 So there's both so much to say about the new Apple TV and then really not that much at all. On the one hand, you could talk about what Apple wants you to talk about. The new Siri remote and tvOS and apps and how universal search and voice control bring everything together and create the future of television. That's their tagline. The future of television is here. But that's what everyone's trying to do. That's Roku, that's Google, that's Microsoft, that's Amazon. See, everyone trying to reinvent television has the same problems. It's hard and expensive to get deals with the cable networks and movie studios that own all the rights. Shows and movies are trapped in hundreds of different apps and navigating an interface that's 10 feet away from you with a D-pad remote is pretty hard. And it turns out that everyone has basically the same solutions to these problems. You get all the video apps in your platforms, you build universal search that can see into all of them, and you control all of your voice. That's what Roku does, that's what Google does, that's what Amazon does. It turns out that's basically Apple's plan too. And because it's Apple, they've done some things a little bit differently and some things a little bit better. The real question is whether or not all those little things add up to an actual revolution. So, the actual hardware of the new Apple TV is pretty uninteresting. It's a black box, just about twice as tall as the old black box, with a handful of ports on the back and a dual-core A8 processor inside. It's boring, but it's supposed to be. It's intended to fade away. It's missing 4K support, which is funny because the new moving picture video loops are exactly the sort of demos that you use on 4K TVs. But honestly, that might not matter until there's more 4K content out there anyway. The real action is TV OS and the new Siri remote, which has a glass touchpad at the top, dual microphones for voice search, and a handful of dedicated buttons. There's also an accelerometer and gyroscope for gaming. It's all the basics of the iOS interface in a remote, and it's what makes the Apple TV feel so much like a little iPhone under your TV. It even charges over a lightning cable, same as the iPhone. The remote connects to the Apple TV over Bluetooth and has infrared to control your TV's volume. The one thing it doesn't have is a power button, which means that if you have an older TV or a receiver that doesn't support taking commands over HDMI, you'll be stuck with the second remote just to turn things on and off. If you do have a newer TV with HDMI control support, everything will turn on and wake up when you click a button on the remote, and you can turn it off by long pressing the home button and putting it all to sleep. It works, but it'd be nice if there was a dedicated power button. Accidentally pressing a button on the remote can turn everything on. Once you're using the Apple TV, it really is all about apps. And if Apple is right that the future of TV is apps, then it needs to spend a lot more time thinking about how to set up and get into all of those apps. The new Apple TV can't restore your logins and most use apps from a previous box, so you'll have to go into the App Store to get everything and log into tons of apps all over again. It's ridiculous that Apple can't just store a single cable company login to authenticate TV apps like HBO Go and Lott's ESPN. Everyone has the same problem there, but if you really want to create the future of TV, that's the one you have to solve. Once you do get all of your apps downloaded and set up, things look pretty much just like the Apple TV interface we've had for a few years, except that it's whitish gray instead of black. But you're not really supposed to spend a lot of time banging around the on-screen interface. You're supposed to talk to it by holding down the Siri button and asking for things. Do the eagles suck? Siri's pretty smart. You can ask for specific shows and movies, you can search by actors, you can ask for weather and sports scores, you can even control playback in interesting ways by saying things like, what did she say, which automatically rewinds 15 seconds and turns on captions so you can see what she said. That just popped a record. Okay, um... Once you've logged into your various video apps, Siri can search them too, so you'll see various HBO, Netflix, and Hulu options right in your results. You can also get pretty granular and ask for things like popular 80s action movies on Netflix, which is pretty cool. But Siri can't do everything. It can't control music at all. Apple only lets big players like Netflix and Hulu into those search results, and you can't use it to search the App Store, which is a huge oversight. Siri also can't help you search inside an app or even dictate in text boxes, which means YouTube search is still just punt and peck with the remote. It also doesn't understand Netflix and chill, which is probably for the best. Of course, you can also navigate using the glass touchpad on the remote. It's really fun, but it doesn't really add much to the experience. There isn't a single part of the Apple TV interface that I found that actually requires the touchpad. Not only does the old D-pad remote work just fine, but you can even tap the sides of the touchpad to use it like arrow buttons if you want. It's cool and fun to have a touchpad, but until game and app developers really take advantage of it, it's actually not that much better than the old remote. And taking advantage of the new remote is really the point. The entire future of the Apple TV rests on opening the App Store to new TV OS apps and games. But this first wave of TV OS apps is pretty weak. Most of them are just blown up iPhone apps so far. An app like Periscope feels like I'm just projecting my phone rather than actually running an app on my TV. It's hard to see why things like Zillow or Gilt are better when they're 10 feet away from you. Actually, and here's a secret, I think the most interesting app on the Apple TV is QVC. It's the only app that actually mixes television with interactivity. It lets you buy what they're showing on QVC. I don't think you should buy anything on QVC, but it's really interesting. The other thing that's really fun is playing games on the Apple TV, even if they're mostly just bigger iPhone games. I love playing Does Not Commute, and Jetpack Joyride is pretty fun on a huge screen. They don't look anywhere near as good as an Xbox One or PS4, but that's not the point. They're a really nice addition to an entertainment box, and if you're bored, they're waiting for you. So there's the promise, and then there's reality. And the reality right now is that the new Apple TV is the nicest TV streaming box available. But it is basically the same idea as every other streaming box out there. It just has tons and tons of extra potential. So, if you need to buy a new TV streaming box, you should buy it. You'll be very happy with it. But if you don't actually need to buy one, I'd wait. I'd wait for a future Apple TV with 4K support, better apps, and hopefully a bigger push from Apple towards the real future of TV.