Update allows customers to hide channels from the main menu

Mar 11, 2014 08:06 GMT  ·  By

After launching a refreshed iTunes Festival channel for users of its $99/€109 set-top box, Apple has released Software Update version 6.1 for all Apple TV customers, offering security fixes and the ability to hide unwanted channels from sight.

Yesterday Apple rolled out an updated iTunes Festival channel on its Apple TV ahead of the iTunes Festival kick-off at South by Southwest (SXSW) 2014.

Users can check out the entire range of artists with gigs lined up for the massive show and use some of the features that are already offered in the official iTunes Festival iOS app for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. The artist lineup can be found below.

Tuesday, March 11: Coldplay / Imagine Dragons / London Grammar Wednesday, March 12: Kendrick Lamar / ScHoolboy Q / Isaiah Rashad Thursday, March 13: Soundgarden / Band of Skulls / Capital Cities Friday, March 14: Pitbull / ZEDD / G.R.L Saturday, March 15: Keith Urban / Willie Nelson / Mickey Guyton

More importantly, Apple also updated its Apple TV software to version 6.1 mere hours after updating the iTunes Festival channel. Apple’s new software does little in terms of new features, but offers a very important new ability, and that is to hide unwanted channels from sight.

Customers can now do away with those icons that they hardly ever access in the Apple TV Home screen, making navigation between channels a lot smoother and less cumbersome. The changes can be seen in both icon view and list view.

Apple TV 6.1 photo
Apple TV 6.1 photo
Last, but certainly not least if you’re worried about security, Apple TV Software Update 6.1 packs a healthy dose of fixes for some recently-found vulnerabilities. Mostly affecting Apple TV boxes of the second and third-generation, over two dozen distinct flaws are mentioned in the advisory on Apple Support.

For example, Apple reveals that “Multiple memory corruption issues existed in WebKit. [...] Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. [...] These issues were addressed through improved memory handling.”

The company credits a handful of researchers for finding and reporting these specific memory corruption flaws.

The advisory also credits the evad3rs, a team of hackers widely known for performing iOS jailbreaks in an endless cat and mouse game where the Cupertino giant is always one step behind. The jailbreakers are responsible for finding and reporting three separate vulnerabilities to the company.

Apple TV 6.1 is available from the Software Update menu under General settings on your set-top box. Alternately, you can manually download the IPSW file and feed it to your box through iTunes.

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Apple TV 6.1 photo
Apple TV 6.1 photo
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