Along with the launch of iOS 8 for Apple's iPhones and iPads, the company also released a new update for the Apple TV, incorporating Beats Music and tweaking the interface to make it more consistent with the iOS interface.
The first manifestation of Apple's $3 billion acquisition of Beats Electronics, which owns Beats Music, appeared on Apple TV on Wednesday. Apple's third-generation set-top box now features a Beats Music channel, which allows users to configure their favorite genres and artists according to user-curated playlists. Users can avail of a 14-day free trial using Beats Music, after which they will have to pay $10 every month or $100 ever year.
One Beats Music feature notably absent from Apple TV, however, is The Sentence, a highlight of the Beats Music app that lets users listen to a playlist based on what he is doing at the moment. For instance, the user can tell the app that he is going on a run, and the app brings up a playlist created by a user made for runners.
Also present in the new Apple TV software is support for family sharing. This lets up to six family members connect their Apple ID to a single Apple TV linked to one credit card to be used for shared content purchases, including movies, TV shows and music. iCloud Photo Library is also now available on Apple TV, which allows users to sync all their photos across all their Apple devices using iCloud for a monthly fee depending on how much storage they want.
Apple also rolled out a number of interface refinements, which are seen as major updates considering how Apple takes its time upgrading the Apple TV. The biggest change seems to be the appearance of the icons, which now look flatter and sleeker to match the design of the icons on iOS. Apple also changed the design and color of certain apps, with Settings getting the most radical makeover to show the nested gears found in iOS 8 and OS X, and eschewed the old fonts for a slimmer one.
The Apple TV update is available as a free download that users can access from the Settings menu of their set-top box. However, Beats Music and the new interface are available only for owners of third-generation Apple TVs.
In February this year, Apple announced that it has made $1 billion in sales of Apple TV since 2013, which means the set-top box could no longer be considered "a hobby." Watchers of the technology industry have criticized Apple about its supposed dedication to television, one that Apple CEO Tim Cook recently reiterated in an interview aired over PBS with Charlie Rose.
"I don't want to get into what we're doing for the future but we've taken stabs with Apple TV and Apple TV now has over 20 million users, so it has far exceeded the hobby label that we've placed on it," Cook says [video]. "And we've added more content to it this year, so there's increasingly more things that you can do on there. This is an area that we continue to look at."
