If you go all-in to Roku’s new Voice Remote Pro, you might get one without the Apple TV + button seen in the marketing materials.
When I was sent a Voice Remote Pro last week, the one I received had four streaming buttons on the wand: Netflix, Disney +, Hulu and Sling TV. But the marketing images for the Pro were the remote control with the Hulu button that was removed on the bottom row and an Apple TV + button instead of a Sling shortcut. The discrepancy was initially identified by Zatz is not funny!, and Roku confirmed to Gizmodo that the remote control with the Apple TV + button will take a minute to start delivery.
“The transition of the button on the Roku Voice Remote Pro will take several months, but in the meantime customers can use their voice to program a personal shortcut button to launch their favorite channels,” said a spokesman.
Indeed, a pair of programmable buttons are part of a handful of great things about Voice Remote Pro that is also rechargeable. In addition to “find my remote” and hands-free features, custom shortcut keys will allow Apple TV + subscribers to easily pass this hiccup. However, the button problem will probably be annoying to anyone not Sling subscriber, but is a paying customer of Apple service.
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It is not clear why the button was described in the marketing materials and why the change seems to have happened so late in the game. But it indicates that Roku has doubled its initiative to conquer Apple users, even for a fairly new service in space and still working to build a substantial library of originals.
Roku has aggressively expanded support for Apple users who opt for its streaming provision over Apple’s set-top boxes, which are significantly more expensive than many of the Roku devices. Roku finally PUT AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support on its 4K devices with the Roku OS 9.4 update and the inclusion of the Apple TV + button directly on the remote controls further demonstrates the company’s readiness to target Apple users.
But it seems that the marketing materials dropped the gun a little. So if an Apple TV + button is an upgrade requirement for you, it looks like we’ll have to wait a few months before we start seeing it become widely available.