Siri, Log Me Into My OTT Accounts. All Of Them.

In the past, if you wanted to sign on to your OTT app of choice on AppleTV, you’d have to log in using the remote. And then repeat this process over again if you wanted to go to the next app. Well, that thankfully is now in the past as one of the big announcements to come out of yesterday’s Worldwide Developers Conference is Single Sign On, which will let you input your details once and share it between compatible apps that require it. So no more needing to log onto everything one at a go. While there is some concern as to how this will actually work, as not necessarily everyone will be eager to participate, if history repeats itself, Apple will be able to bring together forces that weren’t necessarily eager to cooperate before Apple entered the arena.Along with this is the new Apple Remote App, which takes full advantage of the Siri upgrades. Putting aside the fact that this is something that should have probably shipped with the new Apple TV out of the box, this app allows users to navigate through the Apple TV through any iOS device, meaning that the single sign-on you just logged in with can now be more easily navigated with something that has an actual keyboard versus the hunt and peck methodology of the traditional remote.And then there’s Siri, who’s not just for phones anymore. Siri’s going to be part of the entire MacOS, and now that she’s on a screen that has a real keyboard, she’s got her own SDK. This is the first time that the Siri ecosystem has been opened up beyond Apple and select trusted developers and when combined with the other two updates, it should yield fascinating results as to how people can interact with their television through an iOS device.The combination of these new features are going to mean tremendous changes in the way people interact with their content through AppleTV. We’ll be able to talk to our OTT apps, which will all be instantly authenticated, through our phones. This isn’t Apple’s full TV solution that has been hypothesized since the last years of Steve Jobs, but it is a step in the direction of interconnectivity and easier user interactions.

Alan Wolk

Alan Wolk veteran media analyst, former agency executive, and author of "Over The Top. How The Internet Is (Slowly But Surely) Changing The Television Industry" is Co-Founder and Lead Analyst at TVREV where he helps networks, streamers, agencies, brands and ad tech companies navigate the rapidly shifting media landscape. A widely published columnist, speaker and industry thinker, Wolk has built a following of 300K industry professionals on LinkedIn by speaking plainly and intelligently about TV and the media business. He is also the guy who came up with the term “FAST.”

https://linktr.ee/awolk
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