Last week Apple unveiled a number of new products including the long-awaited update to its Apple TV. While the new streaming box can certainly hold its own against the Roku and Amazon Fire TV, some were left underwhelmed after waiting so long.
The most promising part of the new Apple TV is its App Store. Thanks to this, the device could see a new group of customers jumping onboard, as the developers behind Plex have announced that an app is planned for the Apple TV, something that many have dreamed of for years now.
Since previous versions of the Apple TV didn’t support apps and Apple itself had to be part of adding new services, there was no hope for an officially supported way of using Plex on the device. There were a number of workarounds, like PlexConnect, but for those less technically minded or simply unwilling to jump through hoops, Plex was off the table.
Plex’s developers hadn’t made an official announcement, but when asked by IT World’s Swapnil Bhartiya if Plex was coming to the Apple TV, Plex co-founder Scott Olechowski confirmed there were indeed plans to bring the app to the new App Store. Currently the team is awaiting the tvOS developer beta so work can begin.
“There is no question we will be able to offer Plex on the platform,” Olechowski said. “There are multiple ways to go about it, based on the tvOS SDK we now have access to. We are now evaluating the best path for Plex and will begin work in earnest once we have evaluated the options.”
Considering how early in development the system is, there is currently no timeframe on when Plex users can expect to use the app on their new Apple TVs. “Of course we have started digging in and looking at it, but we have some bigger questions to answer before we can set any expectations,” Olechowski said.
While we shouldn’t expect to be able to use the new universal search feature with Plex — Apple is only adding this feature on select apps — we’re still glad to see one of our favorite apps coming to an exciting new platform. The next-generation Apple TV will be released in late October.
