News

This New Apple TV Feature Will Change Everything

by Lauren Holter

Apple enthusiasts have waited a long time for a redesigned Apple TV, and the tech giant finally unveiled the updated set-top box at the annual September Apple event on Wednesday. Along with voice search capabilities, new remote controls, and third-party apps, there's one new thing about it that will change everything — the Apple TV "what did she say?" feature. If you miss something a character says while watching TV, you can simply say "what did he/she say" and Apple TV will rewind 15 seconds, as well as temporarily turn on the captions. Like I said, this changes everything about the way we watch TV.

Apple TV users will never miss an important line in a movie or TV show ever again. Did your dog bark right as a character spoke? No problem. Did a character suddenly start whispering? It's fine. Did your friend start talking during a pivotal point in the movie? Don't worry. Just ask Apple TV, "What did he/she say?," and it will take care of it.

Not only does it automatically rewind for you, but enabling the captions for a few seconds ensures that you know what was said regardless of the volume or outside distractions. Once again, Apple thought of everything — watching TV will never be the same.

This new feature will be especially exciting for the extremely lazy. You'll no longer have to lift your arm, reach for the remote, and manually rewind the TV show and turn on the captions. You'll still have to exert some energy to ask, "What did he/she say?," but no one's mastered telepathy TV commands yet unfortunately. This is as simple as it gets in 2015.

The redesigned Apple TV has other voice capabilities that operate through Siri as well which allow users to press a button and then say, "I want to watch New Girl" or "show me Modern Family episodes with Edward Norton." The search function works in streaming apps like Netflix, HBO, Showtime, and iTunes too. You can even ask Siri for information during a show — if you say, "Who stars in this?," Apple TV will display the actors on the screen without stopping the show.

Apple TV will be available in October, with the 32GB version costing $149 and the 64GB model costing $199. It's slightly larger than the older version and runs off of tvOS, iOS's TV counterpart.

Images: Apple (2); Giphy (1)