Apple TV

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Breaking down why Apple TVs are privacy advocates’ go-to streaming device

ads, Apple, Apple TV, Apple TV Plus, Features, privacy, streaming, Tech, TVs / /

Using the Apple TV app or an Apple account means giving Apple more data, though.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Every time I write an article about the escalating advertising and tracking on today’s TVs, someone brings up Apple TV boxes. Among smart TVs, streaming sticks, and other streaming devices, Apple TVs are largely viewed as a safe haven.

“Just disconnect your TV from the Internet and use an Apple TV box.”

That’s the common guidance you’ll hear from Ars readers for those seeking the joys of streaming without giving up too much privacy. Based on our research and the experts we’ve consulted, that advice is pretty solid, as Apple TVs offer significantly more privacy than other streaming hardware providers.

But how private are Apple TV boxes, really? Apple TVs don’t use automatic content recognition (ACR, a user-tracking technology leveraged by nearly all smart TVs and streaming devices), but could that change? And what about the software that Apple TV users do use—could those apps provide information about you to advertisers or Apple?

In this article, we’ll delve into what makes the Apple TV’s privacy stand out and examine whether users should expect the limited ads and enhanced privacy to last forever.

Apple TV boxes limit tracking out of the box

One of the simplest ways Apple TVs ensure better privacy is through their setup process, during which you can disable Siri, location tracking, and sending analytics data to Apple. During setup, users also receive several opportunities to review Apple’s data and privacy policies. Also off by default is the boxes’ ability to send voice input data to Apple.

Most other streaming devices require users to navigate through pages of settings to disable similar tracking capabilities, which most people are unlikely to do. Apple’s approach creates a line of defense against snooping, even for those unaware of how invasive smart devices can be.

Apple TVs running tvOS 14.5 and later also make third-party app tracking more difficult by requiring such apps to request permission before they can track users.

“If you choose Ask App Not to Track, the app developer can’t access the system advertising identifier (IDFA), which is often used to track,” Apple says. “The app is also not permitted to track your activity using other information that identifies you or your device, like your email address.”

Users can access the Apple TV settings and disable the ability of third-party apps to ask permission for tracking. However, Apple could further enhance privacy by enabling this setting by default.

The Apple TV also lets users control which apps can access the set-top box’s Bluetooth functionality, photos, music, and HomeKit data (if applicable), and the remote’s microphone.

“Apple’s primary business model isn’t dependent on selling targeted ads, so it has somewhat less incentive to harvest and monetize incredible amounts of your data,” said RJ Cross, director of the consumer privacy program at the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). “I personally trust them more with my data than other tech companies.”

What if you share analytics data?

If you allow your Apple TV to share analytics data with Apple or app developers, that data won’t be personally identifiable, Apple says. Any collected personal data is “not logged at all, removed from reports before they’re sent to Apple, or protected by techniques, such as differential privacy,” Apple says.

Differential privacy, which injects noise into collected data, is one of the most common methods used for anonymizing data. In support documentation (PDF), Apple details its use of differential privacy:

The first step we take is to privatize the information using local differential privacy on the user’s device. The purpose of privatization is to assure that Apple’s servers don’t receive clear data. Device identifiers are removed from the data, and it is transmitted to Apple over an encrypted channel. The Apple analysis system ingests the differentially private contributions, dropping IP addresses and other metadata. The final stage is aggregation, where the privatized records are processed to compute the relevant statistics, and the aggregate statistics are then shared with relevant Apple teams. Both the ingestion and aggregation stages are performed in a restricted access environment so even the privatized data isn’t broadly accessible to Apple employees.

What if you use an Apple account with your Apple TV?

Another factor to consider is Apple’s privacy policy regarding Apple accounts, formerly Apple IDs.

Apple support documentation says you “need” an Apple account to use an Apple TV, but you can use the hardware without one. Still, it’s common for people to log into Apple accounts on their Apple TV boxes because it makes it easier to link with other Apple products. Another reason someone might link an Apple TV box with an Apple account is to use the Apple TV app, a common way to stream on Apple TV boxes.

So what type of data does Apple harvest from Apple accounts? According to its privacy policy, the company gathers usage data, such as “data about your activity on and use of” Apple offerings, including “app launches within our services…; browsing history; search history; [and] product interaction.”

Other types of data Apple may collect from Apple accounts include transaction information (Apple says this is “data about purchases of Apple products and services or transactions facilitated by Apple, including purchases on Apple platforms”), account information (“including email address, devices registered, account status, and age”), device information (including serial number and browser type), contact information (including physical address and phone number), and payment information (including bank details). None of that is surprising considering the type of data needed to make an Apple account work.

Many Apple TV users can expect Apple to gather more data from their Apple account usage on other devices, such as iPhones or Macs. However, if you use the same Apple account across multiple devices, Apple recognizes that all the data it has collected from, for example, your iPhone activity, also applies to you as an Apple TV user.

A potential workaround could be maintaining multiple Apple accounts. With an Apple account solely dedicated to your Apple TV box and Apple TV hardware and software tracking disabled as much as possible, Apple would have minimal data to ascribe to you as an Apple TV owner. You can also use your Apple TV box without an Apple account, but then you won’t be able to use the Apple TV app, one of the device’s key features.

Data collection via the Apple TV app

You can download third-party apps like Netflix and Hulu onto an Apple TV box, but most TV and movie watching on Apple TV boxes likely occurs via the Apple TV app. The app is necessary for watching content on the Apple TV+ streaming service, but it also drives usage by providing access to the libraries of many (but not all) popular streaming apps in one location. So understanding the Apple TV app’s privacy policy is critical to evaluating how private Apple TV activity truly is.

As expected, some of the data the app gathers is necessary for the software to work. That includes, according to the app’s privacy policy, “information about your purchases, downloads, activity in the Apple TV app, the content you watch, and where you watch it in the Apple TV app and in connected apps on any of your supported devices.” That all makes sense for ensuring that the app remembers things like which episode of Severance you’re on across devices.

Apple collects other data, though, that isn’t necessary for functionality. It says it gathers data on things like the “features you use (for example, Continue Watching or Library),” content pages you view, how you interact with notifications, and approximate location information (that Apple says doesn’t identify users) to help improve the app.

Additionally, Apple tracks the terms you search for within the app, per its policy:

We use Apple TV search data to improve models that power Apple TV. For example, aggregate Apple TV search queries are used to fine-tune the Apple TV search model.

This data usage is less intrusive than that of other streaming devices, which might track your activity and then sell that data to third-party advertisers. But some people may be hesitant about having any of their activities tracked to benefit a multi-trillion-dollar conglomerate.

Data collected from the Apple TV app used for ads

By default, the Apple TV app also tracks “what you watch, your purchases, subscriptions, downloads, browsing, and other activities in the Apple TV app” to make personalized content recommendations. Content recommendations aren’t ads in the traditional sense but instead provide a way for Apple to push you toward products by analyzing data it has on you.

You can disable the Apple TV app’s personalized recommendations, but it’s a little harder than you might expect since you can’t do it through the app. Instead, you need to go to the Apple TV settings and then select Apps > TV > Use Play History > Off.

The most privacy-conscious users may wish that personalized recommendations were off by default. Darío Maestro, senior legal fellow at the nonprofit Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), noted to Ars that even though Apple TV users can opt out of personalized content recommendations, “many will not realize they can.”

Apple can also use data it gathers on you from the Apple TV app to serve traditional ads. If you allow your Apple TV box to track your location, the Apple TV app can also track your location. That data can “be used to serve geographically relevant ads,” according to the Apple TV app privacy policy. Location tracking, however, is off by default on Apple TV boxes.

Apple’s tvOS doesn’t have integrated ads. For comparison, some TV OSes, like Roku OS and LG’s webOS, show ads on the OS’s home screen and/or when showing screensavers.

But data gathered from the Apple TV app can still help Apple’s advertising efforts. This can happen if you allow personalized ads in other Apple apps serving targeted apps, such as Apple News, the App Store, or Stocks. In such cases, Apple may apply data gathered from the Apple TV app, “including information about the movies and TV shows you purchase from Apple, to serve ads in those apps that are more relevant to you,” the Apple TV app privacy policy says.

Apple also provides third-party advertisers and strategic partners with “non-personal data” gathered from the Apple TV app:

We provide some non-personal data to our advertisers and strategic partners that work with Apple to provide our products and services, help Apple market to customers, and sell ads on Apple’s behalf to display on the App Store and Apple News and Stocks.

Apple also shares non-personal data from the Apple TV with third parties, such as content owners, so they can pay royalties, gauge how much people are watching their shows or movies, “and improve their associated products and services,” Apple says.

Apple’s policy notes:

For example, we may share non-personal data about your transactions, viewing activity, and region, as well as aggregated user demographics[,] such as age group and gender (which may be inferred from information such as your name and salutation in your Apple Account), to Apple TV strategic partners, such as content owners, so that they can measure the performance of their creative work [and] meet royalty and accounting requirements.

When reached for comment, an Apple spokesperson told Ars that Apple TV users can clear their play history from the app.

All that said, the Apple TV app still shares far less data with third parties than other streaming apps. Netflix, for example, says it discloses some personal information to advertising companies “in order to select Advertisements shown on Netflix, to facilitate interaction with Advertisements, and to measure and improve effectiveness of Advertisements.”

Warner Bros. Discovery says it discloses information about Max viewers “with advertisers, ad agencies, ad networks and platforms, and other companies to provide advertising to you based on your interests.” And Disney+ users have Nielsen tracking on by default.

What if you use Siri?

You can easily deactivate Siri when setting up an Apple TV. But those who opt to keep the voice assistant and the ability to control Apple TV with their voice take somewhat of a privacy hit.

According to the privacy policy accessible in Apple TV boxes’ settings, Apple boxes automatically send all Siri requests to Apple’s servers. If you opt into using Siri data to “Improve Siri and Dictation,” Apple will store your audio data. If you opt out, audio data won’t be stored, but per the policy:

In all cases, transcripts of your interactions will be sent to Apple to process your requests and may be stored by Apple.

Apple TV boxes also send audio and transcriptions of dictation input to Apple servers for processing. Apple says it doesn’t store the audio but may store transcriptions of the audio.

If you opt to “Improve Siri and Dictation,” Apple says your history of voice requests isn’t tied to your Apple account or email. But Apple is vague about how long it may store data related to voice input performed with the Apple TV if you choose this option.

The policy states:

Your request history, which includes transcripts and any related request data, is associated with a random identifier for up to six months and is not tied to your Apple Account or email address. After six months, you request history is disassociated from the random identifier and may be retained for up to two years. Apple may use this data to develop and improve Siri, Dictation, Search, and limited other language processing functionality in Apple products …

Apple may also review a subset of the transcripts of your interactions and this … may be kept beyond two years for the ongoing improvements of products and services.

Apple promises not to use Siri and voice data to build marketing profiles or sell them to third parties, but it hasn’t always adhered to that commitment. In January, Apple agreed to pay $95 million to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing Siri of recording private conversations and sharing them with third parties for targeted ads. In 2019, contractors reported hearing private conversations and recorded sex via Siri-gathered audio.

Outside of Apple, we’ve seen voice request data used questionably, including in criminal trials and by corporate employees. Siri and dictation data also represent additional ways a person’s Apple TV usage might be unexpectedly analyzed to fuel Apple’s business.

Automatic content recognition

Apple TVs aren’t preloaded with automatic content recognition (ACR), an Apple spokesperson confirmed to Ars, another plus for privacy advocates. But ACR is software, so Apple could technically add it to Apple TV boxes via a software update at some point.

Sherman Li, the founder of Enswers, the company that first put ACR in Samsung TVs, confirmed to Ars that it’s technically possible for Apple to add ACR to already-purchased Apple boxes. Years ago, Enswers retroactively added ACR to other types of streaming hardware, including Samsung and LG smart TVs. (Enswers was acquired by Gracenote, which Nielsen now owns.)

In general, though, there are challenges to adding ACR to hardware that people already own, Li explained:

Everyone believes, in theory, you can add ACR anywhere you want at any time because it’s software, but because of the way [hardware is] architected… the interplay between the chipsets, like the SoCs, and the firmware is different in a lot of situations.

Li pointed to numerous variables that could prevent ACR from being retroactively added to any type of streaming hardware, “including access to video frame buffers, audio streams, networking connectivity, security protocols, OSes, and app interface communication layers, especially at different levels of the stack in these devices, depending on the implementation.”

Due to the complexity of Apple TV boxes, Li suspects it would be difficult to add ACR to already-purchased Apple TVs. It would likely be simpler for Apple to release a new box with ACR if it ever decided to go down that route.

If Apple were to add ACR to old or new Apple TV boxes, the devices would be far less private, and the move would be highly unpopular and eliminate one of the Apple TV’s biggest draws.

However, Apple reportedly has a growing interest in advertising to streaming subscribers. The Apple TV+ streaming service doesn’t currently show commercials, but the company is rumored to be exploring a potential ad tier. The suspicions stem from a reported meeting between Apple and the United Kingdom’s ratings body, Barb, to discuss how it might track ads on Apple TV+, according to a July report from The Telegraph.

Since 2023, Apple has also hired several prominent names in advertising, including a former head of advertising at NBCUniversal and a new head of video ad sales. Further, Apple TV+ is one of the few streaming services to remain ad-free, and it’s reported to be losing Apple $1 billion per year since its launch.

One day soon, Apple may have much more reason to care about advertising in streaming and being able to track the activities of people who use its streaming offerings. That has implications for Apple TV box users.

“The more Apple creeps into the targeted ads space, the less I’ll trust them to uphold their privacy promises. You can imagine Apple TV being a natural progression for selling ads,” PIRG’s Cross said.

Somewhat ironically, Apple has marketed its approach to privacy as a positive for advertisers.

“Apple’s commitment to privacy and personal relevancy builds trust amongst readers, driving a willingness to engage with content and ads alike,” Apple’s advertising guide for buying ads on Apple News and Stocks reads.

The most private streaming gadget

It remains technologically possible for Apple to introduce intrusive tracking or ads to Apple TV boxes, but for now, the streaming devices are more private than the vast majority of alternatives, save for dumb TVs (which are incredibly hard to find these days). And if Apple follows its own policies, much of the data it gathers should be kept in-house.

However, those with strong privacy concerns should be aware that Apple does track certain tvOS activities, especially those that happen through Apple accounts, voice interaction, or the Apple TV app. And while most of Apple’s streaming hardware and software settings prioritize privacy by default, some advocates believe there’s room for improvement.

For example, STOP’s Maestro said:

Unlike in the [European Union], where the upcoming Data Act will set clearer rules on transfers of data generated by smart devices, the US has no real legislation governing what happens with your data once it reaches Apple’s servers. Users are left with little way to verify those privacy promises.

Maestro suggested that Apple could address these concerns by making it easier for people to conduct security research on smart device software. “Allowing the development of alternative or modified software that can evaluate privacy settings could also increase user trust and better uphold Apple’s public commitment to privacy,” Maestro said.

There are ways to limit the amount of data that advertisers can get from your Apple TV. But if you use the Apple TV app, Apple can use your activity to help make business decisions—and therefore money.

As you might expect from a device that connects to the Internet and lets you stream shows and movies, Apple TV boxes aren’t totally incapable of tracking you. But they’re still the best recommendation for streaming users seeking hardware with more privacy and fewer ads.

Photo of Scharon Harding

Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She’s been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK.

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praise-kier-for-severance-season-2!-let’s-discuss.

Praise Kier for Severance season 2! Let’s discuss.

Apple TV, culture, severance, TV / /

Marching bands? Mammalian Nurturables? An ORTBO? Yup, Severance stays weird.

Severance has just wrapped up its second season. I sat down with fellow Ars staffers Aaron Zimmerman and Lee Hutchinson to talk through what we had just seen, covering everything from those goats to the show’s pacing. Warning: Huge spoilers for seasons 1 and 2 follow!

Nate: Severance season 1 was a smaller-scale, almost claustrophobic show about a crazy office, its “waffle parties,” and the personal life of Mark Scout, mourning his dead wife and “severing” his consciousness to avoid that pain. It followed a compact group of characters, centered around the four “refiners” who worked on Lumon’s severed floor. But season 2 blew up that cozy/creepy world and started following more characters—including far more “outies”—to far more places. Did the show manage to maintain its unique vibe while making significant changes to pacing, character count, and location?

Lee: I think so, but as you say, things were different this time around. One element that I’m glad carried through was the show’s consistent use of a very specific visual language. (I am an absolute sucker for visual storytelling. My favorite Kubrick film is Barry Lyndon. I’ll forgive a lot of plot holes if they’re beautifully shot.) Season 2, especially in the back half, treats us to an absolute smorgasbord of incredible visuals—bifurcated shots symbolizing severance and duality, stark whites and long hallways, and my personal favorite: Chris Walken in a black turtleneck seated in front of a fireplace, like Satan holding court in Hell. The storytelling might be a bit less focused, but it looks great.

Image of Christopher Walken being Christopher Walken.

So many visual metaphors in one frame.

Credit: AppleTV+

So many visual metaphors in one frame. Credit: AppleTV+

Aaron: I think it succeeded overall, with caveats. The most prominent thing lost in the transition was the tight pacing of the first season; while season 2 started and ended strong, the middle meandered quite a bit, and I’d say the overall pacing felt pretty off. Doing two late-season “side quest” episodes (Gemma/Mark and Cobel backstories) was a bit of a drag. But I agree with Lee—Severance was more about vibes than narrative focus this season.

Nate: The “side quests” were vocally disliked by a subsection of the show’s fandom, and it certainly is an unusual choice to do two episodes in a row that essentially leave all your main characters to the side. But I don’t think these were really outliers. This is a season, for instance, that opened with a show about the innies—and then covered the exact same ground in episode two from the outies’ perspective. It also sent the whole cast off on a bizarre “ORTBO” that took an entire episode and spent a lot of time talking about Kier’s masturbating, and possibly manufactured, twin. (!)

Still, the “side quest” episodes stood out even among all this experimentation with pace and flow. But I think the label “side quest” can be a misnomer. The episode showing us the Gemma/Mark backstory not only brought the show’s main character into focus, it revealed what was happening to Gemma and gave many new hints about what Lumon was up to. In other words—it was about Big Stuff.

Image the four MDR refiners on ORTBO

Even when we’re outside, the show sticks to a palette of black and white and cold. Winter is almost as much of a character in Severance as our four refiners are.

Credit: AppleTV+

Even when we’re outside, the show sticks to a palette of black and white and cold. Winter is almost as much of a character in Severance as our four refiners are. Credit: AppleTV+

The episode featuring Cobel, in contrast, found time for long, lingering drone shots of the sea, long takes of Cobel lying in bed, and long views of rural despair… and all to find a notebook. To me, this seemed much more like an actual “side quest” that could have been an interwoven B plot in a more normal episode.

Lee: The “side quest” I didn’t all mind was episode 7, “Chikhai Bardo,” directed by the show’s cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné. The tale of Mark and Gemma’s relationship—a tale begun while donating blood using Lumon-branded equipment, with the symbolism of Lumon as a blood-hungry faceless machine being almost disturbingly on-the-nose—was masterfully told. I wasn’t as much of a fan of the three episodes after that, but I think that’s just because episode 7 was just so well done. I like TV that makes me feel things, and that one succeeded.

Aaron: Completely agree. I love the Gemma/Mark episode, but I was very disappointed with the Cobel episode (it doesn’t help that I dislike her as a character generally, and the whole “Cobel invented severance!” thing seemed a bit convenient and unearned to me). I think part of the issue for me was that the core innie crew and the hijinks they got up to in season 1 felt like the beating heart of the show, so even though the story had to move on at some point (and it’s not going back—half the innies can’t even be innies anymore), I started to miss what made me fall in love with the show.

Image of Patricia Arquette as Harmony Cobel.

Harmony Cobel comes home to the ether factory.

Credit: AppleTV+

Harmony Cobel comes home to the ether factory. Credit: AppleTV+

Lee: I get the narrative motivation behind Cobel having invented the severance chip (along with every line of code and every function, as she tells us), but yeah, that was the first time the show threw something at me that I really did not like. I see how this lets the story move Cobel into a helper role with Mark’s reintegration, but, yeah, ugh, that particular development felt tremendously unearned, as you say. I love the character, but that one prodded my suspension of disbelief pretty damn hard.

Speaking of Mark’s reintegration—I was so excited when episode three (“Who is Alive?”) ended with Mark’s outie slamming down on the Lumon conference room table. Surely now after two catch-up episodes, I thought, we’d get this storyline moving! Having the next episode (“Woe’s Hollow”) focusing on the ORTBO and Kier’s (possibly fictional) twin was a little cheap, even though it was a great episode. But where I started to get really annoyed was when we slide into episode five (“Trojan’s Horse”) with Mark’s reintegration apparently stalled. It seems like from then to the end of the season, reintegration proceeded in fits and starts, at the speed of plot rather than in any kind of ordered fashion.

It was one of the few times where I felt like my time was being wasted by the showrunners. And I don’t like that feeling. That feels like Lost.

Image of Mark on the table.

Kind of wish they’d gone a little harder here.

Credit: AppleTV+

Kind of wish they’d gone a little harder here. Credit: AppleTV+

Aaron: Yes! Mark’s reintegration was handled pretty poorly, I think. Like you said, it was exciting to see the show go there so early… but it didn’t really make much difference for the rest of the season. It makes sense that reintegration would take time—and we do see flashes of it happening throughout the season—but it felt like the show was gearing up for some wild Petey-level reintegration stuff that just never came. Presumably that’s for season 3, but the reintegration stuff was just another example of what felt like the show spinning its wheels a bit. And like you said, Lee, when it feels like a show isn’t quite sure what to do with the many mysteries it introduces week after week, I start to think about Lost, and not in a good way.

The slow-rolled reintegration stuff was essential for the finale, though. Both seasons seemed to bank pretty hard on a “slow buildup to an explosive finale” setup, which felt a little frustrating this season (season 1’s finale is one of my favorite TV show episodes of all time).

But I think the finale worked. Just scene after scene of instantly iconic moments. The scene of innie and outtie Mark negotiating through a camcorder in that weird maternity cabin was brilliant. And while my initial reaction to Mark’s decision at the end was anger, I really should have seen it coming—outtie Mark could not have been more patronizing in the camcorder conversation. I guess I, like outtie Mark, saw innie Mark as being somewhat lesser than.

What did you guys think of the finale?

Nate: A solid effort, but one that absolutely did not reach the heights of season 1. It was at its best when characters and events from the season played critical moments—such as the altercation between Drummond, Mark, and Feral Goat Lady, or the actual (finally!) discovery of the elevator to the Testing Floor.

But the finale also felt quite strange or unbalanced in other ways. Ricken doesn’t make an appearance, despite the hint that he was willing to retool his book (pivotal in season 1) for the Lumon innies. Burt doesn’t show up. Irving is gone. So is Reghabi. Miss Huang was summarily dismissed without having much of a story arc. So the finale failed to “gather up all its threads” in the way it did during season one.

And then there was that huge marching band, which ups the number of severed employees we know about by a factor of 50x—and all so they could celebrate the achievements of an innie (Mark S.) who is going to be dismissed and whose wife is apparently going to be killed. This seemed… fairly improbable, even for Lumon. On the other hand, this is a company/cult with an underground sacrificial goat farm, so what do I know about “probability”? Speaking of which, how do we feel about the Goat Revelations ™?

Image of Emile the Goat.

This is Emile, and he must be protected at all costs.

Credit: AppleTV+

This is Emile, and he must be protected at all costs. Credit: AppleTV+

Lee: I’m still not entirely sure what the goat revelations were. They were being raised in order to be crammed into coffins and sacrificed when… things happen? Poor little Emile was going to ride to the afterlife with Gemma, apparently, but, like… why? Is it simply part of a specifically creepy Lumontology ritual? Emile’s little casket had all kinds of symbology engraved on it, and we know goats (or at least “the ram”) symbolizes Malice in Kier’s four tempers, but I’m still really not getting this one.

Aaron: Yeah, you kind of had to hand-wave a lot of the stuff in the finale. The goats just being sacrificial animals made me laugh—“OK, I guess it wasn’t that deep.” But it could be that we don’t really know their actual purpose yet.

Perhaps most improbable to me was that this was apparently the most important day in Lumon history, and they had basically one security guy on the premises. He’s a big dude—or was (outtie Mark waking up mid-accidental-shooting cracked me up)—but come on.

Stuff like the marching band doesn’t make a lick of sense. But it was a great scene, so, eh, just go with it. That seems to be what Severance is asking us to do more and more, and honestly, I’m mostly OK with that.

Image of Seth Milchick, lord of the dance.

This man can do anything.

Credit: AppleTV+

This man can do anything. Credit: AppleTV+

Nate: Speaking of important days in Lumon history… what is Lumon up to, exactly? Jame Eagen spoke in season 1 about his “revolving,” he watched Helena eat eggs without eating anything himself, and he appears on the severed floor to watch the final “Cold Harbor” test. Clearly something weird is afoot. But the actual climactic test on Gemma was just to see if the severance block could hold her personalities apart even when facing deep traumas.

However, (as Miss Casey) she had already been in the presence of her husband (Mark S.), and neither of them had known it. So the show seems to suggest on the one hand that whatever is happening on the testing floor will change the world. But on the other hand, it’s really just confirming what we already know. And surely there’s no need to kidnap people if the goal is just to help them compartmentalize pain; as our current epidemic of drug and alcohol use show, plenty of people would sign up for this voluntarily. So what’s going on? Or, if you have no theories, does the show give you confidence that it knows where it’s going?

Lee: The easy answer—that severance chips will somehow allow the vampire spirit of Kier to jump bodies forever—doesn’t really line up. If Chris Walken’s husband Walter Bishop is to be believed, the severance procedure is only 12 years old. So it’s not that, at least.

Though Nate’s point about Helena eating eggs—and Jame’s comment that he wished she would “take them raw”—does echo something we learned back in season one: that Kier Egan’s favorite breakfast was raw eggs and milk.

Image of a precisely sliced hard boiled egg on a painted plate.

Eggiwegs! I would like… to eat them raw?

Credit: AppleTV+

Eggiwegs! I would like… to eat them raw? Credit: AppleTV+

Aaron: That’s the question for season 3, I think, and whether they’re able to give satisfying answers will determine how people view this show in the long term. I’ll admit that I was much more confident in the show’s writers after the first season; this season has raised some concerns for me. I believe Ben Stiller has said that they know how the show ends, just not how it gets there. That’s a perilous place to be.

Nate: We’ve groused a bit about the show’s direction, but I think it’s fair to say it comes from a place of love; the storytelling and visual style is so special, and we’ve had our collective hearts broken so many times by shows that can’t stick the landing. (I want those hours back, Lost.) I’m certainly rooting for Severance to succeed. And even though this season wasn’t perfect, I enjoyed watching every minute of it. As we wrap things up, anyone have a favorite moment from season 2? I personally enjoyed Milchick getting salty, first with Drummond and then with a wax statue of Kier.

Lee: Absolutely! I very much want the show to stick the eventual landing. I have to go with you on your take, Nate—Milchick steals the show. Tramell Tillman plays him like a true company man, with the added complexity that comes when your company is also the cult that controls your life. My favorite bits with him are his office decorations, frankly—the rabbit/duck optical illusion statue, showing his mutable nature, and the iceberg poster, hinting at hidden depths. He’s fantastic. I would 100 percent watch a spin-off series about Milchick.

Image showing Seth Milchick's office.

Mr. Milchick’s office, filled with ambiguousness. I’m including Miss Huang in that description, too.

Credit: AppleTV+

Mr. Milchick’s office, filled with ambiguousness. I’m including Miss Huang in that description, too. Credit: AppleTV+

Aaron: This season gave me probably my favorite line in the whole series—Irv’s venomous “Yes! Do it, Seth!” as Helena is telling Milchick to flip the switch to bring back Helly R. But yeah, Milchick absolutely killed it this season. “Devour feculence” and the drum major scene were highlights, but I also loved his sudden sprint from the room after handing innie Dylan his outtie’s note. Severance can be hilarious.

And I agree, complaints aside, this show is fantastic. It’s incredibly unique, and I looked forward to watching it every week so I could discuss it with friends. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait three more years for the next season.

Photo of Nate Anderson

Praise Kier for Severance season 2! Let’s discuss. Read More »

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Apple TV+ crosses enemy lines, will be available as an Android app starting today

Apple, Apple TV, culture / /

Apple is also adding the ability to subscribe to Apple TV+ through both the Android and Google TV apps using Google’s payment system, whereas the old Google TV app required subscribing on another device.

Apple TV+ is available for $9.99 a month, or $19.95 a month as part of an Apple One subscription that bundles 2TB of iCloud storage, Apple Music, and Apple Arcade support (a seven-day free trial of Apple TV+ is also available). MLS Season Pass is available as a totally separate $14.99 a month or $99 per season subscription, but people who subscribe to both Apple TV+ and MLS Season Pass can save $2 a month or $20 a year on the MLS subscription.

Apple TV+ has had a handful of critically acclaimed shows, including Ted Lasso, Slow Horses, and Severance. But so far, that hasn’t translated to huge subscriber numbers; as of last year, Apple had spent about $20 billion making original TV shows and movies for Apple TV+, but the service has only about 10 percent as many subscribers as Netflix. As Bloomberg put it last July, “Apple TV+ generates less viewing in one month than Netflix does in one day.”

Whether an Android app can help turn that around is anyone’s guess, but offering an Android app brings Apple closer to parity with other streaming services, which have all supported Apple’s devices and Android devices for many years now.

Apple TV+ crosses enemy lines, will be available as an Android app starting today Read More »

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The Severance writer and cast on corporate cults, sci-fi, and more

Adam Scott, Apple, Apple TV, culture, Features, sci-fi, severance, streaming, TV / /

The following story contains light spoilers for season one of Severence but none for season 2.

The first season of Severance walked the line between science-fiction thriller and Office Space-like satire, using a clever conceit (characters can’t remember what happens at work while at home, and vice versa) to open up new storytelling possibilities.

It hinted at additional depths, but it’s really season 2’s expanded worldbuilding that begins to uncover additional themes and ideas.

After watching the first six episodes of season two and speaking with the series’ showrunner and lead writer, Dan Erickson, as well as a couple of members of the cast (Adam Scott and Patricia Arquette), I see a show that’s about more than critiquing corporate life. It’s about all sorts of social mechanisms of control. It’s also a show with a tremendous sense of style and deep influences in science fiction.

Corporation or cult?

When I started watching season 2, I had just finished watching two documentaries about cults—The Vow, about a multi-level marketing and training company that turned out to be a sex cult, and Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God, about a small, Internet-based religious movement that believed its founder was the latest human form of God.

There were hints of cult influences in the Lumon corporate structure in season 1, but without spoiling anything, season 2 goes much deeper into them. As someone who has worked at a couple of very large media corporations, I enjoyed Severance’s send-up of corporate culture. And as someone who has worked in tech startups—both good and dysfunctional ones—and who grew up in a radical religious environment, I now enjoy its send-up of cult social dynamics and power plays.

Employees watch a corporate propaganda video

Lumon controls what information is presented to its employees to keep them in line. Credit: Apple

When I spoke with showrunner Dan Erickson and actor Patricia Arquette, I wasn’t surprised to learn that it wasn’t just me—the influence of stories about cults on season 2 was intentional.

Erickson explained:

I watched all the cult documentaries that I could find, as did the other writers, as did Ben, as did the actors. What we found as we were developing it is that there’s this weird crossover. There’s this weird gray zone between a cult and a company, or any system of power, especially one where there is sort of a charismatic personality at the top of it like Kier Eagan. You see that in companies that have sort of a reverence for their founder.

Arquette also did some research on cults. “Very early on when I got the pilot, I was pretty fascinated at that time with a lot of cult documentaries—Wild Wild Country, and I don’t know if you could call it a cult, but watching things about Scientology, but also different military schools—all kinds of things like that with that kind of structure, even certain religions,” she recalled.

The Severance writer and cast on corporate cults, sci-fi, and more Read More »

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Proton is the latest entrant in the quirky “VPN for your TV” market

Apple TV, geofencing, geolocation, netflix, proton vpn, streaming, Tech, vpns / /

Netflix started blocking VPN and proxy providers as early as 2015, then stepped up its efforts in 2021. VPN providers aiming to keep up geofence-avoiding services to customers would sometimes lease IP addresses generally associated with residential IP subnets. This resulted in Netflix banning larger swaths of IP addresses that VPNs were using as exit proxies.

Amazon’s Prime Video, Parmount+, and other services, including the BBC, have similarly ramped up efforts to block anything resembling tunneled traffic. Proton has, for example, a guide to “unblock Amazon Prime Video with Proton VPN“; Proton also writes on that page that it “does not condone the use of our VPN service to bypass copyright regulations.”

You can search the web and find freshly updated lists of the best VPNs for getting around various services’ geo-filtering blocks, but the fact that so many are dated by the year, or even month, gives you some clue as to how effective any one solution may be.

For the purposes of getting back to the content you’re entitled to view, or maybe keeping your viewing habits private on an Apple TV you’re using outside your home, Proton VPN is likely more useful. As for the other stuff, hey, it might be worth a shot. Using the Apple TV app requires a paid Proton VPN plan.

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Apple is turning The Oregon Trail into a movie

Apple, Apple II, Apple TV, culture, Edutainment, gaming, movies, The Oregon Trail / /

Apple will adapt the classic educational game The Oregon Trail into a big-budget movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter (THR).

The film is in early development, having just been pitched to Apple and approved. Will Speck and Josh Gordon (Blades of Glory, Office Christmas Party) will direct and produce. Given that pedigree (zany comedies), it’s clear this film won’t be a serious historical drama about the struggles of those who traveled the American West.

In fact, the report not only notes that it will be a comedy—it says it will be a musical, too. “The movie will feature a couple of original musical numbers in the vein of Barbie,” according to THR’s sources. EGOT winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul will be responsible for the original music in the film.

Of course, with a comedy, the writers are at least as important as the director. The film will be written by Kenneth and Keith Lucas—but they’re most recently best known for the 2021 drama Judas and the Black Messiah, for which they received an Oscar nomination.

That’s all we know about the film so far. As for the game, well, it needs no introduction—especially for folks who were of the appropriate age to play it at school or at home on personal computers from the 1970s through the 1990s.

The game is a major cultural touchstone for a certain generation—to the point that “The Oregon Trail Generation” has been used as a label for many of the people born in the early 1980s. It’s long been a thing to joke about the game’s morbid content, like the infamous phrase: “You have died of dysentery.”

Since the film was greenlit by Apple, it’s likely to debut on the Apple TV+ streaming service, but we don’t yet know when it will arrive or who will star in it.

Apple is turning The Oregon Trail into a movie Read More »

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Amazon, Apple make a deal to offer Apple TV+ in a Prime bundle

Amazon, amazon prime video, Apple, Apple TV, streaming, subscriptions, Tech / /

The Apple TV platform, tvOS, and the original Apple TV app were initially intended to solve this problem by offering an a la carte, consumer-friendly way to manage the options in a burgeoning streaming-TV industry.

However, Apple’s attempt to make the TV app a universal hub of content has been continually stymied by the fact that industry giant Netflix has declined to participate.

Users of the TV app and Apple TV set-top-box still must launch a separate Netflix app to see their watch history on that service, or to see if movies or shows they want to watch are available. Content from most other services—including Amazon Prime Video—is exposable through search within the app and rolls into a unified watch history.

Fighting to succeed in a messy business

Further, streaming services have become increasingly expensive, and streamers have begun trying to find new revenue from sources like bundles and advertising. The reasons for these trends are complex, but one of the key problems is that scripted television content is immensely expensive to produce—especially as the prestige TV era has driven up viewer expectations in terms of quality and production values.

As an early leader in the industry, Netflix established unrealistic expectations for everyone involved—consumers, production houses, investors, and so on—by simply throwing immense amounts of money into content without immediately seeing a return.

When larger economic factors put an end to that practice, streamers had to adjust—including Apple, which among other things is tweaking its film strategy for the new landscape.

Apple still offers several of those central hub features—for example, you can subscribe to services like Paramount+ and launch their shows from the Apple TV app, just like Amazon is doing with its app and Apple TV+ here. But the realities of the mess the industry finds itself in have clearly led Apple to keep an open mind about how it can attract and retain viewers.

Amazon, Apple make a deal to offer Apple TV+ in a Prime bundle Read More »

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Report: Apple changes film strategy, will rarely do wide theatrical releases

Amazon, Apple, Apple TV, culture, movie theaters, movies, Tech / /

Small screen focus —

Apple TV+ has made more waves with TV shows than movies so far.

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George Clooney and Brad Pitt stand in a doorway

Enlarge / A still from Wolfs, an Apple-produced film starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt.

Apple

For the past few years, Apple has been making big-budget movies meant to compete with the best traditional Hollywood studios have to offer, and it has been releasing them in theaters to drive ticket sales and awards buzz.

Much of that is about to change, according to a report from Bloomberg. The article claims that Apple is “rethinking its movie strategy” after several box office misfires, like Argylle and Napoleon.

It has already canceled the wide theatrical release of one of its tent pole movies, the George Clooney and Brad Pitt-led Wolfs. Most other upcoming big-budget movies from Apple will be released in just a few theaters, suggesting the plan is simple to ensure continued awards eligibility but not to put butts in seats.

Further, Apple plans to move away from super-budget films and to focus its portfolio on a dozen films a year at lower budgets. Just one major big-budget film is planned to get a wide theatrical release: F1. How that one performs could inform future changes to Apple’s strategy.

The report notes that Apple is not the only streamer changing its strategy. Netflix is reducing costs and bringing more movie production in-house, while Amazon is trying (so far unsuccessfully) to produce a higher volume of movies annually, but with a mixture of online-only and in-theater releases. It also points out that movie theater chains are feeling ever more financial pressure, as overall ticket sales haven’t matched their pre-pandemic levels despite occasional hits like Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine.

Cinemas have been counting on streamers like Netflix and Apple to crank out films, but those hopes may be dashed if the media companies continue to pull back. For the most part, tech companies like Apple and Amazon have had better luck gaining buzz with television series than with feature films.

Report: Apple changes film strategy, will rarely do wide theatrical releases Read More »

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ESPN’s Where to Watch tries to solve sports’ most frustrating problem

Apple TV, ESPN, ESPN Where to Watch, sports, streaming, Tech, TV / /

A Licensing Cluster—

Find your game in a convoluted landscape of streaming services and TV channels.

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The ESPN app on an iPhone 11 Pro.

The ESPN app on an iPhone 11 Pro.

ESPN

Too often, new tech product or service launches seem like solutions in search of a problem, but not this one: ESPN is launching software that lets you figure out just where you can watch the specific game you want to see amid an overcomplicated web of streaming services, cable channels, and arcane licensing agreements. Every sports fan is all too familiar with today’s convoluted streaming schedules.

Launching today on ESPN.com and the various ESPN mobile and streaming device apps, the new guide offers various views, including one that lists all the sporting events in a single day and a search function, among other things. You can also flag favorite sports or teams to customize those views.

“At the core of Where to Watch is an event database created and managed by the ESPN Stats and Information Group (SIG), which aggregates ESPN and partner data feeds along with originally sourced information and programming details from more than 250 media sources, including television networks and streaming platforms,” ESPN’s press release says.

ESPN previously offered browsable lists of games like this, but it didn’t identify where you could actually watch all the games.

There’s no guarantee that you’ll have access to the services needed to watch the games in the list, though. Those of us who cut the cable cord long ago know that some games—especially those local to your city—are unavailable without cable.

For example, I live within walking distance from Wrigley Field, but because I don’t have cable, I can’t watch most Cubs games on any screens in my home. As a former Angeleno, I follow the Dodgers instead because there are no market blackouts for me watching them all the way from Chicago. The reverse would be true if I were in LA.

Even if you do have cable, many sports are incredibly convoluted when it comes to figuring out where to watch stuff. ESPN Where to Watch could be useful for the new college football season, for example.

Expansion effort

ESPN isn’t the first company to envision this, though. The company to make the most progress up until now was Apple. Apple’s TV device and app was initially meant as a one-stop shop for virtually all streaming video, like a comprehensive 21st-century TV Guide. But with cable companies being difficult to work with and Netflix not participating, Apple never quite made that dream a reality.

It kept trying for sports, though, tying into third-party offerings like the MLB app alongside its own programming to try to make the TV app a place to launch all your games. Apple got pretty close, depending on which sport you’re trying to follow.

ESPN’s app seems a little more promising, as it covers a more comprehensive range of games and goes beyond the TV app’s “what’s happening right now” focus with better search and listings.

ESPN execs have said they hope to start offering more games streaming directly in the app, and if that app becomes the go-to spot thanks to this new guide, it might give the company more leverage with leagues to make that happen.

That could certainly be more convenient for viewers, though there are, of course, downsides to one company having too much influence and leverage in a sport.

ESPN’s Where to Watch tries to solve sports’ most frustrating problem Read More »

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Apple Vision Pro’s content drought improves with new 3D videos

Apple, Apple TV, culture, Immersive Video, Mixed Reality, Tech, virtual reality, vision pro, visionOS / /

Immersive Video —

It’s still not the weekly cadence we expected, but it’s something.

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  • Boundless premieres tonight, taking Vision Pro users on a hot air balloon ride in Turkey.

  • Submerged will be Apple’s first fictional short film for Vision Pro.

  • Users will get a glimpse into the 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend.

  • This cryptic image teases The Weeknd’s Vision Pro “experience.”

  • The new series Elevated will tour places of interest around the world from above.

  • Apple is partnering with Red Bull for a surfing documentary.

  • Wild Life returns with an episode about elephants in a wildlife preserve.

Today, Apple announced a slate of more than a dozen upcoming Immersive Videos for its Vision Pro spatial reality headset. The first, titled Boundless, launches tonight at 9 pm ET. More will follow in the coming weeks and months.

The announcement follows a long, slow period for new Vision Pro-specific video content from Apple. The headset launched in early February with a handful of Immersive Video episodes ranging from five to 15 minutes each. Since then, only three new videos have been added.

On March 28, Apple released a highlight reel of Major League Soccer plays from the season that had ended months prior. A second episode of Prehistoric Planet, Apple’s Immersive Video dinosaur nature documentary, went live on April 19. Likewise, a new episode of the Adventure series titled “Parkour” landed on May 24.

The MLS video played more like a short ad for Apple’s MLS programming than anything else, but other Immersive Videos have impressed with their quality if not their creative ambition. They’re all short videos that put the viewer inside a moment in space and time with either animals or people doing their thing. The videos are high-resolution, and the 3D is generally well done. The production values are high, even if the narratives are light. They come across as tech demos, as much as anything, but they are impressive.

Tonight’s Boundless episode will allow viewers to see what it’s like to ride in a hot air balloon over sweeping vistas. Another episode titled “Arctic Surfing” will arrive this fall, Apple says. Sometime next month, Apple will publish the second episode of its real wildlife documentary, simply titled Wild Life. The episode will focus on elephants in Kenya’s Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. Another episode is in the works, too. “Later this year,” Apple writes in its newsroom post, “viewers will brave the deep with a bold group of divers in the Bahamas, who come face-to-face with apex predators and discover creatures much more complex than often portrayed.”

More on the way

In September, we’ll see the debut of a new Immersive Video series titled Elevated. Apple describes it as an “aerial travel series” in which viewers will fly over places of interest. The first episode will take viewers to Hawaii, while another planned for later this year will go to New England.

Apple is additionally partnering with Red Bull for a look at surfing called Red Bull: Big-Wave Surfing.

In addition to those documentary episodes, there will be three short films by year’s end. One will be a musical experience featuring The Weeknd, and another will take basketball fans inside the 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend. There will also be Submerged, the first narrative fictional Immersive Video on the platform. It’s an action short film depicting struggles on a submarine during World War II.

It’s good to see Apple finally making some movement here; the drought of content after the launch didn’t inspire confidence in the platform. Many people with mixed reality headsets use them a bunch for a few weeks but either fail to find ways to fit them into their daily habits or run out of compelling content and taper off before long. To keep people invested in visionOS, Apple needs to keep a rapid cadence of new content that users look forward to at least every week. Otherwise, some users will see their headsets sit on shelves, forgotten.

When I reviewed the Vision Pro, I assumed that the Immersive Video episodes would roll out weekly. That hasn’t proven the case, and it still doesn’t look like it will. Apple is going to have to invest more in content (and take more risks with that content, moving beyond short tech demo documentaries) to make the Vision Pro stick with customers.

Listing image by Apple

Apple Vision Pro’s content drought improves with new 3D videos Read More »

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Report: Apple TV+ will soon get a lot more movies made by studios other than Apple

Apple, Apple TV, culture, films, movies, streaming, Tech / /

Streaming services —

Apple TV+ series have made an impact, but its films have been less successful lately.

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A photo of a TV showing the landing page for Argylle in the Apple TV+ app

Enlarge / Apple seeks to continue to augment its library of original films like Argylle with films from other studios.

Apple TV+ has carved a niche for itself with strong original programming, and while it’s still far behind the likes of Netflix in terms of subscribers, it has seen a fairly strong initial run. To build on that, Apple is talking with major studios about ways to complement its slate of original programming with films from other companies in order to expand and extend the service’s appeal.

That’s according to Bloomberg reporters Lucas Shaw and Thomas Buckley, who cite people familiar with Apple’s workings. Those sources say Apple is “having discussions” with more than one large film studio about bringing more movies to the service.

Apple previously experimented with this by licensing around 50 movies and making them available on the service for limited runs over the past several months. That experiment seems to have gone well, leading Apple to begin laying the groundwork for expanding on that.

That test run was just in the United States. Bloomberg claims the focus this time is international, with the possibility of new films not just in the US but in other regions, too.

Hollywood studios have reportedly been anticipating this move. As you may have noticed amid the numerous subscription service price hikes, media companies have begun putting greater emphasis on profitability after the conclusion of a long period where subscriber growth at any cost was the goal. Licensing deals like this can help with that new goal.

It’s worth noting that while Apple has found some big successes in terms of series (Ted Lasso, Severance, The Morning Show) it has struggled to make as much of an impact with its movies. Despite big stars and budgets, the films have not always made as much cultural impact as the shows.

That means that bringing in films from studios with a more proven record can be a win-win: It will help Apple bolster the TV+ subscription service while generating revenue for film studios that are struggling to keep up in the new era.

Services like TV+ are a growing part of Apple’s business, which has historically been focused on hardware sales. In the second quarter of its 2024 fiscal year, the services bucket accounted for $23.9 billion in quarterly revenue, which is more than half the revenue generated by iPhone hardware sales.

Report: Apple TV+ will soon get a lot more movies made by studios other than Apple Read More »

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Testers unearth touchscreen UI in tvOS beta, signs point to a touchscreen HomePod

Apple, Apple TV, HomePod, Tech, tvos / /

screen time? —

Rumors of a touchscreen HomePod stretch back to 2021.

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A screenshot of tvOS 17. Recent betas have included evidence that Apple is working on a touchscreen-enabled version of the interface.

Enlarge / A screenshot of tvOS 17. Recent betas have included evidence that Apple is working on a touchscreen-enabled version of the interface.

Andrew Cunningham

Apple’s tvOS betas are usually among its least exciting; the Apple TV’s operating system has changed so little in the last decade that the most exciting thing to happen to it in recent memory is an extra column of icons.

But this week’s tvOS 18 beta 3 release includes a hidden feature that might be exciting for smart speaker enthusiasts, if not for people who still want their Apple TV boxes to develop exciting new capabilities. 9to5Mac has discovered a touchscreen interface (codenamed “PlasterBoard”) inside of the latest beta, a sign that Apple is testing alternate input mechanisms for software that is currently manipulated via remote control and voice.

Last week, MacRumors also discovered a reference to a device called “HomeAccessory17,1” in Apple’s beta software, a naming convention similar to the “AudioAccessory” device identifiers that Apple uses for HomePod speakers. Together, these developments suggest that Apple is working on a version of the HomePod with an integrated touchscreen, a device that rumors have suggested could launch in 2024 or 2025. The company has reportedly been working on a smart home device with a screen since at least 2021.

MacRumors also points out that the 17,1 model identifier could imply that the new HomePod is being powered by Apple’s upcoming A18 chip—model identifiers across Apple’s product lineup are normally tied to chip generation rather than product generation, which is why the Vision Pro (for example) is called “RealityDevice14,1” rather than “RealityDevice1,1.” Using an A18 will presumably give a new HomePod the necessary speed to support upcoming Apple Intelligence features, including a new and improved version of Siri.

All HomePod speakers have been running a forked version of tvOS since version 13.4 of the HomePod software was released in early 2020, which is why HomePod-related leaks seem to be showing up in tvOS-related code. This would also explain why Apple would use tvOS as the basis for a HomePod with a screen rather than a version of iPadOS.

Apple’s take on an Amazon Echo Show

A version of tvOS running on a tablet-style device could use more than just a touch-driven interface to reach its full potential—a tvOS version of Safari would be useful for browsing recipe sites or casual reading while you’re doing something else, for example. However, what Apple adds depends on the form that the screen takes.

Some rumors have suggested that it would be a circular panel that replaces the swirling LEDs on the top of current-generation HomePods, but Bloomberg’s normally reliable Mark Gurman has described the display as “iPad-like,” suggesting that it could look more like a version of Amazon’s Echo Show. Amazon advertises its Show devices as digital photo frames, miniature TVs, and general kitchen aids, and Apple’s pitch for a screen-ified HomePod would likely feature a lot of the same uses.

Amazon has already released multiple generations of Echo Show devices, and Google has made a couple of stabs at the category, too. A HomePod with a screen, whether released in 2024 or 2025, would be far from the first of its kind. However, the HomePod wasn’t a cutting-edge product when it was released either, and it’s still managed to carve out a niche.

We don’t know what a HomePod with a screen might cost, but assuming it includes a HomePod-esque speaker, an iPad-esque screen, and a cutting-edge iPhone processor, it seems likely that it will be priced well above the $299 Apple currently charges for the full-size screen-less HomePod. Apple’s original $349 HomePod flopped partly because it was priced too high relative to competitors and because it didn’t do a whole lot—a speaker that did more things could probably be priced higher without drawing as much criticism.

Testers unearth touchscreen UI in tvOS beta, signs point to a touchscreen HomePod Read More »