It’s been slowly getting better, but could a new set-top box from Apple perfect its TV ‘hobby’ line?
Nearly four years after the launch of the Apple TV 4K and a year after the launch of Apple TV+, we’re champing at the bit to find out what Apple might have planned for a possible hardware refresh of the 4K HDR streamer – and a 2020 leak may have the answer. According to tech analyst Jon Prosser, the model is ready to ship, and could «drop at any time». Of course, this was back in 2020, and he’s since said we won’t get one until at least 2021, so those claims have turned out to be rather optimistic. Our best bet right now is it’ll launch in Spring 2021, which just so happens to coincide with a rumored Apple event. That event could happen on March 23 and it could be the place Apple will debut the new Apple TV. That said, nothing is certain at this point. The Apple TV 4K still generally seems to be considered a niche product by Apple. It doesn’t get the annual upgrades that the iPhone, iPad and Macbook get, only getting a few minutes on stage at WWDC each year to talk about changes coming to tvOS. Hopefully, though, the next Apple TV will be worth the wait. The 4K-enabled Apple TV that arrived in 2017 finally saw the streamer meet the promise it’s always held, boasting super-high-resolution playback, some fun gaming options and voice control that actually worked. So what will a possible follow-up look like? Here’s what we might see from the Apple TV in 2021, which would be the 6th generation of the box. As ever with unannounced Apple products, outside the annual iPhone release, it’s hard to know when, if ever, a new product will hit stores. But we can make educated guesses based on previous models’ release dates. The fifth-generation,4K-capable Apple TV model was revealed on September 12,2017, almost two years to the day that the 4th generation Apple TV was announced. Given that timeline, we thought we might hear more in September 2019, but Apple tends to save hardware announcements – like its latest iPhones – for that time of the year. That date came and went, and we’re now waiting to see what 2021 might now bring. As we detailed above, the latest rumors from Jon Prosser, a knowledgeable, sometimes-right Apple leaker, hint at a release date in the first half of 2021.
