Apple to Developers: Your Apple TV is Ready to Ship

For those not familiar with Plex, the service allows you to organise and then stream your personal movies and music to external devices from your PC, Mac, tablet or smartphone. The mobile market, which supports external controllers but largely appeals to players who use touchscreens, could be worth $30 billion in 2015, according to market research firm Newzoo. Players can make use of the new Apple TV remote or their iOS devices as controllers for the game.

Earlier this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that 25 million Apple TVs had been sold since its introduction in 2007. But for the meantime, some of the best games from iOS that would make the most sense on a device like Apple TV likely aren’t headed to it. With the company planning on making an Apple TV app, users would no longer need to jailbreak or go through workarounds in order to take advantage of the service on the platform.

Apple is requiring that all games for the new Apple TV be playable with the included Siri remote. Some apps are given more credit than others ranked under most-downloaded, top-selling, free games including “top grossing games”. Don’t procrastinate because you only have until 5PM local time on Wednesday, September 16, to confirm you want an Apple TV Developer Kit.

Apple developers find support for Webviews in the Webkit framework through a UIKit class known as UIWebview – but the class doesn’t exist for Apple TV. Expected to function as a game console, Apple is positioning itself to be contender against companies like Nintendo, offering casual gaming on top of home entertainment.

Right now the most obvious change, beyond its user-interface, seems to be the removal of the ability to view a website through an app, also known as a “web view”.

Another great new feature is interactive notifications in TV apps.

But if cable operators are harboring fears about Apple’s new platform and the potential OTT TV competition it represents, they are showing it in a measured way.

Rockstar GamesImagine trying to use the Apple TV remote’s touchpad with that.