From time to time Apple comes with new software updates, in an attempt to give their customers the best of satisfaction they can get from Apple’s products. These days a 1.3 update of the Remote app was released with the new possibility to control Apple TV by tapping and flicking the screen of the iPhone or iPod touch. The previously released 2.4 software update enables to control audio and video playback by flicking gestures over iPhone or iPod touch, Flickr search option, new ways to view modes, updated chapter modes and so on.
But the novelty is this new feature translated into new control scheme for the device in strict relation to iPhone or iPod touch (that run the latest 3.0 firmaware and version 2.3 of Apple’s free Remote app). With the new update it seems that the on-TV interface, which, by the way is still there, is useless, and this because the feature of controlling the Apple TV happens to navigate through the media collection existing on your iPhone or iPod touch.
How does it work? The touch option allows you to tap the list in order to navigate the Apple’s TV interface. By selecting a command you just need to drag your finger down the screen till you reach the desired command which meantime gets highlighted. The activation of this command is made very simple: tap the screen and here it is! Next if you wish to move through a number of items, for instance to look for movies that are listed in a series of thumbnails in the iTunes store, you flick the finger to the left in order to move forward through those items. For a reverse move you flick your finger to the right.
Other features are available such as, the existence of a Menu at the bottom of the screen that allows you (through tapping, of course) to move back up a level or holding it is taking you back to the main menu. This option is quite all right whenever you don’t feel like wandering through a couple of layers of the command ranking. For playing and pausing videos, again the tapping touch of the screen enables you to do this, while the option of FF and RW is possible by holding on the right or left side of the screen. In case you want to navigate through chapters, you have to flick down and a timeline of the chapters appears on the TV screen, then you need to flick to the right to move forward or to the left move backward.
As to the music he functionality follows the same pattern: with a tap you start playback or similarly pause a playing track. Dragging and holding work for FF and RW, swiping to the right you hear the next track or left for the previous. At the right bottom of the screen an Options button is displayed which by tapping you can view a particular kind of media on the Apple TV. The Options button allows you to watch a video while by swiping you can navigate through thumbnail images of the video’s chapters.
As a conclusion tapping controls Apple TV through the new Remote app better than Apple’s hardware remote, so in case you own an iPod touch or iPhone, this update is something that you surely approve.