AppleTV is most certainly not a failure, nor is it a terrible product. It's just... fine. In my own case, I find that I use it less and less.
To say that it's not comparable to the iPhone is an understatement.
The iPhone is a singularity, it's the single most successful product in the history of the human race. It's generated insane profit never before seen. Why would we compare the ATV to that? I'm not sure we'll see another product like the iPhone in our lifetimes.
You know AI the more defensive you get about Apple the more you prove the point of what you're trying to dismiss? Does anyone really think apps are the future of TV? Does Apple know how to think beyond the app paradigm? Apps have not moved the needle for Apple Watch or Apple TV. One could even say the same for iPad where sales growth has been declinig for a while now. This story seems to indicate there were/are engineers inside Apple who wanted to do something different than just a grid of apps for Apple TV. I'm glad there are employees inside the company thinking outside the box.
Have you used the TV app? That's exactly what it is -- not a grid of apps.
As for AI, it's not defensive to take down the mental midgets who troll Apple on a weekly basis. I enjoy DED's columns because this dismantle all the fuzzy thinking and mental gymastics needed by trolls to hand-wring and predict DOOM. It's fake news, a false narrative. Which is probably why dismantling it bothers you so much.
If The iPhone 7 had been recalled and killed, and Tim Cook arrested for corruption, we'd have nothing to worry about I guess. Samsung sails merrily along while Apple is doomed as it continues to swallow world profits whole. "The Anti-Apple Force is strong in this one."
My AppleTV was ok even tho it was only 720p. I bought th season of Downton Abbey, and that was a major convenience for Mrs Martinicat. But when I bought a new 4K screen, the remote had an Amazon prime button on it, and several other video service buttons that actually make it more convenient. I admit I was not thrilled to find the screen, a Vizio, by default collects viewing history, verifying pixel patterns, but since the TV is pretty much powered down 24-7 this was not a super minus. When the AppleTV stopped working I didn't see any reason to replace it. I may have taken it to electronics recycling but I don't remember
So your new set does Prime content, great. How does it playback your iTunes content? Oh yeah it doesnt. Apple Music? Nope.
1. Apple needs a better video strategy. And POTA and Carpool Karaoke is not it. They need to either buy Netflix or build a truly competitive Netflix competitor. If people may want to subscribe to music, people desperately want to subscribe to a TV and film plan.
2. They need a first-party gaming controller at least as nice as the PS3 controller. It doesn't need to be included, but it needs to ready as a one click add-on at checkout and ready to be tested in stores with a big marketing push and a HUGE developer push behind it. You don't leave it to a third party to make your damn gaming controller.
3. The regular remote control needs to be rethought. The touch area idea is sound. What's not sound is a TV controller that shatters if you drop it on a wooden floor. A TV controller shouldn't need a damn rubber third party case to be practical. And I think there's probably room for a couple more physical buttons on the remote to help with non-voice navigation. And more ergonomic and slightly larger.
That is what Apple TV is lacking. A Netflix-like solution from Apple: I'd acquire Netflix. They are the solution. Creating a studio by itself will be too much of a distraction for Apple. Netflix is turn-key, provided they can keep most their content deals—with enough money anything is possible. A very good first party gaming controller. And a far better TV remote.
Wait but why -- if the ATV already plays Netflix content, why is not-owning-Netflix a shortcoming of the ATV? That doesn't make any sense.
Paying $75B for Netflix wouldn't make financial sense at $12/mo for its membership. The return is not there.
Even though I have owned every model of AppleTV, it is IS seriously flawed when Siri cannot search your own personal collection of movies and music. C'mon, really Apple ?
Even though I have owned every model of AppleTV, it is IS seriously flawed when Siri cannot search your own personal collection of movies and music. C'mon, really Apple ?
That's what I mostly use it for and I've given up on that feature. I don't think Apple likes Home Sharing because it can't monetize it.
AppleTV 4, when it was announced, came with the promise of introducing a real human-computer-voice interface for the TV. That was a great promise to simplify the experience of interacting with a TV, which until today, remains largely unintuitive. Unfortunately, Apple completely failed to live up to that promise, as even where Siri is supported, its functionality is minimal.
Hmm which features did they announce that it doesn't have? Be specific.
I've owned every Apple TV since it was released. So fu** Apple TV. For 10 years I've had to put up with the horrible vertical GUI when scrolling through my personal library. I have to scroll through 200 movies to get to the one I want to watch and I can't even search. Basically, if you didn't buy the movie from Apple, screw you.
And after over a year, there still aren't any go-to games. Most of them are .99 cent pieces of crap.
It is simply a supplement to the iPhone. If you own an iPhone there is no better streaming box in the market. PERIOD... These boxes are simply an easy way to extend your phone into your television. Thats it.
Why can't that (streaming) be done by sending content directly to the TV from the phone/router and bypassing the ATV altogether?
Most TV's have Ethernet and Wi-Fi.
I have an ATV (third gen I think) but it's just collecting dust.
DED is incredibly smart and insightful. I suspect some folks who read this article and then complain about AppleTV not being a revolutionary success didn't really read the article, or didn't grok the main message of the article. Oh well.
One minor gripe. I'm amazed, as intelligent as DED is, that he uses the term Facial Recognition. There are literally thousands of technical papers on the science, all of which use the term Face Recognition. Facial Recognition, like Face Detection, is a subset of the science of Face Recognition, and is not the correct term to describe what's being discussed. Sheesh!
That remote, so sensitive to scrolling and stopping at exactly the place you want. Tested it at the Apple store, and because of it, I'll stick with the previous generation. Apple TV could be so much more with a better remote. Maybe get rid of touch on remote, and stick with a couple of buttons and air pointer.
No way -- the touch aspect of the remote is the best part about it. Seriously, thats the point. It's fast, precise, and touch-based scrubbing is infinitely better than toggling buttons. I never use my Harmony One for the ATV anymore.
I've owned every Apple TV since it was released. So fu** Apple TV. For 10 years I've had to put up with the horrible vertical GUI when scrolling through my personal library. I have to scroll through 200 movies to get to the one I want to watch and I can't even search. Basically, if you didn't buy the movie from Apple, screw you.
Concur. The basic UI strategy seems to be "let's make a device that connects stuff we sell to the TV practically everyone owns." And they are quite unashamed of that.
Why does a product have to be "groundbreaking" to be good? The Apple TV v3 that's currently in our house does the job just fine. Everybody is happy using it for what they want.
exactly.
The AppleTV4 was never meant to be ground breaking.
What a weak argument. It's like the child who comes third in a race and says "yeah, but I wasn't really trying". You're actually making the Apple TV sound worse than it is with those kinds of comments.
No, it's a valid point -- the 4th gen ATV even looks just like the previous (only taller). It's not meant to be groundbreaking. The media may have beat that drum about Jobs "finally cracking it", but Apple never said that. It's a set top box that streams and runs apps. You can beam your iOS devices to it. It's cheap. That's it...it's not meant to end world hunger.
Apple TV 4 owner here with two units in the house. Love them both. Its been great to see the software updated and polished over time. I was a past Roku user and found their quality assurance/control lacking. I haven't cared about 4K support until recently because there wasn't much 4K content out there to watch. It is time for a ATV5 4K refresh and I'll be gladly upgrading and giving my old ATV4 units to friends/family when that happens.
We were led to believe after 3 years and Steve's dying breath uttered "I solved the TV interface blah blah" statement, that we WERE expecting a "breakthrough" product through TV 4
Do you understand the difference between rumors and actual features? You're referring to a widely spread rumor supposedly from Jobs on his deathbed, as reported by Walter Issacson in his book. Ok that's about as far removed from Apple promising you something as you can get. Apple never led you to believe anything -- you took a rumor and ran with it, and now you're disappointed that reality isn't as much fun as the fiction in your head.
That's the problem with treating rumors like theyre facts. It's no way to live.
You know AI the more defensive you get about Apple the more you prove the point of what you're trying to dismiss? Does anyone really think apps are the future of TV? Does Apple know how to think beyond the app paradigm? Apps have not moved the needle for Apple Watch or Apple TV. One could even say the same for iPad where sales growth has been declinig for a while now. This story seems to indicate there were/are engineers inside Apple who wanted to do something different than just a grid of apps for Apple TV. I'm glad there are employees inside the company thinking outside the box.
Have you used the TV app? That's exactly what it is -- not a grid of apps.
As for AI, it's not defensive to take down the mental midgets who troll Apple on a weekly basis. I enjoy DED's columns because this dismantle all the fuzzy thinking and mental gymastics needed by trolls to hand-wring and predict DOOM. It's fake news, a false narrative. Which is probably why dismantling it bothers you so much.
I enjoy the columns. They are worth every penny I pay for them.
We were led to believe after 3 years and Steve's dying breath uttered "I solved the TV interface blah blah" statement, that we WERE expecting a "breakthrough" product through TV 4
Far from it - starting with: out of the box NOT being able to get sound. Can you say 2016 MacBook Pro "Touch Bar"? Yep this nonsense of "nothing you have will now connect" started waaaaaaay back with TV alienating users ability to use their current devices. Come on... no sound is a big one no matter how much you now like TV 4. And to top it off the "fix" was NOT something you could just drive to BestBuy and buy, no it was so unique you had to order it online and wait for it to arrive?
And all of this hassle was created because they removed the audio port for... yep you guessed it a USB-C port, but not because you could use it it was ONLY in case you had to bring it to the genus bar for repair. They removed the optical sound port for Genius Bar to get access to something that MIGHT break? Well that's not a vote of confidence no matter what you think?
ok that's that.
Next up the interface: you have other boxes having the ability to stream and play 4K video - something Apple claimed was too "nitche" to even consider? This from the same company that took 5 years to get us 1080p on TV? Hello? Has no one at apple been to a Costco the past 2 -3 years?? The 4k TV's have been out for 3 "non computer upgrade cycles" at least .
So the new mac has 4 USB-C only because we need to "stay ahead of the curve", and no headphone jack on iPhone 7 (same reason) but they release a tv box specifically for a TV that doesn't offer something that's been on a tv for 2-3 years?? That shows me a lot about the team running its development of this device.
And then the user interface. Since the moment it was released, as a developer and beta tester I have bitched and complained about the scrolling options when looking at your OWN movies. One slight tiny movement of the finger throws you out of the "TITIES" column into the "UNWATCHED" column or "GENRES" column - then when you try to go back to where you were ("I almost made it to the letter "D") it makes me start over and over and over back to the letter "A". Seriously? How hard would it be to make it an actual dedicated "non jumping" column for each topic? One you stay in while scrolling downwards? What a pain in the ass. And each beta request was met with "please send screen shots were not sure what you're describing?" WTF? Oh I sent screen shots but they ask I describe what each screen shot was for. So I made a damn movie and then I never heard from them ever again until one day I got a notice "this ticket is now closed as a dupicate@. When I asked what that meant I was told "weee not at liberty to discuss this". Huh?
And it took 19 months to come up with even a slight "fix"? Now at least when it "jumps columns", it At least tries to get closer to where you were in the 26 letter alphabet, but I hardly find this scrolling option "state of the art" or "groundbreaking". My 8 year old kid who mastered wii at 3 with smaller hands has no advantage either. Over and over he yell "Dad I can't get to Scooby-Doo it keeps jumping columns around "F" can you come do this?
Now before someone jumps in and says "just use Siri!" Yeah about that... Siri won't search through your shit, only things you bought from Apple. So why can't she search the drive connected to my Mac providing me with my 2,000+ bluray movie library? The iPhone the Mac itself - know how to search. How come the groundbreaking TV 4 cant? At least that would be a workaround around the scrolling column disaster.
Ill stop there. Trust me there's much more to go on about.
So before we totally attack this asshole - and yes he is an asshole - consider that after a 3 year wait and death of our beloved CEO this is what they have given us? And now we're heading on it's 2 year anniversary of its release and still no resolve to these two main issues? Sorry but this (TV 4) was then and in many aspects still is a mess compared to other tv boxes out there.
I love Apple. They are MY company but they are making some really bizarre decisions and doing more alienating their users (regarding requests for things WE want and need) then they are providing groundbreaking releases. I'm just one man with an optinion but is it too much to ask once you enter a column you stay in that column? Imagine EXCEL jumping columns while scrolling but instead of other columns in the same document it starts scrolling through other documents instead. What a mess that would be! How is this different? Why aren't they fixing it along with Siri finding our stuff connected to the device? "Either purchase it from us or screw you?" That's the new apple?
I feel your pain. When I realised it didn't even want to try and play anything that wasn't in an approved format and had a limited remote to navigate a limited interface I quickly lost the will to search for workarounds.
I just wanted something simple to send whatever I threw at it at the TV without problems without having to spend on a NAS.
Right now I'm looking at Minix for streaming local content.
Mark Gurman is definitely an anti-Apple, professional troll. It's plain as day. The fact that he permanently blocked me on Twitter for saying so is absurd and reveals his hyper-sensitivity. Poor young snowflake...
Are you surprised? If I were a tech journalist and anyone called me a professional troll then my reaction would be that this person isn't worth engaging with, and they're only likely to give me grief, so blocked. That's not hyper-sensitivity, it's just having better things to do than deal with mindless keyboard warrior attacks.
It's not an attack -- it's a valid criticism: he's trolling Apple while presenting it as unbiased journalism. And for a big-time writer to block an anonymous nobody just proves that he cant take the criticism and wants instead to live in a bubble, where one can be a special snowflake without fear of anyone questioning their biases and agendas.
I see bozos on this forum every single day, but I don't block them because I don't want to live in a bubble.
Comments
Have you used the TV app? That's exactly what it is -- not a grid of apps.
As for AI, it's not defensive to take down the mental midgets who troll Apple on a weekly basis. I enjoy DED's columns because this dismantle all the fuzzy thinking and mental gymastics needed by trolls to hand-wring and predict DOOM. It's fake news, a false narrative. Which is probably why dismantling it bothers you so much.
So your new set does Prime content, great. How does it playback your iTunes content? Oh yeah it doesnt. Apple Music? Nope.
Wait but why -- if the ATV already plays Netflix content, why is not-owning-Netflix a shortcoming of the ATV? That doesn't make any sense.
Paying $75B for Netflix wouldn't make financial sense at $12/mo for its membership. The return is not there.
Hmm which features did they announce that it doesn't have? Be specific.
And after over a year, there still aren't any go-to games. Most of them are .99 cent pieces of crap.
Most TV's have Ethernet and Wi-Fi.
I have an ATV (third gen I think) but it's just collecting dust.
point 2 - no one cares. sorry.
No way -- the touch aspect of the remote is the best part about it. Seriously, thats the point. It's fast, precise, and touch-based scrubbing is infinitely better than toggling buttons. I never use my Harmony One for the ATV anymore.
No, it's a valid point -- the 4th gen ATV even looks just like the previous (only taller). It's not meant to be groundbreaking. The media may have beat that drum about Jobs "finally cracking it", but Apple never said that. It's a set top box that streams and runs apps. You can beam your iOS devices to it. It's cheap. That's it...it's not meant to end world hunger.
That's the problem with treating rumors like theyre facts. It's no way to live.
I just wanted something simple to send whatever I threw at it at the TV without problems without having to spend on a NAS.
Right now I'm looking at Minix for streaming local content.
It's not an attack -- it's a valid criticism: he's trolling Apple while presenting it as unbiased journalism. And for a big-time writer to block an anonymous nobody just proves that he cant take the criticism and wants instead to live in a bubble, where one can be a special snowflake without fear of anyone questioning their biases and agendas.
I see bozos on this forum every single day, but I don't block them because I don't want to live in a bubble.