![]() Apple TV Gets iOS 7/8/9’s Greatest Accomplishment: Reduced Chrome They’re now required for app icons and optional for other graphic elements. ( Update: Yes, multi-layered icons are part of tvOS, and developers can include up to 5 layers to create the parallax effect. It’s hard to tell whether Apple is supporting both completely flat and two layer logos with parallax abilities (see the animation above where Zooey Deschanel stays mostly in place as the icon box and words differentially tilt behind her), but if this is a new icon option for tvOS developers, this could be very, very cool going forward. If I was going to guess at the single most “fun” thing about the tvOS UI, it would be the way that the cursor selection responds to subtle touches by letting you play with/tilt the icon’s edges, even when you’re not shifting from one icon to the next. As the grid above shows, developers are going to need to adjust to the change, but if icons can be built going forward with text and logos, this may wind up being a net gain for tvOS’s UI.Ģ. Unlike the Apple Watch, where the lack of icon labels is simultaneously necessary to the hex-like grid and maddening in creating inscrutably similar little circles, I think the Apple TV can make this change without frustrating users. ![]() Unless you select an app icon, which makes it larger, adds a shadow, and makes text temporarily appear underneath, the only way you can identify apps without selecting them is by whatever’s inside the icon. But Apple went even further: the soft-cornered icons have become almost boxy, and despite preserving the last Apple TV OS’s white space between the icons, Apple has for some reason eliminated text from the grid. We’d heard that the new Apple TV was going to get a more thorough iOS 7/8/9-style whitewashing, and that is indeed the case - soft transparent backgrounds and white space pervade the tvOS UI. But did it get the rest of the UI right, or are we in for more years of main menu redesigns? Let’s take a look at what tvOS 1.0 gets right and wrong…ġ. I’ve long suspected that pervasive voice control was the missing link - Siri was added to the iPhone 4S just before Jobs died - and from every indication, Apple has done a wonderful job of building voice navigation into the new Apple TV’s tvOS operating system. But after Jobs passed away, the Apple TV received only a couple of modest tweaks - improvements, but modest nonetheless - as Jobs’ mysterious “simplest UI” apparently remained unused.Īs an Apple TV user and fan, I’ve spent years waiting for this week’s introduction of the fourth-generation Apple TV, as much for improved hardware as the opportunity to see Jobs’ vision in action. “It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine,” apparently indicating that complex remotes would be a thing of the past. Apple TV’s user interface has been through more changes over the past 8 years than any other Apple OS - the rare Apple UI that has seen more major changes than the devices it runs on. As improbable as this might have seemed for a “hobby,” fixing the Apple TV was one of the last topics Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs discussed with biographer Walter Isaacson: “I finally cracked it,” Jobs said about an upcoming Apple TV UI. ![]()
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