A New Apple TV

A new Apple TV lands more solidly in the “maybe” pile, as there have been a lot of conflicting rumours about what’s coming. However, an update to Apple’s set-top box is long overdue, so we’re certainly hopeful that Apple will announce something next week in the form of a more powerful device that can handle the increasing demands of Apple Arcade gaming.

To be honest, we’re surprised that Apple didn’t release a refreshed Apple TV last year when it debuted Apple Arcade, instead of requiring gamers to limp along on the old A10X version with only 64GB of storage. For whatever reason, however, Apple obviously decided that the addition of game controller support in tvOS 13 was enough to tide users over, and it probably simply had other design and engineering priorities to work on, leaving the Apple TV on the back burner.

Earlier this year we heard that an A12-equipped Apple TV was in the works, and in fact, some even suggested it would see a spring launch. However, conflicting reports later appeared from some pretty reliable sources saying that a new Apple TV wouldn’t be coming until sometime in 2021, along with the possibility that Apple was planning on putting an A14X chip into it instead.

It wasn’t until this week that a new rumour actually tied the two together in a way that makes sense, suggesting that Apple has not one, but two new Apple TV’s in the works. While that’s far from definitive at this point, there is some logic to the fact that Apple at least had two versions of the set-top box in development. What’s not known is whether the plans for an A12-equipped version have been scrapped and they will simply move straight to the A14X one next year, or whether the company actually plans to release two models — and if so, will it wait until next year to release them as an Apple TV and “Apple TV Pro” or is it going to release the A12-equipped one first this fall?