The much-touted universal search feature of Siri, Apple's voice-based virtual assistant, would soon be available for Apple Music on the latest Apple TV, which is going on sale in the US on Friday. The streaming box went up for pre-orders earlier this week. It costs $149 for the 32GB variant, and $199 for the 64GB variant.
Apple confirmed the Apple Music on Apple TV would get Siri universal search support early next year to Buzzfeed website. The universal search feature of Siri for Apple TV has been appreciated by critics, allowing users to search for TV Shows and other artists across iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and other services. Siri can also gives users information on weather forecasts and videos, and can launch apps based on voice commands.
The new Apple TV comes with a Siri Remote, which features motion controls via the gyroscope and accelerometer, and also includes a touchpad, apart from enabling voice-based search, playback, and navigation via two microphones for Siri.
Inclusion of Siri on Apple Music would let users search for songs, albums and music artists via voice commands on the streaming box. The much-needed feature might also make more customers subscribe for the Apple Music streaming service, which was launched earlier this year. Until now the music streaming service has around 6.5 million paying listeners worldwide, said Tim Cook to The Wall Street Journal last week in an interview. The service has 15 million total subscribers.
The Apple TV set-top box features an A8 SoC and supports full-HD resolution displays, apart from Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, 10/100Mbps Ethernet, USB Type-C port, and HDMI v1.4 connectivity.