Make it an Apple TV Pro. Including support for 8k and with an M4 to rival any PlayStation 5 or XBOX in terms of gaming.
It would be difficult to get a competitive price and maintain profit.
The Apple TV is $129, 64GB SSD, A15 (iPhone 13), 4GB RAM. The Mac mini M4 is $599, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD. This is half the performance of XBox/PS5, which sell for $450.
They'd have to use an iPhone chip to get the price down and they'd need 8GB RAM as some games use over 5GB:
It might be easier to allow people to dock their iPhone to a TV as there are tens of millions of them in use already, this video shows it works well (7:00):
Then it's more like a Nintendo Switch that docks to a TV.
They might be able to do A18 Pro, 8GB, 64GB for $299 but people would then be weighing up vs an XBox Series S at $300.
In terms of unit volume, getting people to dock iPhones to their TV with a first party dock and supported controller (Xbox One, PS5) would be higher. People can even dedicate an old iPhone to the TV dock.
I like that idea!!! Where does „half the performance“ come from.
I am sure Apple can tweak some cores (more gpu etc) to easily double the PS5 performance
I agree. My one complaint with the Apple TV is not its performance, but with the ATV+ experience which feels like it's constantly trying to shove content down my throat. There are essentially no configuration options, no way to tell it that I'm not interested. It's so irritating that I generally leave my ATV app in 'Library'.
(in a kind of tragic irony, the best way to use the TV app on Apple TV is to not run it at all; if it's just selected on the home screen it displays a nice quiet list of your upcoming episodes without any sound, video, or fanfare)
A long shot, but bringing back optical audio output (which TV used to have) would be great for AirPlay directly to the stereo system without requiring a third-party HDMI audio extractor component. Not holding my breath, of course.
For me, the main problem with lack of optical is that you can't stream to the speakers attached to the TV without the TV being on. I just want to be able to stream music with the TV off. Even if it's not possible to tell the TV to sleep and keep the optical on, just make screen black, it would save loads of power on OLED TVs.
I am sure Apple can tweak some cores (more gpu etc) to easily double the PS5 performance
GPUs have raw performance measures that come from core counts and clock speeds. These measures aren't always directly comparable but they tend to be fairly reliable. M4 is 4.6TFLOPs (around the same as XBox Series S), the PS5 is around 10 TFLOPs.
It's better to compare actual GPUs, the consoles use AMD hardware and the PS5 is close to an AMD 6600XT:
There aren't many games on the Mac to compare but Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a well-optimized title. It shows M4 around 30% of the PS5-equivalent. With upscaling, it can get close to half.
M4 Pro is 9.2TFLOPs and roughly equivalent to PS5. M4 Max is 18.4TFLOPs and roughly double the PS5, probably close to PS5 Pro. A18 Pro in the iPhone is 2.5TFLOPs, around 1/2 the M4 or 1/4 the PS5.
Apple's cheapest M4 Max product would be the $2000 M4 Max Studio when it's released.
Nvidia's latest AI frame-gen can 4x the FPS. Apple will have at least 2x frame-gen in an upcoming MetalFX for the Cyberpunk 2077 port this year so this will help vs the PS5 performance, although PS5 has it too:
The Nintendo Switch 2 is rumored to be around 4TFLOPs (10x Switch 1) and will support DLSS3 and frame-gen, this should perform closely to a PS5 without upscaling and frame-gen and similar to the base M4 iPad Pro. Apple would be competitive with Switch 2 in the iPad Pros and Mac mini and with upscaling and frame-gen can give PS5-like performance.
A TV dock would allow people to use their iPad Pros this way too and the dock could open a TV UI like Steam's Big Picture mode.
This is used for photos, music, movies. A dock could help get more Apple TV+ (and Arcade) users because way more people have iPhones than Apple TV boxes.
High quality games for this setup are still lacking but Ubisoft is having some financial trouble just now and seem to be putting themselves up for sale. Tencent owns a portion of the company but the owners have some contention about leadership. If Apple was more willing to let them lead the company, perhaps they'd sell to them instead (should cost $5-10b). Then they'd get a few decent franchises like Splinter Cell, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Rayman, Rabbids, Watchdogs, The Crew (like Forza), Trackmania, Just Dance. They'd get 2 game engines: Snowdrop and Dunia (fork of CryEngine). Snowdrop was used in the Avatar game:
All I know is I just want 120Hz or 120Hz+VRR either one, just come ON! So "that" on an TV and then 2 HomeMini 2s!
No more Apple purchase except iPhones and Watches (and this is every 3 year intervals), again no more (other) purchase till 2030!
PLEASE let me FINISH for 5 years!!
MBP M1 Pro 16 and Pro M2 12.9 (me), MBP M2 13 and iPad Pro M1 12.9 iPad (wife), with Mac Mini M4 Pro 1TB/64GB with various other products going backwards; but we can do this till 2030! Just need the damn HomePod Minis for the daily listening to music and podcast and AppleTV for my game I am working on... UGH
5 years ready to work!!! Things are really good right now!!!
I would prefer that Apple move the Siri button to the top. The side button is too easy to press when you’re gripping the remote, which is required for such a small and slippery device. Lighted buttons would be very nice as well. I’m sure Apple could figure how to intelligently activate the lighting using a combination of motion detection and ambient light sensing.
For me a New Apple TV Should come with HDMI 2.2 and WiFi 7.
If it has a camera it would be great if it had a find me option that told you if you were getting closer or further away from the remote. The remote could have built in air tag.
If it had an option to undo updates or install older versions of apps that would be great as I think the current apple tv app is awful and the old iTunes apps where better. If then don't then the Apple TV app needs the Lost features of the iTunes apps such as whish lists.
I would prefer that Apple move the Siri button to the top. The side button is too easy to press when you’re gripping the remote, which is required for such a small and slippery device.
Amen to that idea!!! I have come close to tearing apart the remote and physically disconnecting the button, it is so damned annoying!
Each service has it’s own interface to learn, for starters. Some are integrated with SIRI, some aren't. Some have DVR functionality, some don’t.
Programming is service specific, if you want to watch a particular show you need a particular service. When dumping Verizon cable, my wife demanded access to HGTV, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), CNN and local news and weather. TCM was the toughest one to find, it turns out the only alternative to using cable to watch it 24/7 is Sling as part of a $6 package on top of the $40 monthly base service which includes HGTV, CNN and our local NBC channel. It's the most expensive service we use because it includes live TV channels. We have about a dozen channels as favorites and there’s only a half dozen we watch regularly.
We've been Netflix subscribers from when it was a DVD service, we contribute to the local PBS station so we use the PBS app to watch that and we have Amazon Prime because we were already Prime members. We use two freebies…Kanopy (through our town library!) and Pluto.
We unsubscribe and resubscribe to Apple TV+ only when something we want to watch is available, we binge for a month and then unsubscribe again. We have never had Hulu, Peacock or any of the other services I see mentioned in the TV review section of my local newspaper and have no plans to do what we do already with Apple TV+. We don’t have enough time to watch even a fraction of what we have already.
I’ll mention that music streaming is just as bad. I'm no fan of Spotify but it has a huge advantage over every other service…it integrates nicely with my home stereo system and my car stereo system. I’ve tried many others and they all are fussier to use and just like video streaming every one has a different interface and different content.
Comments
Where does „half the performance“ come from.
(in a kind of tragic irony, the best way to use the TV app on Apple TV is to not run it at all; if it's just selected on the home screen it displays a nice quiet list of your upcoming episodes without any sound, video, or fanfare)
It's better to compare actual GPUs, the consoles use AMD hardware and the PS5 is close to an AMD 6600XT:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Radeon-RX-6600-XT-vs-M4-10-Core-GPU_10939_12502.247598.0.html
There aren't many games on the Mac to compare but Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a well-optimized title. It shows M4 around 30% of the PS5-equivalent. With upscaling, it can get close to half.
M4 Pro is 9.2TFLOPs and roughly equivalent to PS5.
M4 Max is 18.4TFLOPs and roughly double the PS5, probably close to PS5 Pro.
A18 Pro in the iPhone is 2.5TFLOPs, around 1/2 the M4 or 1/4 the PS5.
Apple's cheapest M4 Max product would be the $2000 M4 Max Studio when it's released.
Nvidia's latest AI frame-gen can 4x the FPS. Apple will have at least 2x frame-gen in an upcoming MetalFX for the Cyberpunk 2077 port this year so this will help vs the PS5 performance, although PS5 has it too:
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/98570/amd-fsr-3-frame-generation-is-now-available-on-ps5-and-xbox-series-consoles-to-deliver-120-fps/index.html
The Nintendo Switch 2 is rumored to be around 4TFLOPs (10x Switch 1) and will support DLSS3 and frame-gen, this should perform closely to a PS5 without upscaling and frame-gen and similar to the base M4 iPad Pro. Apple would be competitive with Switch 2 in the iPad Pros and Mac mini and with upscaling and frame-gen can give PS5-like performance.
A TV dock would allow people to use their iPad Pros this way too and the dock could open a TV UI like Steam's Big Picture mode.
https://store.steampowered.com/bigpicture
Apple used to have something called Front Row, which was a media center software:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_Row_(software)
This is used for photos, music, movies. A dock could help get more Apple TV+ (and Arcade) users because way more people have iPhones than Apple TV boxes.
High quality games for this setup are still lacking but Ubisoft is having some financial trouble just now and seem to be putting themselves up for sale. Tencent owns a portion of the company but the owners have some contention about leadership. If Apple was more willing to let them lead the company, perhaps they'd sell to them instead (should cost $5-10b). Then they'd get a few decent franchises like Splinter Cell, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Rayman, Rabbids, Watchdogs, The Crew (like Forza), Trackmania, Just Dance. They'd get 2 game engines: Snowdrop and Dunia (fork of CryEngine). Snowdrop was used in the Avatar game:
They can port their existing library of games:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubisoft_games:_2010%E2%80%932019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubisoft_games:_2020%E2%80%93present
No more Apple purchase except iPhones and Watches (and this is every 3 year intervals), again no more (other) purchase till 2030!
PLEASE let me FINISH for 5 years!!
MBP M1 Pro 16 and Pro M2 12.9 (me), MBP M2 13 and iPad Pro M1 12.9 iPad (wife), with Mac Mini M4 Pro 1TB/64GB with various other products going backwards; but we can do this till 2030! Just need the damn HomePod Minis for the daily listening to music and podcast and AppleTV for my game I am working on... UGH
5 years ready to work!!! Things are really good right now!!!
If it has a camera it would be great if it had a find me option that told you if you were getting closer or further away from the remote. The remote could have built in air tag.
If it had an option to undo updates or install older versions of apps that would be great as I think the current apple tv app is awful and the old iTunes apps where better. If then don't then the Apple TV app needs the Lost features of the iTunes apps such as whish lists.
I have come close to tearing apart the remote and physically disconnecting the button, it is so damned annoying!
Each service has it’s own interface to learn, for starters. Some are integrated with SIRI, some aren't. Some have DVR functionality, some don’t.
Programming is service specific, if you want to watch a particular show you need a particular service. When dumping Verizon cable, my wife demanded access to HGTV, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), CNN and local news and weather. TCM was the toughest one to find, it turns out the only alternative to using cable to watch it 24/7 is Sling as part of a $6 package on top of the $40 monthly base service which includes HGTV, CNN and our local NBC channel. It's the most expensive service we use because it includes live TV channels. We have about a dozen channels as favorites and there’s only a half dozen we watch regularly.
We've been Netflix subscribers from when it was a DVD service, we contribute to the local PBS station so we use the PBS app to watch that and we have Amazon Prime because we were already Prime members. We use two freebies…Kanopy (through our town library!) and Pluto.
We unsubscribe and resubscribe to Apple TV+ only when something we want to watch is available, we binge for a month and then unsubscribe again. We have never had Hulu, Peacock or any of the other services I see mentioned in the TV review section of my local newspaper and have no plans to do what we do already with Apple TV+. We don’t have enough time to watch even a fraction of what we have already.
I’ll mention that music streaming is just as bad. I'm no fan of Spotify but it has a huge advantage over every other service…it integrates nicely with my home stereo system and my car stereo system. I’ve tried many others and they all are fussier to use and just like video streaming every one has a different interface and different content.