By: Marco Carola
I’ve been writing a lot about the Apple ecosystem lately, and the new Apple TV 4K (2022) is the icing on the cake. It’s unnecessary, but if you want the crème de la crème of the smart TV experience, it’s difficult to beat it. The software is well-designed, and ad-free, while the hardware is top-notch, with a remote that feels incredible.
The best part of using the new Apple TV 4K is how well it plays with your iPhone. Since the update to iOS 16.1, the on-phone virtual remote has gotten exponentially better now that you can play/pause, scrub through content, and control volume playback right from the lock screen.
This means you no longer need to unlock your phone and dive into an app or menu. Just pick up your iPhone, and boom, the media controls you want are instantly accessible.
This new functionality is enabled through Apple’s ‘Live Activities’ framework. Because of this, Roku and other streaming devices with an iPhone app can likely take advantage of similar lock screen-based controls via an update.
The other perk built into the Apple TV 4K is that you get access to Apple Arcade and a fully functional Apple Fitness+ app. You can cast Fitness+ classes to any Airplay-compatible TV, but having a brow seable app on your television is nice.
Compared to other smart TV operating systems, one of the key upgrades is that the Apple TV menu actually looks good. It’s not great, but it’s clean, high-resolution and easy to navigate
Google’s and Amazon’s home screens push content to watch, often regardless of whether you’re subscribed to the service hosting that content.
The remote feels excellent, but the button with a TV on it makes little sense. When you click the TV/Home button, it jumps you into the Apple TV app. If you hold it, you go back to the home screen