New SIRI Remote
By Graham Gunning
When it comes to accessible tv devices the apple tv in my opinion is the cream of the crop. The only thing that was letting it down was the remote. Recently apple released a new version of their remote for the apple tv.
The New SIRI remote is a simple and slick design, and you have two ways of acquiring it. You can either buy the new apple tv which has the remote included or you can just purchase it for £55. The remote is rectangular in shape and is 5.4 inches tall, 1.4 inches wide and weighs 2.2 ounces. Apple have kept the grid of six buttons from the previous remote which consists of the back, menu, home, options and volume up and down. The touch pad and mouse style click button from the previous remote has been replaced with a round style directional pad and the select button in the middle. The select button can also act as the touch pad. A power button located at the top has been added along with a button for SIRI on the right-hand side of the remote.
Apple have implemented a couple of new gestures for accessing the remote. Both the gestures for the accessibility short cut and the app centre have been kept. Pressing the back button three times will activate the accessibility shortcut while double pressing the menu button will activate the app centre. There is a new gesture for closing open apps. Instead of swiping up on the touch pad to close apps in the app centre you can now double press up on the directional pad. The other new gestures are for playback. Pressing on the left-hand side of the d-pad will rewind playback while pressing right on the d-pad will fast forward. To pause playback simply press the select button.
I have been using the new SIRI remote for a couple of weeks now and I am really enjoying it. Pairing up the remote to my apple tv was simple and hassle free. I just pressed and pointed the remote at my tv and it automatically started pairing. I like the introduction of the physical D-pad instead of the touch pad. The old touch pad was workable but sometimes when navigating it would scroll past what you were looking for. Adding the power button to the remote is another good addition. Having the access of turning on and off your tv with the one remote is a real bonus. The only negative is the price of the remote.
All in all, the new SIRI remote is a nice addition to the apple tv and gets three top tech ticks out of five.
If you would like to find out more about devices for people with a visual impairment contact us at.
Triple Tap Tech
The Renfield Centre
260 Bath Street Glasgow G2 4JP
0141 353 1567
0780 5353 149
Info@TripleTapTech.org
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