Last week, we presented our belief that the new iOS-based Apple TV was designed to eventually accept third-party apps from its own App Store. Steve Jobs even suggested that Apple was poised to launch an Apple TV App Store when the time was right.
The launch of Apple TV-specific apps would make some sense as Apple continues to find itself competing against Google. Google's recently-announced Google TV offers developers an opportunity to deploy their own applications to that device. We don't expect the Apple TV App Store to allow customers to run existing iOS apps on the device, but instead to open the door to Apple TV-specific apps.
Adding a bit to the evidence is a LinkedIn profile showing a recent Apple intern describing their summer position as an "Apple TV Apps Engineer". While this could represent work on the built-in Apple-supplied functionality, the internal view that the Apple TV is simply a collection of apps seems to be in line with future third-party expansion.
Apple today released tvOS 26.5, the fifth update to the tvOS operating system that came out last fall. tvOS 26.5 is available for the Apple TV 4K, and it comes over a month after Apple released tvOS 26.4.
tvOS 26.5 can be downloaded using the Settings app on the Apple TV. Open up Settings and go to System > Software Update to get the new software. Apple TV owners who...
Apple today provided developers with the first betas of upcoming watchOS 26.6, tvOS 26.6, and visionOS 26.6 betas for testing purposes. The software two weeks after Apple launched the 26.5 versions of each platform.
The software updates are available through the Settings app on each device, and because these are developer betas, a free developer account is required.
There's no word on...
Apple has announced that "Larger Text" support is coming to tvOS, allowing users to increase the on-screen text size to make it easier to read.
"Larger Text" lets you adjust the size of text in supported apps, with the option already available on other devices like the iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro.
This was one of the new accessibility features that Apple previewed earlier this week, with ...
