Not explicitly mentioned during the Worldwide Developer’s Conference keynote, the Apple TV will also be receiving an update to its iOS software in the near future.
The update will supports iTunes Radio and offers a few minor new features. The first beta, which is referred to as iOS 5.4 (notably skipping 5.3 entirely), doesn’t yet make any severe design changes but does add support for the forthcoming iTunes Radio, allowing developers a chance to test the service.
It is not yet clear if Apple will update the Apple TV software to reflect the style of iOS 7 in the near future, but in the current beta both the look and functionality are largely the same, with just a handfull of new features, all of which would be considered fairly minor. Users will also see that iTunes in the Cloud is supported alongside iTunes Match, the latter being a paid service that creates a large “virtual storage locker” for iTunes music.
Interestingly, Apple has not yet merged the “Radio” feature on Apple TV with the new “iTunes Radio” function, though that is expected to happen at some point. The Radio function is largely copied from iTunes.
Another minor change is a renaming of the sometimes-confusing “Photo Stream” to “iCloud photos,” which simply shows a gallery of any photos stored in iCloud.
he update is likely to be issued sometime just before or at the same time as the upgrade to iOS 7 for other Apple mobile devices — currently said to be happening this fall.
