What Is Apple TV?

Apple TV is one of those product names that confuses people because it refers to two different things. The first is a small box, currently shipping in two versions ($149 for the HD model, $179 for the 4K model), that plugs into a TV's HDMI port and runs a tvOS app store. The second is a piece of software called the "Apple TV app" (sometimes "TV") that ships on iPhones, iPads, Macs, and the Apple TV box itself, and is supposed to unify your content from across multiple streaming services. The naming is unhelpful. The product story is more coherent than the name suggests.

The Apple TV Box

Hardware-wise, the Apple TV competes with the Roku Ultra, the Fire TV Cube, and (loosely) the Nvidia Shield. It runs tvOS, which is essentially iOS adapted for a TV with a remote, and it has a real app store with thousands of apps including the major streaming services. Performance is much better than the cheaper streamers; a 2017 Apple TV 4K is closer to a low-end Mac than to a Fire TV Stick in compute power.

The Siri Remote is the device's most polarizing feature. It has a touchpad, an accelerometer, microphones, and four buttons. It's elegant and minimalist on paper. In practice, the touchpad is over-sensitive, the orientation is symmetric (you keep picking it up upside down), and people lose it constantly because it has no traction in a couch cushion. Apple has shipped two iterations and it's still the most-complained-about part of the product.

The price is the harder pill. At $149 to $179, the Apple TV costs three to four times what a Roku Streaming Stick or Fire TV Stick costs. The performance gap is real, but most users aren't running games, won't notice the speed difference on Netflix, and the cheaper devices have caught up on 4K and HDR support. Apple is selling this on the experience and the ecosystem fit, not on the spec sheet.

The Apple TV App

The software side is more interesting strategically. Apple's TV app shows you content from across multiple streaming services in a unified UI: a single Up Next queue, a single search that returns results from Netflix and Hulu and HBO Now together, a single Watch Now hub. The pitch is that you stop opening individual apps to find something to watch and start opening one app instead.

It works, partially. The services that integrated their catalogs into Apple's TV app (HBO, Hulu, Showtime, ESPN, and a long list of cable network apps) show up natively. The notable exception in 2018 is Netflix, which has refused to integrate. Netflix is the largest streaming service by viewing time, and its absence from the unified UI is the biggest gap in the product.

The more important shift is what the TV app foreshadows: Apple's transition from a hardware company to one that also sells subscriptions and content. Apple TV+ is rumored for a 2019 launch with original programming, and the TV app is the surface that's going to host it. The unified hub is partly a user feature and partly Apple positioning itself as the default surface for paid TV content, including its own.

Apple TV vs the Alternatives

The honest decision tree: if you live in the Apple ecosystem, the Apple TV box is the right answer because of AirPlay, HomeKit integration, and the way iCloud-stored video shows up across devices. If you don't, you're paying for things you won't use. Roku and Fire TV cover 95% of what most users actually do with a streaming box, at a quarter of the price.

The TV app on iPhone and iPad is worth using regardless of which streaming hardware you own. As a content-finder, it's the best of the unified search options in 2018, and it's free if you have an iPhone. The hardware box is a separate decision and a much harder one to justify on price alone.