First Evidence of Fifth-Generation Apple TV and tvOS 11 Possibly Spotted in Developer Logs
Just one month after Bloomberg reported that Apple is testing a new Apple TV capable of streaming high-resolution 4K video, which it said is codenamed "J105" and could launch as soon as this year, the first evidence of the rumored fifth-generation streaming box may have surfaced in developer logs.
Firi Games, the developers behind arcade games Phoenix HD and Phoenix II, told us they have seen a single device identified as "AppleTV6,2" and running "tvOS 11.0" connect to Phoenix HD for Apple TV from the United States in its logs. The IP address falls within a range linked to Apple's headquarters in Cupertino.
The current Apple TV has a model identifier of AppleTV5,3, and Apple TV6,2 does not correspond with any released model.
While the details could be faked, similar evidence of an iPhone 5s running iOS 7 showed up in January 2013, around nine months before the device was announced, and the timeline is appropriate if Apple is indeed testing a new Apple TV. The current Apple TV, the first to run tvOS, launched in October 2015.
No other details surrounding a fifth-generation Apple TV are known at this point. In December 2015, hit-or-miss Taiwanese website DigiTimes, citing supply chain sources, claimed the next-generation Apple TV would feature a new CPU with dramatically improved performance, but that report has yet to materialize.
Last quarter, Apple financial chief Luca Maestri said Apple TV sales declined compared to the year-ago quarter, when the fourth-generation model launched. The product still remains something of a hobby for Apple, which reportedly shelved its rumored streaming TV service and only has its "toe in the water" with original content.
Popular Stories
Apple today seeded the first betas of upcoming iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3 updates to developers for testing purposes, with the software coming a week after Apple released iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2.
iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3 can be downloaded from the Settings app on a compatible device by going to General > Software update.
There's no word yet on what's included in iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3, ...
The current Apple TV 4K was released more than two years ago, so the streaming device is becoming due for a hardware upgrade soon. Fortunately, it was recently rumored that a new Apple TV will launch at some point next year.
Below, we recap rumors about the next-generation Apple TV.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman last week reported that Apple has been working on its own combined Wi-Fi and...
Apple is planning a series of "major design" and "format changes" for iPhones over the next few years, according to The Wall Street Journal's Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie.
The paywalled report published today corroborated the widely-rumored "iPhone 17 Air" with an "ultrathin" design that is thinner than current iPhone models. The report did not mention a specific measurement, but previous...
Apple on Monday seeded the first tvOS 18.3 beta to developers for testing. The update will likely be released in January. So far, there are only minor changes for the Apple TV, with one new feature and a few code changes discovered.
Below, we outline what is new in tvOS 18.3 so far.
Robot Vacuum Support in Home App
First, tvOS 18.3 will add robot vacuum support to the Home app on the...
Apple released iOS 18.2 in the second week of December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. Apple has added a handful of new non-AI related feature controls as...
Contrary to recent reports, the iPhone 17 Pro will not feature a horizontal camera layout, according to the leaker known as "Instant Digital."
In a new post on Weibo, the leaker said that a source has confirmed that while the appearance of the back of the iPhone 17 Pro has indeed changed, the layout of the three cameras is "still triangular," rather than the "horizontal bar spread on the...
