It comes every autumn, just like the turning of the leaves. Every Apple product gets new updates. Some products, such as the iPhone and Apple Watch, are now annual affairs that don’t require any prognostication. Some, such as the iPad and Mac, require more frequent revisions, depending on how long the products have been around.
But there’s a third category: The products that often go years without seeing a substantial change; the Apple products that simply keep on trucking and get upgraded when the company darn well feels like it.
Though this year’s slate of Apple releases is probably not yet complete, a few of those perennial also-rans already seem unlikely to get attention, especially if we take into account the way the wind seemed to be blowing when the company talked about its platform updates at its Worldwide Developers Conference back in June. Is it simply a matter not to mess with success? Is there more to these products?
Television or not?
The last time Apple revised its Apple TV set-top box was back in May 2021, when it got an internal upgrade to the processor and support for some of the latest standards—HDMI 2.1, Wi-Fi 6, high-frame rate HDR, etc. But that release was itself the second generation of the Apple TV 4K and didn’t otherwise depart much from its predecessor, which dates back to 2017.
Apple
On the face of it, there doesn’t seem to be much of a reason to update the Apple TV hardware: it’s among the most capable set-top boxes on the market and if it needs a real change, many would point to a price tag that’s far higher than its competitors.
More importantly, the tvOS PlatformIt has not received any major updates and was not included in any Apple presentations this season. Finaly, tvOS 16, which added a few minor features to the Apple TV app this fall, included support for game controllers and HDR10+. Many users probably didn’t even notice the update.
Granted, the state of the art in TV isn’t changing rapidly and Apple’s focus in this arena seems to be more on content than on tech, but that doesn’t mean that tvOS couldn’t stand some attention to be lavished upon it. For one thing, the iOS-inspired home screen is getting harder to manage as we all have umpteen more streaming apps, and Apple’s TV app—while perhaps well-meaning—has not helped simplify that at all. My colleague Joe Rosensteel has adroitly chronicled the Apple TV’s shortcomings in depth over the last few yearsJust in case you were wondering if there are still issues to be solved.
Does Apple care not about TV? Apple TV+ might seem to support this assertion, but perhaps Apple is unwilling to give its TV business so much attention.
Home and away
Elsewhere in the home, Apple’s interests also seem to have flagged a bit. The HomePod was eventually replaced by the HomePod mini. This proved to be more popular than its predecessor, and not least because it had a lower price (are you listening Apple TV?). But it too has stagnated; this year’s marquee HomePod features are a more robust underlying framework and support for the newly launched MatterSmart home standard. While both are positive improvements, Apple has yet to implement them as it waits for updates in conjunction with other major platform updates.
There’s been much talk in rumor realms of updated home smart speaker offerings, perhaps including a model with a screen or one that works as a FaceTime appliance. The existence of such disparate use cases suggests that perhaps Apple itself isn’t even sure about what direction to head in.
In the meantime, however, Apple’s foothold in the living room has continued to be underwhelming: plagued by unreliability and not really pushing the market forward. Fundamentally, the company’s home strategy seems to lack any sort of direction.
Amazon and Google are its largest competitors in the market. They have invested more time and money to build their home ecosystems, and created a variety of devices. This isn’t to suggest that those are the Right approaches—and both companies certainly have challenges to overcome, not least of all in the realms of privacy—but merely to demonstrate that the lone HomePod mini feels like a weak claim planted on desirable ground.
Apple
Enhancing the future
But there could be something else underlying both of these products’ more languorous pace of updates–specifically, a major Apple endeavor thought to be on its way next year: the company’s push into augmented reality.
These platforms might be influenced by a new product category for a number of reasons. For one, it may simply be a matter of priorities, with more resources devoted to something seen as a big new market rather than other areas that are holding steady and perhaps don’t have as much opportunity for growth.
But Apple is also a company that relies heavily on interplay between all of its platforms, and a putative augmented reality device certainly seems like something that could have an impact on both the living room and home markets; a virtual tvOS-like experience might well be one key part of the story Apple plans to tell about the device—watch your content in an immersive screen that doesn’t have to be limited by the size of your TV.
The home could be another area where AR headsets might offer a new way to interact. Imagine turning on the lamp by looking at the bulb, or seeing the temperature in a room instantly. This is a far more intuitive way to interact with the AR headset than having to search Siri or pull up the information from your phone.
If Apple is indeed committed to making augmented reality its next big thing, then it won’t be a surprise that it wants to leverage connections across all of its platforms and maybe it’s looking to see what that future looks like before committing too much to the platforms of the past.
Apple HomePod Mini
