Michael Flarup is a designer, entrepreneur and co-founder of Robocat – a digital agency from Denmark, which has recently designed an Apple TV app for Danish National Television (DR TV). On his blog, Michael shared some of the experiences they have made building tvOS apps for the largest content providers in Denmark.

His list of useful tips for creating great Apple TV apps include:

• How to get started
• The focus engine is your new friend
• Tease offscreen content
• Horizontal is easy, vertical is expensive
• Clearly separate buttons and content
• Place controls mindfully
• Be obvious
• Design for distance
• Minimise text inputs
• Make it come alive

You can find all the details here.

Michael has also made and shared a new tvOS UI template available on appicontemplate.com.

With the tvOS UI Template PSD, you’ll easily be able to build off existing standard assets when putting together your new interface for the platform. The template includes dark and light variant recreations of the most common assets and sizes found in tvOS along with a 1920 x 1080px artboard canvas.

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Between December and February Apple hosted a series of “Tech Talks” for developers interested in getting in-depth information on building and designing apps for tvOS. These events took place in Toronto, Los Angeles, Austin, Seattle, Cupertino, Berlin, London, New York, Tokyo and Sydney. Apple has now shared all the videos from Tech Talks on its website.

The collection consists of 11 videos that cover the following topics:

• Kickoff
• Designing for Apple TV
• Focus-Driven Interfaces with UIKit
• Siri Remote and Game Controllers
• On-Demand Resources and Data Storage
• Media Playback
• Introduction to TVMLKit
• Best Practices for Designing tvOS Apps
• Tuning Your tvOS App
• The Top Shelf
• App Store Distribution and Marketing

All the session videos are available on Apple’s developer website.

Be sure to follow Apple TV Hacks on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ for all the latest Apple TV-related news.

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After releasing the Gold Master version of tvOS for Apple TV 4 and Xcode 7.1 yesterday, Apple has sent out emails asking developers to submitt their tvOS apps tested on the latest GM seed.

We’re hearing from developers that Apple is already reviewing their apps really fast. It doesn’t come much as a surprise as we learned that the new Apple TV is coming next week – orders will start on Monday, Oct. 26, with the device shipping later that week.

Giveaway: Win a brand new Apple TV 4!

Apple also posted an app submission guide on its developer website and laid out some Apple TV human interface guidelines.

More on Apple TV 4:

• MAME emulator running on Apple TV 4
• Official Plex app is coming to the new Apple TV
• VLC coming to the new Apple TV
• tvOS not coming to Apple TV 2 and Apple TV 3
• How Apple is fixing what’s wrong with console gaming today

Be sure to follow Apple TV Hacks on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ for all the latest Apple TV-related news.

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