I believe this XML+JS thing was the only way to write apps for the old Apple TV. Various postings on the internet seem to suggest this from way back; the old SDK was probably only ever available to a select few handpicked appletv channel partners.<p>What&#x27;s new in the new tvOS SDK is that you can also write native apps in Objective-C&#x2F;Swift, with a main() function that starts up UIKit, and with access to most of the normal iOS APIs (like OpenGL, SceneKit, etc etc).