Apple has released a new kids-oriented app onto the Apple TV’s tvOS App Store that allow children and their parents to select books featuring read-aloud capabilities, bringing text to life on the big screen.
Called iBooks StoryTime and free to download, the app is built to enable children to read along with interactive books, right from the comfort of their sofa and on their big screen TVs.
The available books include The ABCs of Cookies, The Little Red Hen, and Goodnight Moon, and they are essentially audio-enhanced text books which features character voices, sound effects, and word-for-word narration that children can follow along with. Parents can use the Siri Remote to control the playback/reading of the book.
While the iBooks StoryTime app is free, the content is not. Apple is offering Dora’s Big Buddy Race Read-Along Storybook as a free taster title to allow parents and children to try the app out, but further books will need to be purchased from the iBooks Store.
• Experience your favorite Read-Aloud books on a large screen.
• With Read-Aloud narration, pages flip automatically as you go.
• Turn Read-Aloud off to read the story aloud to your child.
• iBooks StoryTime works with Siri Remote, making it easy to swipe between pages.
• Buy additional Read-Aloud books on iBooks, from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
• Any Read-Aloud book purchased by you or your family will appear in your iBooks StoryTime library
Apple has released the iBooks StoryTime app with no fanfare but ironically it is this kind of family experience which the Apple TV should be trumpeted for, and many of us feel is actually what Apple should build on. Cable boxes simply cannot compete with this kind of content and interactivity, and while other set-top boxes do exist along the lines of the Apple TV, it’s the tvOS App Store, and by extension the iBooks Store, which makes apps such as iBooks StoryTime possible.
Apple should shout it from the rooftops, and if it doesn’t, we can. The app can be downloaded for free on the Apple TV from the download link below.
(Download: iBooks StoryTime for Apple TV)
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