Product1 publisher2 min readPublished
Bloomberg says the revamped Siri clears Apple's held-back Apple TV for autumn
The refreshed box is reported to carry an A19-class chip and as much as 12GB of RAM, and its main selling point is software that only shipped on Monday alongside iOS 27. The price tiers set earlier this year are expected to hold.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- Bloomberg's Power On newsletter reports that Monday's rollout of the new Siri AI alongside iOS 27 clears Apple's held-back products, naming the refreshed Apple TV as due sometime this autumn.
- Apple reportedly kept the set-top box in reserve until those revamped Siri features were ready to ship.
- The model on sale runs the A15 chip and dates to 2022, and leaks point to an A19 or A19 Pro processor in the replacement.
- Pricing climbed to 199 and 249 in pounds and dollars earlier this year, and that structure looks set to carry over, alongside a rumoured Siri Remote redesign.
- Apple has not confirmed a release date, though Trusted Reviews expects November at the latest, going on its recent rollout pattern.
Compiled by The Product DeskSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- capability A household running HomeKit Secure Video would get camera footage processed on the box itself, so the video stops making the round trip to Apple's servers to be analysed.
- decision Anyone who needs a streaming box now can wait a season and get four chip generations more silicon at the two price points they would pay today, assuming the tiers hold.
- constraint Apple has tied the hardware's value to software that has only just reached households, so the box gets judged on how the new Siri behaves in its first weeks.
- precedent Holding hardware until the software it depends on is live is now the pattern buyers should expect for the rest of the Apple Home line, including the rumoured Home Hub tablet.
The pitch on the new box is AI, and it comes in two parts, according to Trusted Reviews: an on-device Siri that can do more, and HomeKit Secure Video footage processed on the device instead of on Apple's servers [9]. The camera part is the one a household can check. Either the footage goes to Apple or it stays in the living room.
Amazon and Google have both already layered generative AI features onto their own streaming boxes, ahead of any comparable refresh from Apple [4]. Local processing is the part specific to Apple's leaked spec [9].
The same Siri rethink that pushed the set-top box back is what stalled a rumoured Home Hub tablet and other Apple Home hardware, after a sluggish 2024 Apple Intelligence rollout and a widely reported delay [2]. That history is the case for reading Monday's software release as a general unblocking. But the Home Hub tablet is still a rumour with no date attached [2].
An A19 or A19 Pro would be four chip generations on from the A15 in the box now on sale [14]. It would not be Apple's newest part, because the A20 Pro already exists [7]. The rumoured 12GB of RAM is the figure attached to on-device AI processing and gaming [8].
Whether the feature you want needs the new silicon or arrives with iOS 27 on the box already under the television is unsettled: Trusted Reviews does not say which of the features are exclusive to the new hardware [15]. And the list of things kept off Apple's servers has one item on it so far, the camera footage [9].
Gaming is the claim on the leaked sheet that a buyer can test without Siri at all. Trusted Reviews notes that the A19 family's graphics performance sits in a device with constant power and active cooling, which is more than a handheld gets [10].
What to watch
- Whether the rumoured Home Hub tablet gets a window of its own now that the Apple TV has one.