Mini-review: tvOS 9.2 fixes all the Apple TV’s biggest problems

CUPERTINO, Calif.—The new Apple TV and tvOS are mostly superior to the hardware and software they replaced, and they began the work of building the Apple TV into a platform rather than just a streaming box. That platform mostly seems solid, and its biggest problems are mostly the same ones that every streaming box has—battles between content creators and content providers make it hard to get everything you want, when you want, in the way you want it.

At today's product event, Tim Cook announced a free update for tvOS. The tvOS 9.2 update goes a long way toward fixing the problems that are within Apple's ability to fix. These mostly fall into three categories: improving text input and the sign-in/setup experience, decluttering the home screen, and improving navigation. On all three accounts, things have markedly improved.

Text input

This was my single biggest complaint with the Apple TV as it shipped—the new software keyboard required a ton of laborious swiping back and forth on the Siri Remote, and it made signing in to apps and setting the box up a giant pain. Using an old Apple TV remote or universal remote could restore the old software keyboard grid, but it was barely better.

In tvOS 9.2, Apple does what it should have done in the first place: lets you use the Siri Remote to dictate words and sign-in credentials. Any time you see a text field in the OS, you're able to hit the Siri button and say what you want to type instead of laboriously inputting it. In standard text fields, you can just say entire words, and if you're entering credentials you speak individual letters, numbers, and symbols (this single-character credential mode also understands commands like "capital [letter]," "back" or "delete" to hop back a character, and common phrases like "at gmail dot com").

This is good. It's much faster, more accurate, and less frustrating. I can almost forgive Apple for not designing it this way in the first place.

Folder support

This one is less far-reaching, but if you've got a long list of apps you might find it useful. tvOS now supports app folders, which look and work more-or-less like they do in standard iOS. Long-press the trackpad when you've highlighted an app and wait for it to start wobbling. Then, either hit the play/pause button or drag it on top of another app to create a new folder or add the app to an existing one. Folders can then be moved around like apps would.

A folder can show a 3x3 grid of apps at once, at which point you'll need to open the folder and scroll down to see the rest.

Fixing fast forward

You know how when you're watching something and you pick up the remote on purpose, or on accident, or if you nudge it with your palm, or if your cat sits down next to it, or you look at it the wrong way, and it starts rewinding or fast forwarding? Typically, you then have to pick up or hunt down the remote or dig it out from under your cat and swipe back to where you were originally.

Apple must have finally figured out that this was a problem, because tvOS 9.2 tweaks the behavior. To scrub back and forth through video with the Siri Remote, you now need to pause playback first and then swipe. You can still hop through stuff as it’s playing if you want, but you need to swipe to the left or the right and then click the trackpad to jump back or forward in 10 second increments. Alternatively, you can use Siri to hop back if you need to. Either way, it's harder to interrupt playback inadvertently. It has to be intentional.

And the rest

There are only really two other things that bear mentioning: the return of Bluetooth keyboard support and the revamped multitasking switcher. Bluetooth keyboards were supported on the old Apple TV as an alternate text input method but it returns here, and while it's still primarily used for typing game developers could also theoretically use it for keyboard-friendly titles.

The multitasking switcher, accessible by double-pressing the Home button, now looks like a stack of cards. This is the same way it looks on iOS 9. I use the multitasking switcher on the Apple TV much less than I do on my iDevices, so I don't really care much about this change. In any case, it looks a lot different than the iOS 7/8-ish switcher did in the initial tvOS releases.

tvOS 9.2 is a good update. It fixes quite a few real problems without breaking or removing anything that was working fine. Making more sweeping changes or adding new APIs that will drastically alter the box's functionality or the types of apps on the platform will require a bigger update. WWDC is just a few months away, and it's probably safe to assume that we'll get our first look at tvOS 10 then.

Apple's Cupertino event has just concluded, and you can revisit all the action in our liveblog. We'll update this post as new information becomes available.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham