To Voice My Love by Kikiberoski16

@larrysballetslippers

Harry/Louis/OMC | 8,5k | Explicit | Kinky Poly Relationship

“It’s nothing” It came out too high, his body betrayed him again. Harry sighed when Andrew’s frowny face got even worse. “Okay, I had a umm question.”

“Spill it, Styles.” Andrew said in a stern voice, he could easily dominate Harry if he wanted to. Andrew was clearly a switch, but he never tried to do anything to Harry, maybe Louis didn’t let him. Harry wouldn’t mind being tied up and bossed around by him.

“I… umm.” Harry started blushing. “How do you like, make Louis tick?”

Or, Harry wants to be spanked but doesn’t know how to tell Louis, so he asks his other boyfriend, Andrew, for help.

Part 2 of the For My Lovers series.

tl;dr version: I made an Apple TV app with atvjs and it was fun and easy.

I listen to a few podcasts and one of my favorites is Accidental Tech Podcast, a podcast run my Marco Arment, Casey Liss and, my favorite host, John Siracusa. They talk about tech and complain about stuff (mostly Apple) but one of the things they love to hate is the new Apple TV, which is sadly is not available in Korea.

I asked my friend from the US who is visiting to bring one over for me and within a day, I had a working TVOS app running on the emulator. Apple took the javascript on the server idea and allowed developers to create very simple apps using prebuilt templates and js for simple event handling, routing and data manipulation.

Looking at TVJS as a modern javascript developer, it is pretty lacking when compared to current tools and frameworks but someone noticed that and created a wrapper framework called atvjs https://github.com/emadalam/atvjs which simplifies a lot of the repetiveness of the vanilla TVML framework.

I already had a rails server that served videos so it was a breeze connecting an API with atvjs. Creating an app that shows seasons and episodes of a show and plays them back. I used handlebars.js to do some small templating.

You can also inspect your app using safari, similar to a phonegap app, which was a nice surprise. Using that with the log helpers in handlebars helped a lot in figuring out templating problems.

A few small complaints that I had was that it was hard to transfer state when navigating and had to create custom handlers to read from the TVML dom to get state. I'm sure there is a better way to do this but I couldn't find a way. Also I got stuck when I saw that JSCore in the Apple TV does not log arrays correctly. If you log a standard array with an object in it such as [{cat: 1}] it shows it as {}. It does not affect the logic at all, but it was surprising.

Our developers and designers have been taking a close look at the new tvOS for Apple TV and we've put together a short list of things to consider in targeting this new platform.

tl;dr

Apple TV apps are not a direct port from iOS and require additional development work to function. Apps should be purpose-designed to optimize for the TV experience. The device ships at the end of October. No doubt gift-wrapped little black boxes will be next to a lot of menorahs and under a lot of trees this holiday season. Get to work now.

1. Apple TV ships at the end of October. History tells us that it’s great to be on a new Apple platform early and to enjoy time at the top of the charts. It’s not often that a new platform with this much proven demand comes to market. The inputs are all in place for a mammoth new platform.

2. iOS style development is not required. You can use Apple-provided templates to craft more Web-like apps using JavaScript and XML-based TVML. Ideal for streaming experiences.

3. The device has no local storage for developers. Don’t let the retail specs fool you (and don’t overspend as a consumer). The storage appears to be for iCloud.

4. Video and cue points can be tied to data and interactivity. Check out the glorious new MLB At Bat from the Apple demo day. This can be useful for shopping, diagrams, enhanced data. Sports is an ideal application. With the right product teams and vision, racing, boxing, and the Olympics should be amazing on Apple TV. Apple TV will stand out from other platforms with richer apps.

5. Universal search via Siri. It's possible that your apps will be indexed, with results coming up alongside those of Netflix and others. This is going to be the primary way that people search for content on Apple TV.

6. The remote control combines a small touchscreen (#1 above with fixed buttons for the Menu, Volume, Display, Play/Pause and Siri. The touchscreen is a game changer for the UI. Apps won't be limited to simple Up, Down, Left, Right navigation, but can accommodate more precise gestures. Viewers can point to what they want with a single gesture, instead of 10 button presses.

7. You can build universal apps that run across Apple TV, iPad and iPhone. But it’s not a single instance of an app. To the consumer it will be universal, but there is more work to do as a developer to craft a seamless experience.

8. Universal payments. Consumers will be able to buy an app one that works across Apple TV, iPad and iPhone.

9. You may easily be able port your iOS app to TV, but the UI will not automatically be optimized for the big screen. TV is very different from a handheld device. You must consider TV-friendly colors and textures, safe areas, viewing distance. Apple’s sample templates help. Plan for a purpose-designed experience aimed at the device, not a simple port. As Apple notes in its developer guide:

“On top of new controls, the overall user experience is drastically different. Macs and iOS devices are generally a single-person experience. A user may interact with others through your app, but that user is still the only person using the device. With the new Apple TV, the user experience becomes much more social. Several people can be sitting on the couch and interacting with your app and each other. Designing apps to take advantage of these changes is crucial to designing a great app.”