4) I agree that the lack of data available, even if just a scrolling banner with weather, news, maybe some Twitter or Mal subject if you want that enabled would be nice. Or an overlay. Something! That said, those new screensavers are brilliant to look at.
Maybe there's an app out there, but if not maybe a dev opportunity? Customize a display with "widgets" from an iOS or macOS device, then throw it to the ATV4 for display.If reasonably robust and usable I'd buy for maybe $5 or so.
Seems like a great way to grow the tvOS App Store and Apple TV sales and usage.
There's a reason Apple restricted to 200MB because of waiting time. On my cable broadband, I still have to wait a few minutes for a 200MB game to download.
There's a reason Apple restricted to 200MB because of waiting time. On my cable broadband, I still have to wait a few minutes for a 200MB game to download.
They weren't restricted to 200MB though, that was just the initial download. Apple tried to encourage developers to put the majority of the content from larger games into purgeable on-demand assets:
This way the system could free up space by deleting those assets if space was running low without deleting the app and download the assets again when needed.
They probably just found that it wasn't necessary because most iOS games are around 1GB at most anyway so 32GB is enough space to have a bunch of games installed at once. Plus the purgeable assets have size limits too:
I guess if they were expecting major games with as much as 20GB of assets then the system forcing developers to split the parts would work better but the developers who have those kind of games can easily work with Apple for a solution rather than forcing everybody who doesn't need to do that to figure out how to split out and download content on-demand, which they don't have to do on iOS.
All Apple really needed to offer was a cloud sync for save games so that game progress worked across platforms and would allow deleting entire games without deleting progress. This is something that would be useful for all apps. A simple database format like SQL that they provide guidelines for and they save the data files in the cloud, possibly along with other app data or have something to cache data in iOS separate from the app on deletion that gets restored on reinstall. The majority of the time, games won't need to be removed to free up space.
Given that the iPhone 7 moved to 32GB base with 128GB/256GB upgrades, NAND prices must have dropped enough to let them do this so I reckon they'll just drop the 32GB models and have the 64GB at $149. I doubt they'll need to offer a 128GB model at $199 but they might offer it anyway.
For once can we get a platform that FORCES code to be tight again? I mean, yeah, there were things in the original Macintosh that the team wanted to add but couldn't, but for heaven's sake, there's no excuse for the laziness we see today.
The 200MB was only a limit on the initial download size (the new 4GB limit is also just on initial download size). AppleTV apps were, and are, free to download more resources as needed using tvOS's on-demand resource system.
This change won't make AppleTV apps better, just have bigger initial download sizes and take up more space since more developers will move away from using on-demand resources (which can be automatically deleted by tvOS when no longer needed) and instead just shoving it all in the initial download.
This change doesn't come without a cost. In addition to a "more complete and rich experience", it also encourages code bloat and reduces the number of installable applications.
Dude. That would have to be some pretty bloaty code to take up 4GB.
This is about assets, not code.
The 200MB limit was stupid. This is long overdue.
Apple could make the AppleTV a decent gaming console if they lifted half a finger. This change is lifting maybe 1/10th of a finger.
The 200MB was only a limit on the initial download size. Each app could host up to 20GB of on-demand resources on Apple's servers, and have up to 2GB of those on the device at any given time. Apps could even specify a set of on-demand resources that should be downloaded and installed along with the app.
The idea is that the on-demand resources can be purged when no longer needed by the app. They aren't immediately deleted, in case the user wants to replay a level or something, but if the device runs low on space and sees a bunch of unused on-demand resources hanging around, it can just delete those instead of users being forced to manually manage their device's storage by deleting apps.
All this will do is mean apps can lazily just throw all their resources in the initial download, decreasing the the number of apps that a user can have installed before they have to start deleting apps to free up space, since the data in the initial download isn't automatically purgeable by tvOS.
Comments
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/FileManagement/Conceptual/On_Demand_Resources_Guide/index.html
This way the system could free up space by deleting those assets if space was running low without deleting the app and download the assets again when needed.
They probably just found that it wasn't necessary because most iOS games are around 1GB at most anyway so 32GB is enough space to have a bunch of games installed at once. Plus the purgeable assets have size limits too:
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/FileManagement/Conceptual/On_Demand_Resources_Guide/PlatformSizesforOn-DemandResources.html
I guess if they were expecting major games with as much as 20GB of assets then the system forcing developers to split the parts would work better but the developers who have those kind of games can easily work with Apple for a solution rather than forcing everybody who doesn't need to do that to figure out how to split out and download content on-demand, which they don't have to do on iOS.
All Apple really needed to offer was a cloud sync for save games so that game progress worked across platforms and would allow deleting entire games without deleting progress. This is something that would be useful for all apps. A simple database format like SQL that they provide guidelines for and they save the data files in the cloud, possibly along with other app data or have something to cache data in iOS separate from the app on deletion that gets restored on reinstall. The majority of the time, games won't need to be removed to free up space.
Given that the iPhone 7 moved to 32GB base with 128GB/256GB upgrades, NAND prices must have dropped enough to let them do this so I reckon they'll just drop the 32GB models and have the 64GB at $149. I doubt they'll need to offer a 128GB model at $199 but they might offer it anyway.
The idea is that the on-demand resources can be purged when no longer needed by the app. They aren't immediately deleted, in case the user wants to replay a level or something, but if the device runs low on space and sees a bunch of unused on-demand resources hanging around, it can just delete those instead of users being forced to manually manage their device's storage by deleting apps.
All this will do is mean apps can lazily just throw all their resources in the initial download, decreasing the the number of apps that a user can have installed before they have to start deleting apps to free up space, since the data in the initial download isn't automatically purgeable by tvOS.