Oliver Haslam on October 22, 2015, 8:09 am

Apple Releases tvOS GM For Apple TV 4

Apple has today been on a software updating spree, with one of the new releases being the Gold Master seed of the company’s new tvOS, the software set to power the as yet unreleased new Apple TV 4th-gen.

Set to be made available for order next week on October 26th, the new Apple TV brings with it a host of new features including a full App Store experience. In order to make that possible, the new hardware also needs new software, and tvOS is what Apple calls the new set-top box’s operating system. With developers hard at work getting their software ready for release day, the GM release of the first version of tvOS is a significant one.

tvOS-2

Developers will want to get the update downloaded ASAP in order to test their new apps against it, with this Gold Master build very likely to be the same software that the Apple TV eventually ships with once it starts to roll out next week. While Apple isn’t making too many noises about what has changed in this Gold Master when compared to previous beta releases, it’s a fairly safe bet that something somewhere will have changed and it can often be the small things that stop apps from working fully and, sometimes, from working at all.

As mentioned earlier, the fourth generation Apple TV goes on sale next week and will start from a pricetag of $149. The new box features an App Store as well as heavy Siri integration that Apple hopes will allow the company to finally crack the television market that it has dabbled in for so long. With runaway success such as the iPhone and at one point, the iPad, it’s easy to forget that the Apple TV has languished for some time, with Apple treating the device as a hobby as it was famously once called by Steve Jobs.

With the release of the fourth generation device, though, it’s fair to say the Apple TV is a hobby no more.