Apple’s new ‘TV’ app is its way of simplifying all your streaming content

At today's event, Apple unveiled its newest video streaming system: an app called TV. Similarly to what rumors stated, the new app is meant to help users find their most watched content across all the streaming services they may subscribe to by aggregating those shows and movies in one place. TV will also recommend new content to watch based on your history.

This is the biggest update to Apple's TV ecosystem since last year, when the company revamped its TV interface and incorporated Siri into the Apple TV remote to enable searching via voice commands. TV takes those updates and builds upon them to create an interface where you can find content from all the streaming services you subscribe to in one place. Within TV, there are apps for services including HBO Now, Hulu, Showtime, and more (Netflix was noticeably absent from the TV UI in Apple's presentation), and you can watch content from any of them by going into TV and selecting the one you want. If you search for a particular TV show or movie using text input or Siri commands, TV will automatically play it from the app that has that content. Essentially, TV takes all of the content available to you across separate platforms and brings it together in one app, so you don't have to go around searching in each service's app for the videos you want.

Apple puts its own spin on the interface with different categories of content to watch. Up Next will show you new episodes of shows you watch frequently; What to Watch proposes show and movie suggestions based on what you've already watched; and the library view will show you only your iTunes purchases so you can filter video options that way as well. With Apple's single sign-in feature, you'll be automatically logged in to all the new streaming apps you download and those apps will appear in TV across all your devices. The TV app will be available on Apple TV of course, as well as iPad and iPhone.

There's also a live component to the TV app. There are a number of news channel apps, including CBS and ABC, and choosing any of those will bring you to the current, live broadcast. Sports fans can also search for the live game they want to watch, or ask Siri to put on a certain game, and the TV app will open it in the appropriate service app. All of this is dependent on what you subscribe to—the TV app will only play content it can find in the apps that you're signed in to and pay for. If you don't pay for ESPN, you won't be able to watch anything on that channel through TV.

Along with the TV app, Apple announced a new feature that lets you combine different Apple TV apps to make your watching experience more dynamic. At Apple's event, Twitter employees demoed a live NFL game on the Apple TV with a Twitter stream right next to it on the screen. While watching the game, you can see the conversation surrounding that game, watch video replays and different viewing angles, and send tweets from the Apple TV to your iPhone so you reply and join the conversation. Apple didn't say how many Apple TV apps could be combined, but Twitter and live TV in general will likely be a popular combination for the most social fans. Apple's TV app will be free when it rolls out in an update in December.