck it anywhere you can fit a current Apple TV, as long as you have an extra 12mm of height in your TV stand.

The improvements are all on the inside. It has an A8 SoC like the one in the iPhone 6 and sixth-generation iPod Touch, with one key difference: it includes 2GB of RAM instead of 1GB (the same is true of the A8 in the iPad Mini 4). It has 32GB or 64GB of storage for apps and media, and it's been upgraded to 802.11ac Wi-Fi from 802.11n. The old Apple TV really couldn't handle much more than video streaming, but in a lot of ways the new model is just a tiny ARM-based desktop computer.

The UI is similar to the interface on the existing Apple TV, but the faster chip allows for more eye-catching animations and transitions. The whole interface has a lot of "whoosh" to it—whooshing when you enter into an app, whooshing as you swipe through lists of things, whooshing as you bring up and dismiss Siri. More than anything, it's reminiscent of the media browsing experience on modern game consoles, which use their relatively powerful CPUs and GPUs to drive similarly smooth interfaces.

We got just a couple of minutes of time with the new Siri Remote, but at first blush it seems like a big improvement over the current Apple TV remote. The old UI required endless clicking—clicking to navigate, clicking to select, clicking to return to the Home screen. The small touch-enabled strip at the top of the remote is a significant improvement, since so much of the Apple TV UI still involves scrolling horizontally or vertically through lists of items. Bluetooth connectivity is also a nice touch, eliminating the need to maintain line of sight between the remote and the box.

There's a lot about how the Apple TV works that we just can't evaluate right now (the App Store is the biggest), but, if you're watching a demo, it's easy to appreciate how well Siri is implemented here. Unlike on the iPhone and iPad, there's not a wait between hitting the button and waiting for Siri to come up, and, if you're watching something, Siri doesn't automatically pause it. As in the onstage demo , you can also bring up a small strip of Siri information across the bottom of the screen if you want to look up sports scores or weather or other contextual information about what you're watching. The Apple TV only pauses if you maximize Siri to use the full screen.

Apple has been working on in iOS and OS X and brings it to a platform where the benefits are more apparent. Your voice is the Apple TV's primary input mechanism, so better understanding of things actual humans would say is a bonus. The ability to quickly view other information without stopping what you're watching is an antidote to picking up your phone or computer to look things up while you're watching TV. Siri is a feature that demoes well.

PRICE:-

Apple states that the price will be confirmed when the unit goes on sale. In the US the 32GB lowest-capacity version costs twice as much as the entry level model at $149 while the 64GB version costs $199.

LAUNCHING:-

The new Apple TV 2015 will be available in late October.

Techbuzz