Sources: Apple TV 4 coming in October for under $200; Apple TV 3 will support streaming service next year, but won't have App Store or direct Siri controls
Apple TV 4 coming in October for under $200, Apple TV 3 stays & gets new streaming service — Rough mockup of fourth Apple TV vs. third Apple TV by Michael Steeber
Context & Ripple Effects
This report closes out a month of leaks: after BuzzFeed reported in late July that Apple would show a new Apple TV with an App Store, SDK, Siri, and a touch remote at the September iPhone event, follow-ups detailed near-universal Siri control and a gaming push and then the A8-based hardware spec itself.
What today's report adds is the commercial shape: a sub-$200 price point and an October window, plus a legacy plan — Apple TV 3 stays on sale into next year with support for the upcoming streaming service, but without the App Store or direct Siri controls. That makes this the moment Apple's TV line splits into a platform tier and a service-only tier.
First-order effects
- Apple TV 3 owners get a defined ceiling: their devices will stream the new service next year but are excluded from apps and voice control, effectively freezing the third generation's feature set from day one.
- The sub-$200 price gives the fourth-generation box a mass-market entry point just weeks after the September unveiling, setting the anchor price for the App Store era.
Second-order effects
- An App Store on television forces rival set-top and console players to compete on developer ecosystems rather than content catalogs alone, since Apple can now recruit the same iOS developers into the living room.
- Keeping Apple TV 3 in market at presumably a lower tier lets Apple segment buyers by willingness to pay instead of discontinuing old stock, pressuring competitors who must clear inventory when they refresh.
Third-order effects
- If the tiering pattern holds, TV hardware lifecycles lengthen around services rather than specs — a trajectory visible in later refreshes like the 2017 4K-capable model and the 2021 $179/$199 Apple TV 4K update, where older boxes persist as cheap service endpoints.
- Structurally, Apple's living-room play becomes access-layer economics: whoever owns the app distribution and voice interface on the TV captures the recurring relationship, with hardware priced as the toll gate.
The trend: TV set-top boxes are splitting into tiered app platforms versus legacy service terminals, with Apple using software tiers to stretch each hardware generation's commercial life.