Apple's limp tvOS 16 update makes me worried for the Apple TV 4K's future

The Apple TV 4K 2021 and its remote sitting on a table

(Image credit: Future)

As Apple ran through all its big software announcements at WWDC 2022 – including the launch of iOS 16 and macOS 13, among others – I was waiting on tenterhooks for the launch of tvOS 16.

In more recent years, tvOS on the Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD has felt like a bit of a forgotten cousin compared to how exciting the developments in other areas have been – and this year it seemed to have actually been totally forgotten, because it didn't get a mention or showcase on-stage.

But the good news is that it does exist – although I only really know this because I went hunting for evidence, as if for some kind of benevolent software chupacabra.

Opinion: it's not looking great for Apple TV

I love the Apple TV 4K – its image quality beats pretty much every other streaming box, and the movie downloads from Apple's store are at a higher quality than you get from any other streaming service. They're the closest to 4K Blu-ray you can get without actually splurging on discs… but you can often buy 4K movies for less than the cost of a sandwich, which is not true of Blu-rays (well, maybe except in the case of some New York sandwiches).

But the lack of development of tvOS is really concerning, and makes me wonder if Apple is still committed to the platform. It's not like there haven't been additions – Spatial Audio in iOS 15 was a fantastic new feature. But in, say, watchOS 9 or iPadOS 16 you're getting five or six fantastic new features, and lots of smaller cool ones.

One of the improvements mentioned above implies that there could be real-time second-screen info on your iPhone or iPad relating to what you're watching on your main screen, and that sounds great… but how many developers will work to add that if Apple isn't pushing tvOS as a platform? Apple needs to lead, and show people what they could have, otherwise these new tricks will just be ignored.

Do we really think there's nothing more in the world of TV interaction that would benefit from some fresh thinking? Of course not. What kind of smart picture-in-picture options could we have? What about if Apple applied its machine learning skills to analyze what you're watching and tell you everything about it, such as who the actors in a scene are, and what else they've been in – like Amazon X-Ray, but on everything you watch? Could Apple use its language processing to create subtitles even for shows that don't have them?

And you know, the keyboard on the Apple TV is still horizontal rows of letters on the screen, a solution that exactly zero people love.

So the question is: why isn't Apple adding more to tvOS? And we may not like the answer.

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Matt is TechRadar's Managing Editor for Entertainment, meaning he's in charge of persuading our team of writers and reviewers to watch the latest TV shows and movies on gorgeous TVs and listen to fantastic speakers and headphones. It's a tough task, as you can imagine. Matt has over a decade of experience in tech publishing, and previously ran the TV & audio coverage for our colleagues at T3.com, and before that he edited T3 magazine. During his career, he's also contributed to places as varied as Creative Bloq, PC Gamer, PetsRadar, MacLife, and Edge. TV and movie nerdism is his speciality, and he goes to the cinema three times a week. He's always happy to explain the virtues of Dolby Vision over a drink, but he might need to use props, like he's explaining the offside rule.