By Jason Snell

A $299 Apple TV: Is that all there is?

This summer, I stood up for the Apple TV hardware in the face of one analyst who said that it was “essentially dead” because nobody would spend $200 on a streaming device. I wrote:

Apple TV has plenty of reasons to keep on living. But it sure would be nice if Apple would show the product some attention beyond the massive price increases. Attention like new hardware, OS improvements, and (eventually) a price that makes it less of a hard sell to people who are desperate to escape the garbage of all the other streamer-box platforms.

Well, this week the Apple TV got some attention, in the form of a hardware update that came along with another price increase, up to $299. If the Apple TV’s base price of $199 made it “essentially dead” for anyone but the most die-hard of Apple customers, how much more dead could this fourth-generation model be?

While I’m obviously not a fan of the theatrical declaring of products dead because they don’t meet one analyst’s definition of success—lots of products are profitable and successful without taking huge market share—I do think that the $299 price tag puts Apple TV hardware in a really tough spot. (And to analyst Dan Rayburn’s credit, this week he made his point with a little more finesse: At $299 “it won’t appeal to the masses,” he wrote.)

These days, pretty much every TV you buy comes with an embedded computer that means you don’t really need to buy anything to make it work with streaming services. A stroll through my local Costco reveals a panoply of enormous TVs with high-quality screens, low prices, and embedded OSes from Roku, Amazon, Samsung, or Google. They all have all the apps, and all the services.

As a result, the addressable market for an external TV box just keeps contracting. For most people, what’s in their TV will be good enough. That leaves the rest of us, of course: the people who realize that the embedded systems in TVs tend to be slow and inelegant and are even potentially built on privacy-invading surveillance technology. But there are, sad to say, a lot fewer of us.

This change in the market means that cheap streaming sticks, once a mainstay, are essentially irrelevant. They’re no better than what’s in the TVs out there. Maybe there was a day when spending $20 for a Roku stick at Walmart made sense, but those days are largely over.

For the people who do care, who do want something better, the options are more limited. Amazon’s Fire TV Cube is $199. Roku’s “Ultra” is $149. The Google TV streamer, my favorite of all the non-Apple products on the market, is $150.

When you could get an Apple TV starting at $199, you could spot Apple playing its usual game—not the low-price leader, but in the ballpark. At $299, though, it becomes a lot harder for me to convince my relative who is complaining about how slow and terrible their streaming interface is to spring for the Apple one and solve their problems.

In the past, Apple has offered a second, lower-priced Apple TV model alongside the fully specced-up one—the previous low-end Apple TV 4K lacked Ethernet and had less storage space—but that’s not currently the case. I’ve seen some commentators suggest this is a good thing because it “simplifies the product line.”

I don’t follow that argument at all. Having a cheaper product is good, because not only do some people not need Ethernet or large amounts of storage on a streamer box, but lower prices broaden the market! (The iPhone product line could be simplified if we got rid of the iPhone 17e, iPhone 17, iPhone Air, and heck, iPhone 18 Pro Max, but I don’t think that would be a very good idea!)

So why only one Apple TV 4K this time? There are three possibilities. The first is that Apple just doesn’t care about trying to reach people at lower prices, and has resigned itself to the fact that tvOS is an exceedingly small niche product for its most committed customers. It’s possible, but I don’t want to believe that.

The next possibility: Given how weird chip supply and cost issues are right now, Apple has prioritized releasing its high-end product, and will release a lower-end model at some point in the future once it can make enough with the parts it has on hand. Going to market with a brand-new Apple TV 4K in the lowest-end version doesn’t make any sense… you’d always start with the high-end model that is going to be an instant buy for your hardest-core customers who don’t mind the price tag. Then you backfill later with the stripped-down model that maybe doesn’t have as much storage, or those fancy microphones, or an Ethernet port.

And finally, it’s possible that the Apple TV hardware world is in flux because Apple wants to make a different product that hits a lower price point. One that’s less full-featured than the top-of-the-line model, but different enough that it’s not just a variant of the existing product. This is the long-theorized “Apple TV Stick,” and I’m not sure that product needs to exist if the company can just make a box that’s more competitive with the high-end offerings from Google, Amazon, and Roku. But at least it’s possible, and might even be preferable if there are key markets asking for it. (I recently stayed in a hotel with Apple TV boxes on the back of every room TV. Would hotels prefer something a little simpler to install? I honestly have no idea.)

Regardless, as someone who thinks that tvOS—despite all its limitations—offers the best TV media streaming interface experience out there, I hope Apple cares enough to keep it alive and keep it relevant for the small market of people who can’t imagine being stuck with using the software embedded on their TV sets. The masses may not care, but we care, and if that’s not a recipe for a successful Apple product, I don’t know what is.

It just needs to start at less than $299.

By Glenn Fleishman

Share your location in Messages, now for a custom period

Apple stuffs a lot of different kinds of tasks into Messages. It’s a junk drawer for communications with other people. Send photos? Sure. Set up a safety partner for when you are going somewhere? Why not. Pay somebody? Of course! And, yeah, let’s stick in a poll!

But I think the best use beyond text and media of Messages is sharing your location. It’s a convenient way to share your whereabouts with someone else or a group, either indefinitely or for a fixed time period. Starting in the version 27 operating systems, you don’t have to use Apple’s preset periods, either: you can set a custom duration, which can be up to 30 days.

Sharing your location in Messages is an extension of Apple’s Find My service and native apps. You can also share your location within a native Find My app—that’s on an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch, not iCloud.com’s Find My, which only works with devices.

Like everything with Find My, your current location is locked down except to share with those you explicitly permit, and only for the period you choose, or indefinitely.

Continue reading “Share your location in Messages, now for a custom period”…

By Jason Snell

Third-party HomeView apps? Think CarPlay

Apple’s new HomeView device doesn’t have an App Store, but it does have an app story, of a sort. There are some selected Apple apps on its (surprisingly) iPad-like home screen, but you can’t add more. What’s a person to do?

If you use apps that play audio or video and support CarPlay, though, you’re in luck: HomeView supports those apps, and just those apps, via projection from your iPhone. So if you’re a fan of Overcast or Spotify, you’re in luck.

And if you’re curious about video CarPlay, well, that’s a feature Apple added this year that lets apps play video using CarPlay when the car is parked. And the HomeView is always parked.

Beyond that, though, it seems like HomeView is at least starting life as a very limited app platform. Apple does say that if you make a Siri AI query for your personal content, it will search everything on your iPhone or iPad—and that includes apps that aren’t on the HomeView. So you should be able to query your iPhone apps, but not actually run them.

In the short term, this means that if you want to (for example) access your calendar right on your device, you will probably have to do so via Apple’s Calendar app, even if you use a different app on your other devices. (If you use an app that has a web app equivalent, you could probably open it up in Safari, which is an app that the HomeView does offer.)

In the long term, I still think it’s quite likely that Apple will eventually expand what can be run on HomeView. I haven’t used one yet, but based on what I’ve seen on Apple’s website, it feels very much like a 1.0 product with plenty of room for expansion. Whether that comes in the form of apps, widgets, or access for CarPlay apps that aren’t audio or video apps, remains to be seen.

By Jason Snell

New Home Collection banner offers Apple-influenced accessories

On Tuesday as a part of its deluge of smart home announcements, Apple has launched something a bit different: a series of products called Apple Home Collection that are… not quite Apple products, but not not Apple products. Instead, they’re “designed in collaboration” with partners, in this case LG Electronics and Schneider Electric.

It’s hard to tell where one company ends and the other begins, but if you carry the weight of a brand like Apple, having Apple stand over the shoulder of some other company and sprinkle in some secret ingredients isn’t the worst approach if you don’t want to actually build and support those products yourself.

According to Apple, each accessory can be set up with one tap from an iPhone, and only requires the Apple Home app. (That describes a lot of products today, too—it’ll be interesting to see if Apple’s added some new tech just for these products or if they’re largely using standard techniques that other products in the market can offer.)

Now to the products, which will be available starting in December, and all of which share a “clean, minimal aesthetic and premium materials,” which would probably be your first clue that Apple was involved in their design.

LG is offering four cameras, all of which capture 2.5K video and connect directly with iCloud for video via the HomeKit Secure Video specification.¹ There’s a video doorbell (with chime integrated with HomeView, HomePod, and HomePod mini), a combination camera and floodlight, a standard outdoor camera, and an indoor camera that can tilt down automatically to physically stop monitoring when a family member enters the home.

Apple gets in the smart lock game with LG’s Smart Deadbolt Lock, which uses UWB for automatic unlocking when you approach the door, like the locks released earlier this year by Aqara and Schlage. It’s also got NFC support for non-UWB devices, a numeric keypad, and a hidden physical key slot.

And then there are the smart thermostats. There are two of these, from LG and Schneider Electric. The two thermostats support external temperature and humidity sensors as well as those built in to HomeView, HomePod, and HomePod mini. It’s unclear what differences the two products have, but Apple’s press release hints that there might be some different kinds of system compatibility, perhaps for the home heating and cooling systems themselves, though both are described as working “with a broad range of HVAC systems.”

Every one of the accessories supports Thread, which Apple has been building into its devices for a while now. While it doesn’t seem like there’s much here that hasn’t been done in other smart home products, Apple’s stamp of approval is important. If you don’t do a lot of research, even today you can end up buying a smart home product that has hidden gotchas. These devices will presumably be as standard and Apple-friendly as they come.

That said, other smart home products also seem to live up to everything Apple is describing with the Home Collection. Until these products ship, it will be hard to determine if there’s some special stuff Apple is doing with these products that’s unavailable to other products, but at a glance it doesn’t seem so.

By Dan Moren

New Apple TV 4K adds Siri AI support

In an announcement sure to shock the very foundations of the world, Apple rolled out a new Apple Siri Remote with support for Find My with Precision Finding and a speaker that can play a noise, ensuring you’ll never again lose it in your couch cushions for months on end. And also a new Apple TV 4K with Siri AI.

The new Apple TV 4K uses an A19 chip that gives it access to the revamped Siri. For the first-time, the Apple TV also features built-in microphones that let you use Siri without depending on the remote.

The A19 chip features an AV1 decoder, which Apple says will offer high-quality streaming with less bandwidth. And you can now pair up to four second-generation HomePods or four HomePod mini 2 to create a full surround-sound experience—but bear in mind, each pair of speakers, front and back, must be of the same type.

In other big news, the Apple TV is now of the higher 128GB storage tier and comes with a commensurately expensive price: $299. That’s more expensive than the previous model, which Apple raised to $199/$249 just a few months ago, and considerably more expensive than the $129 entry-level cost it offered for the previous model when it was introduced.

The new model is available for pre-order today and will ship on November 13. The new Siri Remote is available separately and is compatible with both previous Apple TV HD and Apple TV 4K models; Find My Support will work with the second-generation Siri Remote or later, but for the Precision Finding (via a new Bluetooth Channel Sounding protocol), you’ll need that new fourth-generation model.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]

By Jason Snell

New HomePod mini 2 offers Siri AI–but not yet

Among its smart home product announcements on Tuesday, Apple announced the new HomePod mini 2, priced at $149 and powered by an S10 chip (introduced in the Apple Watch Series 10). Curiously, its banner feature—support for Siri AI—will not be available when the product ships on October 30.

According to Apple, Siri AI will come to the HomePod mini 2 “in a future software update.” When it does, Apple’s press release hints that it will be able to tap into personal context when paired with an Apple Intelligence-capable iPhone or iPad. When there’s no such device available, it’ll still have access to broader Siri AI functionality, but won’t have access to the treasure trove of data that rides with your device.

Of course, since home accessories are the order of the day, Apple has touted the HomePod mini 2’s integration with the broader home experience. Like its predecessor, you can use it to control home devices via voice commands. Apple’s also supporting a new four-speaker surround sound setup, when four HomePod minis are connected to the new Apple TV 4K.

Apple also continues to tinker with that little glowing circle at the top of the HomePod, that’s not quite a display but is… something. The new Sound Glow feature turns it into a visualizer that is based on the sound of the currently playing song, and its color scheme will match the song’s associated album art.

By Dan Moren

Apple announces HomeView smart display

As was widely expected, Apple today took the wraps off its “HomePod with a screen”, dubbed the HomeView.

The device features a seven-inch Liquid Retina display with multitouch, at 1088-by-1088 resolution and is powered by an A18 chip. It comes in two different styles: a model intended to sit on a tabletop with a half-dome and small tilt-adjustable arm holding up the display, and one that’s meant to be wall-mounted. The former comes in silver, starlight, rose pink, and space gray options, while the latter has only silver and space gray.

The other main distinction between the two is the addition of more speakers on the tabletop version: a custom down-firing woofer and dual force-cancelling passive radiators. Both, however, nominally support spatial audio with Dolby Atmos. If you opt for the wall-mounted version, you can pick up a wall mount sold separately.

That A18 chip gives the HomeView enough juice to run Siri AI, which is at the heart of the new experience. The HomeView comes with a subset of built-in apps familiar from Apple’s devices, including Calendar, Home, Safari, Music, Messages, Podcasts, Weather, FaceTime, and more. Additional apps can be powered by a connected iPhone, including Apple News and Apple TV, as well as “supported third-party audio and video apps.” Apple says the device will recognize up to six people and gives them each their own home screen, while still allowing some shared features amongst all members of a household, such as music or shared photo albums. A 12MP Center Stage camera allows for FaceTime calls.

In terms of interface, the HomeView is reminiscent of the Apple Watch, with a customizable clock screen and various “faces”, including a Home Modular face that provides access to your commonly used smart home devices.

Apple also showed off a recipe specific mode that can detect recipes in Safari and format them appropriately for the device.

Both versions of the HomeView cost $299 and will be available on November 13. Pre-orders are open today for customers in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, the UK, and the U.S. The device is not available in the European Union, due to the lack of Siri AI in that region.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]

By Philip Michaels

App Report: Apps worth grabbing

It’s a real grab bag of apps in this week’s report, but that seems wholly appropriate somehow. After all, most of us turn to our Macs for a variety of reasons, so why not a selection of apps that speed up image processing, give you new controls over your tunes or help you keep a cleaner, better organized desktop? Oh, and there’s an iOS app in there, too, for the next time the travel bug bites you.

So why not reach in and see if any of the apps below grab you? And if there’s something we haven’t covered, drop us a line with the details at apps@sixcolors.com. We can’t respond individually, but rest assured that we take a look at every suggestion we get.

Freshly Squeezed

Each week I produce a weekly newsletter where I write about whatever’s on my mind — you should subscribe! — and one of the big production tasks is to take the images I’ve shot and convert them into 16:9 JPEGs cropped down to 2000 x 1125. It’s a job that would definitely benefit from batch processing, which is where an app like Freshly Squeezed comes into play.

Freshly Squeezed handles the jobs you’d expect from a batch image processor: It can resize, crop, compress and convert images to different files, all while retaining your originals. I’ve set up the app so that I can drop photos into it and get the right cropping and conversion, with Freshly Squeezed giving me the option to individually tweak crops if I want.

The app’s showcase feature is called Drop Folder, which you set up when you need to perform the same image processing over and over again. Once you’ve set up the parameters, just drop images into the folder, and Freshly Squeezed handles the rest.

You can download Freshly Squeezed onto your Mac for $7. A 7-day trial lets you try things out for free.

NepTunes

For another way to control music playback on your Mac, turn to NepTunes 4, which works with both Apple Music and Spotify. In fact, the Pro version of the app even lets you toggle between the two music services.

At its most basic, NepTunes lives in your menu bar, where it shows you whatever song is currently playing along with playback controls. You can also customize NepTunes to display additional info — I’ve got the app showing recently played songs, and if you link it to your Last.fm profile, you can see stats affiliated with that account. From the NepTunes interface, you can look up similar artists, while Pro users can find similar tracks to what’s playing. And all NepTunes users can set up hotkeys to control different playback features.

I keep mentioning the Pro version, which is a $10/year subscription. Besides the aforementioned features, Pro users can display their top albums in a grid. They can also download desktop widgets in various styles, such as one that displays the album you’re listening to like it’s a CD in a jewel case. You can peruse the 15 available widgets to get a flavor for NepTunes’ visual flair.

The Pro version comes with a 14-day free trial. Otherwise, NepTunes is a free download.

Tidy

It’s an occupational hazard that I have a lot of screenshots piled up around my Mac with names like Screenshot 2024-07-09 at 10.05.32 AM that tell me nothing about what’s actually contained in the screenshot. I imagine you might have the same problem with IMG files or PDFs or any file with an inscrutable collection of letters and numbers as its only means of identification.

Tidy is the answer to our organizational prayers. This $9 macOS download takes the screenshots, scans and other oddly named files from your Downloads folder, takes a look at them using its own built-in OCR feature and proposes readable names to help you better identify what the file actually contains. You approve the names, so nothing’s forced upon you, and Tidy only generates names using what it sees, so there are no hallucinations.

Even so, Tidy occasionally misses the mark. For example, a screenshot of the NepTunes app from up above got renamed “dutton-toster” because the font for singer Sutton Foster’s name proved too tricky to decipher. I was able to reject that suggestion, though, so no harm, no foul.

More often, Tidy proved to be on the money, as a photo of the ferris wheel looming over Disney’s California Adventure was retitled “blue-sky-land-amusement-park” — a much more decipherable moniker than IMG_435.HEIC.

Appricio

Appricio looks to be an indispensable travel companion by taking advantage of your iPhone’s location awareness. Fire up Appricio in a city included in one of the iOS app’s guides, and it can tell you what to do based on where you are, what the weather is and preferences shared in the settings.

You won’t just get a list of places to visit with Appricio, though. It’s a curated guide that makes specific suggestions, with a bias toward taking you off the beaten path (at least when you’re amenable to that). For example, Appricio detected that I’m near San Francisco and that the weather’s nice right now, so it steered me away from Pier 39 — which it dismissed as a tourist trap — and guided me to a day in Golden Gate Park instead.

Appricio would be a fine app if it just helped you in the moment, but it helps you plan trips, too. That feature is somewhat limited by the fact that the app only covers 50 cities at the moment, though I was able to do web searches for an upcoming visit to San Diego (currently not among the included cities) without the benefit of Appricio’s curation.

The app is free, though a $30/year subscription gives you a dozen more cities, a multi-day planning feature in which Appricio helps build your trip and an events calendar, among other bonuses.

Droppy

If you’ve looked at the notched display on your MacBook and thought, “I wish this worked more like the Dynamic Island on my iPhone,” Droppy is here to answer the call. At its most basic, this app lets you drag documents and files up toward the notch, where they can be stored for easy access until you find a more permanent home for them. But Droppy’s feature set doesn’t end there.

Droppy provides access to other features, like music playback controls, a clipboard that keeps the history of things you copy and paste and a five-hour weather forecast. Additional widgets — or Droplets, as the app dubs them — can be added to handle things like editing screenshots, file conversion, transcription and more.

While the app complements notch-equipped machines, it brings those Dynamic Island capabilities to other Macs as well. Droppy is free to try for three days; afterwards, a $10 payment unlocks the app for up to two Macs.

[Philip Michaels has been writing about technology since 1999, most notably for Macworld and Tom’s Guide. He currently finds himself between jobs, so if you need someone who can string a few sentences together (or make your sentences read a lot better), drop him a line.]