These slides accompany a talk I gave at Dallas App Developers meetup group. The resulting project is available at https://github.com/NickCulbertson/Apple-TV-Quiz-Game-Starter-Kit

1. Dallas App Developers
How to Make an Apple TV App
(Basics & Beyond)
Thursday, November 5, 2015

2. Overview
❖ Basics
❖ Apple TV Introduction
❖ Remote
❖ Focus Engine
❖ What You Will Need To Make An App
❖ Beyond
❖ App Creation Demo (Quiz App)
❖ See The Apple TV In Action
❖ Apple TV ASO

3. Basics
❖ “The new Apple TV redefines the living room
experience, allowing you to deliver extraordinary,
immersive content on the big screen like never before.”

4. Apple TV Introduction
❖ Release Date? Last Friday
❖ Cost? 32GB is $149 & 64GB is $199
❖ Why Do We Care? New App Store!

5. The Remote
❖ Touch Surface
❖ Recognizes 5 Taps, Click, 4 Swipes,
Gyroscope
❖ Buttons
❖ Menu Button = Home/Menu
❖ Home Button = Home
❖ Siri Button
❖ Volume
❖ Play/Pause Button

6. Focus Engine

7. What You Will Need
❖ Hardware
❖ 64-bit Mac
❖ 1080 TV (recommended)
❖ Apple TV with USB-C & HDMI cables (recommended…)
❖ Software
❖ Latest Version of Xcode
❖ Photoshop (recommended)

8. Languages
❖ iOS Languages (Objective-C or Swift)
❖ Apple TV Markup Language (TVML/Javascript)
❖ Unity 3D coming soon…

9. Image Resources
❖ Large 3 Layer App Icon (1280px by 768px)
❖ Small 3 Layer App Icon (400px by 240px)
❖ Top Shelf (1920px by 720px)
❖ 5 App Screenshots (1920px by 1080px)
❖ https://developer.apple.com/tvos/human-interface-guidelines/

10. Gotchas
❖ Limited Internal Storage
❖ 200 MB Max App Size
❖ Must use Siri Remote
❖ No UIWebViews
❖ No iAd
❖ Top Shelf Image Can’t Contain Alpha Channel
❖ Menu Button Should Exit App (Handled Automatically)
❖ With IAP Requests Must Be Retained
❖ Game Center Requires a Parallax Image in Assets Folder

11. Reception
❖ Pros
❖ App Devs Become Console Devs
❖ Easily Updated
❖ Cons
❖ Using The Remote Is Tedious
❖ Limited Discoverability
❖ No Apple TV Seller Apps
❖ Not Enough Users Yet

12. Making Your First Apple TV App
❖ Quiz App Xcode Project
❖ https://github.com/NickCulbertson/Apple-TV-Quiz-Game-Starter-Kit

13. Thank You!
❖ Nick Culbertson
❖ nickculbertson@gmail.com
❖ Find my apps by searching my name on the Apple TV
❖ https://github.com/NickCulbertson/Apple-TV-Quiz-Game-Starter-Kit