If you do an all-in with Roku’s new Voice Remote Pro, you might get one without the Apple TV + button that appears on the marketing materials.
When they sent me one Voice Remote Pro last week, what I received had four broadcast buttons on the wand: Netflix, Disney +, Hulu and Sling TV. But the marketing images for the Pro represented the remote control with the Hulu button chosen in the bottom row and an Apple TV + button instead of a Sling shortcut. The discrepancy was initially detected by Zatz is not fun!, and Roku confirmed to Gizmodo that the remote control with the Apple TV + button will take a minute to start sending.
“The transition from buttons to Roku Voice Remote Pro will take a few months, but in the meantime, customers can use their voice to program a personal shortcut button to launch their favorite channels,” a spokesman said.
In fact, a couple of programmable buttons are part of a handful of great things about Voice Remote Pro, which can also be reloaded. In addition to his “find my command” and hands-free features, custom shortcut keys will allow Apple TV + subscribers to avoid this hiccup quite easily. The button problem, however, will probably bother everyone who is no is a Sling subscriber but is an Apple paying customer service.
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It is unclear why the button was represented on the marketing materials and why the change appears to have occurred so late in the game. But it does indicate that Roku has doubled in its initiative to win over Apple users, even for a fairly new service in space and is still working to build a major library of originals.
Roku has aggressively expanded support for Apple users who opt for its streaming devices on Apple’s own decoders, which are significantly more expensive than many of Roku’s devices. Roku finally introduced AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support for its 4K devices with the Roku OS 9.4 update and the inclusion of the Apple TV + button directly on the remote controls demonstrate the company’s willingness to target Apple users.
But it looks like the marketing material blew the gun a bit. So if an Apple TV + button is an upgrade requirement to do so or break it, it looks like we’ll have to wait a few months before we start seeing it as available.