FWIW and IMHO there's no particular reason Apple could not have developed a separate platform-agnostic gaming portal if games were something they thought important, adding value to Apple TV. They still could for that matter. It's been done with some success.
I think the particular reason is the size of iOS gaming + Metal 2 + A series SoC. People knock Apple on gaming, but their focus on graphics oriented performance can't be denied. Just focus on improving how the App Store works and how it can generate revenue for developers.
Last time I tried the ATV remote I thought it was too touchy to even navigate the TV interface with it, and decided not to buy one until they take a different approach than the touch remote. Disappointed they did not improve on it. I think Apple charges more for things like the ATV because they can, and they can because of their ecosystem. The Amazon TV is a better value, even with the ads, if it was not for the easy integration between all things IOS and MacOS and the media in the cloud you bought from Apple. Amazon is not getting into gaming with their TV, but neither is Apple getting into it seriously, let's be honest. Not with that remote as a controller. The best gaming platform so far is the Nintendo Wii, if you want not just sit your ass on the couch and work out your thumbs. My kids love it, my 2 year-old actually just got into it. There is nothing else yet to replace the Wii experience, out there, unless you count the Kinect or Sony with those lightbulb controllers, which I've heard are not as reliable as the Wii. I think Amazon is doing some good things, and they will put pressure on Apple to lower their prices. Like someone said above, market share is not a monolithic thing. You can't only count your profits, if you won't have the critical mass in numbers for your ecosystem, to make it sticky. You need market share for that.
This thing can be made out of Gold for that price and I won’t buy it. AppleTv doesn’t have to be number one in sales or number 2 or 3... Apple just have to keep investing in AppleTv and continue to improve and I will continue to purchase it. I’d rather pay 149 once every couple of years than buy that Amazon thing. 149 bucks is not gonna leave me broke.
If Apple only sold AppleTV’s then they will have something to worry about. They don’t, a lot of people I know by AppleTv because they own an iPhone and fell in love with their products. Sooooo many “non tech” people I know won’t go near Amazon Fire Tv. The folks I know who use anything Amazon attatcked to their TV only use it for Kodi.
And that’s how I feel. I came to Apple products from MS and Android and I’m not looking back. There is simply something special about the video quality of AppleTV that is natural and movie like that locks me in. Yeah it smarts sometimes that Apple is ‘behind’ on the latest and so-called greatest but hey I’ll choose quality over quantity i.e cheap and fast any time.
Most people would rather have some Ads and save money. We know that already. $69 vs $149 is a major difference for many people. While Apple is pushing gaming, Amazon is not. How many people really care about the gaming aspect?
My kids love playing games on the TV and the new 4K res is awesome for that!
Also, only 8GB of storage? Apple quadruples that out of the gate and the processor is orders of magnitude faster. This thing can pretty much just handle streaming and decoding 4K video. That's about it.
No ethernet? That's an extra adapter expense. Sorry, but for streaming I'm not going to hook it up via WiFi and have my cluttered radio space make my kid's shows choppy.
So far, very few people are gaming on their aTV. I tried it, and so far, it’s a bomb. Apple’s aTV sales have dropped to forth place, whereas at one time they were first place. Apple’s movie and Tv sales and rentals have dropped a lot as well, where they were once in first place for that too. There’s a correlation there. Obviously, Apple’s Tv products and services are losing major ground to cheaper competitors, and to ones who are willing to make the content deals Apple isn’t.
until Apple turns that around, nothing anyone says about their hardware, or software in that area makes any sense, if they’re defending it. Sales tell us everything we need to know about how much people like the products.
so, I’ve got this on order. I’ve also got several controllers for my iPad and iPhone which work. But that testimonial, as well as yours, means little, overall, because of the declining sales.
This statement that I bolded is 100% unfiltered crap, and from a long-time Apple user to boot. Until the iPod came around, what did Apple lead in? It's never been in the lead in personal computer sales for the last 20 years, and probably more.
Sales can either tell us how much people like a product, or how cheap the product is. $40 Android phones from an assortment of vendors beat iPhone sales -- does that mean the iPhone is crap? Acer's PC sales eclipse Apple's Mac sales. Does that mean the Mac is crap? Sale volumes say very little about capabilities of a product.
Here: "I got this widget on sale for $X/2! It's not perfect, but it gets me to 60% of where I want to be, so, it'll be fine." Does this sound like anything to you?
I think your response is crap. You obviously didn’t understand what I wrote. Apple was bragging that they had the number one movie and Tv sales and rentals. Don’t give me BS about how Apple feels about marketshare, because I’m tired of hearing that garbage. Apple has ALWAYS made points about marketshare, when Jobs as there, after he left, and after he came back. Now that he’s gone, they still do. This is nothing new, and if you knew half as much about Apple as you think you do, you would know that.
as far as my saying, or even hinting that the products themselves were crap, well, where did I say that? You won’t find it, because I never said that. You made a very distorted statement about what I said. But yes, it’s true, gaming on the aTV is terrible. I’m not the only one to say that. Read any review that involves gaming, and it will agree. Is it all Apple’s fault? No, it’s also the developers. But Apple did make it more difficult by requiring that all games enable the Apple controller. They’ve stated that. And that’s from developers who do very well on Apple’s other iOS platforms.
innate capabilities aren’t the only thing that involves value. If developers don’t take advantage of it, then the value will be less. That’s really not difficult to understand. And right now, whether you like it or not, the state of gaming on the aTV isn’t very good. I do have hopes it will get better.
i don’t understand what that last part has to do with anything. It certainly has nothing to do with what I said. But, we see that Amazon just released a new Tv device for $69. It doesn’t play games, true. But are people buying these things for games, or to watch video? I’d bet that almost all of the use is for video.
Nice spin. Nice ad hominem too, and selective application of Apple's statements about marketshare over time.
Done here, and disappointed. Have a nice night.
Oh, don’t give me that. I just threw your own word back at you. If you’re not happy about that, then why did you start it by throwing it at me? Was I ticked? You bet. I expected better from you after all.
i’ve seen Apple’s history from the beginning, real time, and I knew all of these guys from the Homebrew Computer Club before most people here were out of kindergarten. I understand their talk about marketshare quite well. If you disagree, come back and talk about it. Don’t slink away.
Fine.
You're applying selective application of Apple's stance on marketshare. Yes, Apple talks about it when they get good gains. No, they don't give a shit about it, and never have -- and since you knew the guys since kindergarten and had that experience you should know that as well instead of trotting out the whole sales=measure of goodness argument. Famously, Jobs said for over thirty years that he didn't care about marketshare, was more interested in best-in-class products, and I still don't think he did the day he died.
The Apple TV 4K is best in class. The new Fire TV is less powerful than the predecessor. It's using the crappy Amlogic S905, and only very slightly beats out the second generation Fire TV stick. So, sure, let's race to the bottom. That always ends well. They did the same thing with their Fire tablets, where the 10-inch Fire HDX was a very nice piece of kit, then Amazon got stupid with the ridiculous $40 POS.
Apple's marketshare of streaming content is falling, but volumes are growing. That's not because Apple has lost any special sauce -- it's because the market is changing. There will always be a market segment that likes the on-sale get-you-most-of-the-way-there option. Apple doesn't chase that market, and frequently says so.
Anyway, I left the conversation other than popping in for moderation duties since I have the keys tonight, because you are so convinced that you're right and have a unique perspective that you're not that interested in discussing it - and it isn't the first time I've seen it. You didn't really read what I said, nor comprehended that the last sentence wasn't in response to you, but an addition to what I was saying. Nor did I say anything about gaming at all in this particular forum thread, but am on record for saying that the fourth generation was only going to be as good as the gaming software -- which never really materialized for an assortment of reasons.
I wasn't disappointed about the response so much as I was by your lack of vision surrounding the device. That, and some linguistic tells that you were gearing up for an argument that will get us nowhere and take time from other stuff I've got going on, including slamming this Apple TV 4K right here.
Off topic fun fact: I was hired by Apple in 2000 to be on a new games evangelism team. The position never got started, and we all got canned three weeks after on-boarding.
The ad hominem I was referring to was the "if you knew half as much about Apple as you think you do, you would know that," not the "crap" part.
First of all, I think it’s interesting that you’re giving an opinion of Apple’s stance on some public statements that are themselves as much marketing, as reality. I already brought that up. It’s rare when a top company official, of any company, will flat out state that their main goal is marketshare, though we do see that from time to time. It depends on what their products are. It’s always better to make your public stance that; “we want to make the best quality products”, and then hope that sales and marketshare increase. If Apple really didn’t care, they would NEVER mention it.
i’ve seen this argument here when Apple wasn’t doing well. It was a great mantra then, because it gave a great excuse for poor sales. But developers don’t respond the same way. When Apple had problems in the late ‘90’s, because of some terrible decisions their then, short lived CEO, Michael Spindler made, Adobe moved their products from pure Mac, to Windows development. They then moved development off the Mac platform entirely to the Windows platform, and Mac users had to wait some months before the software became available, and then, for greater insult, Adobe refused to support Mac only hardware and OS features, because they said that they wanted feature parity between platforms, which led to people abandoning the Mac for Windows. Since this was my business; a commercial film lab, I noticed it right away.
they weren’t the only ones. When I was on the executive board of NYMUG, the New York Mac Users Group, which, at its peak had 5,400 members, I spoke to a lot of software developers about why their Mac version had less features, no printed manuals (in the days when multi hundred page manuals were still common, and there’s a story there too), and came out later. The replies were that with a small marketshare, it didn’t pay to spend as much on the Mac product. And yes, marketshare was the stated reason. And that’s because if sales all around were much lower, their prices would have been higher, and they would maintain profits. But they couldn’t raise Mac related prices, because it doesn’t work that way, and so, they took out features, and didn’t supply manuals.
now for that story. The main reason why Apple was the first to embrace online manuals was because of this problem Apple had with developers. They figured that if a developer could put the manual on line, it wouldn’t cost much to give Mac users a full manual. It worked.
I have no argument that the aTV is best in class. I’ve said that in several threads here since we first began discussing it. I ordered the 64GB version the first day it became available, just like I did with the 4. But that wasn’t the point I was making. There are two types of customers. The first, in no particular order, wants a device for a specific purpose. If there are two or more devices that accomplish that, they will often buy the least expensive one, and that’s ok. The other type of customer will look for the high end device that does the same thing, and that may have features that they may want, but may not want. They just want, as a friend constantly tells me about everything he buys, no matter how crappy it is; “the best”. I’m not saying, before you accuse me of it, that the aTv is crappy. Just giving a state of mind that some people have.
but if the new Fire Tv does everything needed for 4K, such as auto 5.1, 7.1, Atmos, etc, then why does it matter what hardware is inside for most people? As I said earlier, it’s not a device for gaming, or software, whereas the aTV is.
my argument about the aTV with Apple’s direction, is that other than for iPhone gaming, they just don’t understand the market. They’ve been making a major public push for gaming, and for app use there, and it hasn’t been successful. That doesn’t mean that no one does it, but that it just hasn’t taken off. There’s no buzz whatsoever in gaming circles. Apple’s gaming excitement, as I said, is on and off. Since you related to us your own experience there, You should know what I’m talking about.
While you say you weren’t talking about gaming, my posts have been talking about that, because Apple is talking about that, and it’s obvious that the new hardware isn’t required simply for any 4K Tv needs, hence the higher price relative to other devices competitors have, or will be coming out with. You can just talk about the Tv aspect, but then, why so much hardware? It only makes sense in relation to gaming and app use, which is something its competitors aren’t doing.
my opinion on this, which I suppose you disagree with, from what I read of your statements, is that if Apple wanted to just make a Tv device, they could have made a less expensive one, because of lower hardware needs. Notice I didn’t say cheaper, because that denotes a not always true relationship between hardware and software quality and price. Lower hardware requirements in line with the product’s needs doesn’t mean it’s a cheap product, with all of the implied crappiness. I don’t regardc the Mac Mini to be a cheap product, even though Apple has allowed it to fall behind. It’s less expensive because of lower hardware costs because it’s use category doesn’t require much more.
I also don’t understand why you think I have a lack of vision regarding this product. You need to expand on that. I think I have a pretty good idea of where Apple wants to go here. I just don’t feel they are going about it the right way. I know that Sol feels that we’re not allowed to question, or criticize what Apple does, because they know best, but he’s wrong. I hope you’re not getting that same idea.
what I said to you wasn’t an ad hominem. That would be when someone calls another “an idiot”.
Sorry but no, Apple doesn’t pander to the Church of Market Share. they have chosen profit over market share, time and again. They could have saturated several markets but have chosen not to engage in a race to the bottom, unlock all of the old PC companies of yore, android phones, etc.
I don’t doubt that they may brag about market share if they led it for some presentation slide, but it’s clearly not their product strategy.
Oh, for crying out loud. This is such a mantra here. Jobs, and now Cook want to see this company grow. They know they need to get sales from competitors. The statements they make about making the best products, and if people like them, they will buy them, is part truth, and part marketing. But marketshare is important to them too. They even brag about it wen it look old.
marketshare isn’t a simplistic thing, the way some of you are apparently looking at it. You’re looking at it as though it’s this monolithic thing. It’s not. It’s broken down into categories, even in one industry, even in one segment of that industry.
apple isn’t interested in marketshare in the entire cell industry. They aren’t interested in marketshare in the entire smartphone industry. They are interested in marketshare in flagship models. They are interested in marketshare in enterprise. That’s the way it works. They understand that.
"In particular, Roku, Amazon and Google all offer ‘stick’ options that plug directly into your TV as well as their set-top box options, and these cheap stick solutions are proving perennially popular; Park Associates states that streaming sticks account for a full half of the 2015 total streaming media player market. In fact, the Fire TV stick accounted for three quarters of all Amazon’s streaming media player sales."
Your last sentence makes no sense. Of course I understand it. But rising sales that are falling further behind its competitors does not make for a good position. One reason what Apple has been having so much trouble in making deals, as has been widely reported, including here, is that their clout in the industry is dropping.
Most people would rather have some Ads and save money. We know that already. $69 vs $149 is a major difference for many people. While Apple is pushing gaming, Amazon is not. How many people really care about the gaming aspect?
I don’t believe Apple is pushing gaming. It’s still just a hobby for them. I wish they would take gaming seriously.
Most people would rather have some Ads and save money. We know that already. $69 vs $149 is a major difference for many people. While Apple is pushing gaming, Amazon is not. How many people really care about the gaming aspect?
My kids love playing games on the TV and the new 4K res is awesome for that!
Also, only 8GB of storage? Apple quadruples that out of the gate and the processor is orders of magnitude faster. This thing can pretty much just handle streaming and decoding 4K video. That's about it.
No ethernet? That's an extra adapter expense. Sorry, but for streaming I'm not going to hook it up via WiFi and have my cluttered radio space make my kid's shows choppy.
So far, very few people are gaming on their aTV. I tried it, and so far, it’s a bomb. Apple’s aTV sales have dropped to forth place, whereas at one time they were first place. Apple’s movie and Tv sales and rentals have dropped a lot as well, where they were once in first place for that too. There’s a correlation there. Obviously, Apple’s Tv products and services are losing major ground to cheaper competitors, and to ones who are willing to make the content deals Apple isn’t.
until Apple turns that around, nothing anyone says about their hardware, or software in that area makes any sense, if they’re defending it. Sales tell us everything we need to know about how much people like the products.
so, I’ve got this on order. I’ve also got several controllers for my iPad and iPhone which work. But that testimonial, as well as yours, means little, overall, because of the declining sales.
Because Apple is still tinkering and playing with this hobby. While Amazon, Goog, Roku etc. Are putting in 100% effort Apple is just dipping their toes in with maybe 20%.
if Apple took Apple TV out of beta they would have added:
custom gaming chip.
M-processor, 3D Touch and advanced Taptic Engine for gaming, fitness apps, health etc.
AR camera array for shopping, FaceTime, games and other apps we can’t imagine yet.
advanced IR aiming and an official nunchuck Style controller for gaming(again).
With Swift, Metal 2 and A11Bionic, I know the day is coming soon when the “real” Apple TV is announced. I believe they’re waiting to mass produce a single chip that can handle iPad, iPhone, tvOS. We’re close but not there yet.
Going well back into the 1990’s, Apple made big, and very short lived foray’s into gaming. But they never liked it. Gaming was always something they had distaste for. Ironically, the reason why the “PC” became popular with the public wasn’t, as people think, because of work, but because of gaming. While Microsoft encouraged it, and did everything they could to get it going, Apple pretended it didn’t exist, most of the time. But, despite that, Macs were called toys. I suppose that had something to do with distrust of the genre. They were trying to be taken seriously.
Apple is pushing gaming. Every developers conference, every major product intro, they talk gaming, and have games on stage. It worked for the iPhone. It’s one of the most popular gaming platforms. It hasn’t worked anywhere else. Not big time. They’ve been pushing gaming since the 4 came out, and they’re pushing it with the new 5.
its fine to call everything that isn’t doing well as a hobby. But I’d bet that since the iPhone did become a major game platform they are taking it very seriously. But they don’t understand what they need to do. Enabling real controllers was a good first step. But requiring the aTV controller was a bad step. I get why. They don want people to have to buy a controller. But gamers will buy a controller. Do you see all of the gaming mice, trackballs, keyboards, sticks and other devices out there? That’s gaming, not the controller Apple supplies. At least, this year I expected something that would be better at it, but no.
the aTV is not in beta.
the SoC Apple uses can do all of what you’re saying right now. It all has to do with cost and profit. I was shocked when they said that the A10x was going into this at this price. It’s decent enough for good game play at 1080p. That’s a lot lower than my iPad Pro 12.9” 2017. They even put a fan in. I don’t see a performance problem.
I understand but I do not believe they’re taking Apple TV as serious as they usually do their products.
if you compare iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and HomePod to Apple TV you’ll see what I mean. Today’s Apple TV is what the first version should have been.
i understand it can play 4k games now but I don’t think it compares to the real players(Nintendo, Xbox, PlayStation) at all. I feel it will come eventually with their A series chips advancing faster than anything out there but we may have to wait until A13. I was happy too they announced A10x as it’s a year old and the 4th gen Apple TV used a chip that was very outdated at the time.
Again if Apple took gaming seriously they would have announced enhanced Siri remote feautures, bought a few studios and made Mario Run TV a thing.
regarding market share, it’s very important and I wanna see Apple take the cake like iPod did. I believe the reason the iPhone and iPad are having a hard time is because countries are allowing companies to make knockoffs and legally sell them as legit products.
I agree. Sometimes marketshare isn’t all important. But sometimes it’s very important. Why do we see XBox with developers abandoning it, even though sales are higher than the last generation? Because Sony is killing it in sales and that also denotes marketshare. I don’t know why this is so hard for some people to understand.
i’ve seen Apple’s history from the beginning, real time, and I knew all of these guys from the Homebrew Computer Club before most people here were out of kindergarten. I understand their talk about marketshare quite well. If you disagree, come back and talk about it. Don’t slink away.
Lol, when you run out of everything else argue that age and experience trumps logic and facts...
If you take eMarketer active user share numbers and apply the 2015 50% of the market are sticks metric you end up with a market of 132.9M active streaming boxes of which 66.45M were sticks.
So Apple had 21.3M active users out of the non-stick market of 66.45M users and had #1 share among the top 4 families of non-stick streamers including the mid-tier and low tier non-stick models that cost far less than $149.
I'm guessing you're the one thats going to slink away.
I tell of my experience, because when people just use public marketing statements of supposed “facts”, which they are not, and I’ve lived through it, and spoken to a number of those very people, I do think I have a handle on what they think.
No reason to slink away. Those 2015 stats are out of date. The stick market has expanded since then. But even using those numbers, Apple had 21.3 million active users out of a total of 132.9 million active users of streaming boxes. In other words, 16% of the market. It’s less now. That’s supposed to be good? Is that the direction they want to be going in?
Most people would rather have some Ads and save money. We know that already. $69 vs $149 is a major difference for many people. While Apple is pushing gaming, Amazon is not. How many people really care about the gaming aspect?
My kids love playing games on the TV and the new 4K res is awesome for that!
Also, only 8GB of storage? Apple quadruples that out of the gate and the processor is orders of magnitude faster. This thing can pretty much just handle streaming and decoding 4K video. That's about it.
No ethernet? That's an extra adapter expense. Sorry, but for streaming I'm not going to hook it up via WiFi and have my cluttered radio space make my kid's shows choppy.
So far, very few people are gaming on their aTV. I tried it, and so far, it’s a bomb. Apple’s aTV sales have dropped to forth place, whereas at one time they were first place. Apple’s movie and Tv sales and rentals have dropped a lot as well, where they were once in first place for that too. There’s a correlation there. Obviously, Apple’s Tv products and services are losing major ground to cheaper competitors, and to ones who are willing to make the content deals Apple isn’t.
until Apple turns that around, nothing anyone says about their hardware, or software in that area makes any sense, if they’re defending it. Sales tell us everything we need to know about how much people like the products.
so, I’ve got this on order. I’ve also got several controllers for my iPad and iPhone which work. But that testimonial, as well as yours, means little, overall, because of the declining sales.
This statement that I bolded is 100% unfiltered crap, and from a long-time Apple user to boot. Until the iPod came around, what did Apple lead in? It's never been in the lead in personal computer sales for the last 20 years, and probably more.
Sales can either tell us how much people like a product, or how cheap the product is. $40 Android phones from an assortment of vendors beat iPhone sales -- does that mean the iPhone is crap? Acer's PC sales eclipse Apple's Mac sales. Does that mean the Mac is crap? Sale volumes say very little about capabilities of a product.
Here: "I got this widget on sale for $X/2! It's not perfect, but it gets me to 60% of where I want to be, so, it'll be fine." Does this sound like anything to you?
Don’t give me BS about how Apple feels about marketshare, because I’m tired of hearing that garbage. Apple has ALWAYS made points about marketshare, when Jobs as there, after he left, and after he came back. Now that he’s gone, they still do. This is nothing new, and if you knew half as much about Apple as you think you do, you would know that.
Sorry but no, Apple doesn’t pander to the Church of Market Share. they have chosen profit over market share, time and again. They could have saturated several markets but have chosen not to engage in a race to the bottom, unlock all of the old PC companies of yore, android phones, etc.
I don’t doubt that they may brag about market share if they led it for some presentation slide, but it’s clearly not their product strategy.
Oh, for crying out loud. This is such a mantra here. Jobs, and now Cook want to see this company grow. They know they need to get sales from competitors. The statements they make about making the best products, and if people like them, they will buy them, is part truth, and part marketing. But marketshare is important to them too. They even brag about it when it looks good.
marketshare isn’t a simplistic thing, the way some of you are apparently looking at it. You’re looking at it as though it’s this monolithic thing. It’s not. It’s broken down into categories, even in one industry, even in one segment of that industry.
apple isn’t interested in marketshare in the entire cell industry. They aren’t interested in marketshare in the entire smartphone industry. They are interested in marketshare in flagship models. They are interested in marketshare in enterprise. That’s the way it works. They understand that.
If you qualify market share to mean “market share in this much smaller segment of the market” then you’ve redefined the term to mean something else. Apple strategy has not been to claim product category market share at the expense of profit. It’s profit first. If market share for a small segment of the market that is high end and very profitable is what you mean, then sure ok.
No, I haven’t. It’s been simplistic to think in terms of everything included when thinking in terms of marketshare. Haven’t you ever heard of segmented markets? Every industry has them. The auto industry does. The Tv industry does. So does every other industry. We read that the Mac has a USA marketshare of about 15%, but we also read that they have a marketshare of about 90% when talking about computers over $1,000 (I don’t know if that number is accurate now, it was from two years ago). That’s market segmentation.
we can’t talk about marketshare without taking this into consideration.
The concept of an actively cooled A10X had appeal to me, but only if it develops an ecosystem of games using MFi controllers. After that, 4K+the same HDR specs is pretty much 90% of the use of such a streamer.
Shame there being no 10 dollar more expensive option to remove the ads though. So 70 or more than double that for one that's a bit faster with no ads. An 80 dollar Fire dongle with no ads would be the sweet spot.
I'm in the same boat as Gruber in that if they want to differentiate it and earn that 170 dollar price tag, they should start pushing the gaming aspect more than just an afterthought.
There's an actively cooled A10X in there, it's easily head and shoulders above something like the Switch and every 7th gen console. They should use that, seeing as they dropped the wand controller requirement, and they sell MFi controllers in store.
If I was going to spend 70 dollars on a 4K HDR dongle like the Fire TV anyways, another 100 for a nifty microconsole wouldn't be bad. But so far it seems to mainly have games that don't require much.
Beat me to it! And I think Gruber nails it with the regarding the general sentiment with respect to Apple TV. It isn't a bad device, just not worth the money. The Verge (for once) has a great article on why Apple should possibly make an actual television set. Great read
I'm in the same boat as Gruber in that if they want to differentiate it and earn that 170 dollar price tag, they should start pushing the gaming aspect more than just an afterthought.
There's an actively cooled A10X in there, it's easily head and shoulders above something like the Switch and every 7th gen console. They should use that, seeing as they dropped the wand controller requirement, and they sell MFi controllers in store.
If I was going to spend 70 dollars on a 4K HDR dongle like the Fire TV anyways, another 100 for a nifty microconsole wouldn't be bad. But so far it seems to mainly have games that don't require much.
Agree. When you're at the near-$200 mark, you're either in gaming-console territory. If Apple wants the ATV to succeed as a gaming console it needs to make its own first-party controller and invest in gaming content like it's doing with Music & TV.
i’ve seen Apple’s history from the beginning, real time, and I knew all of these guys from the Homebrew Computer Club before most people here were out of kindergarten. I understand their talk about marketshare quite well. If you disagree, come back and talk about it. Don’t slink away.
Lol, when you run out of everything else argue that age and experience trumps logic and facts...
If you take eMarketer active user share numbers and apply the 2015 50% of the market are sticks metric you end up with a market of 132.9M active streaming boxes of which 66.45M were sticks.
So Apple had 21.3M active users out of the non-stick market of 66.45M users and had #1 share among the top 4 families of non-stick streamers including the mid-tier and low tier non-stick models that cost far less than $149.
I'm guessing you're the one thats going to slink away.
I tell of my experience, because when people just use public marketing statements of supposed “facts”, which they are not, and I’ve lived through it, and spoken to a number of those very people, I do think I have a handle on what they think.
No reason to slink away. Those 2015 stats are out of date. The stick market has expanded since then. But even using those numbers, Apple had 21.3 million active users out of a total of 132.9 million active users of streaming boxes. In other words, 16% of the market. It’s less now. That’s supposed to be good? Is that the direction they want to be going in?
You clearly claimed that Apple cares about specific market share (i.e. high end handsets) and then claim that Apple is a failure because they aren't #1 in total market share of streaming boxes. The 132M active subscribers are from 2017 for the entire market including sticks which you claim has expanded beyond 50% of the total streaming market and makes your argument worse not better.
If you remove sticks, like we remove low-end android handset sales, you see that Apple still maintains #1 share in the streaming device market segment it cares about with 32% EVEN when including mid-tier streaming boxes that cost half what an Apple TV costs. That's like comparing the iPhone against $200-$300 android phones.
You talk out both sides of your mouth and you can't have it both ways. Apple DOESN'T care about total market share. It DOES care about marketshare within its target segment in computers, smart phones and streamers. When you look at these segments Apple is usually #1 in market share and completely dominates the profit share.
If you qualify market share to mean “market share in this much smaller segment of the market” then you’ve redefined the term to mean something else. Apple strategy has not been to claim product category market share at the expense of profit. It’s profit first. If market share for a small segment of the market that is high end and very profitable is what you mean, then sure ok.
No, I haven’t. It’s been simplistic to think in terms of everything included when thinking in terms of marketshare. Haven’t you ever heard of segmented markets? Every industry has them. The auto industry does. The Tv industry does. So does every other industry. We read that the Mac has a USA marketshare of about 15%, but we also read that they have a marketshare of about 90% when talking about computers over $1,000 (I don’t know if that number is accurate now, it was from two years ago). That’s market segmentation.
we can’t talk about marketshare without taking this into consideration.
You just did that when you claimed that Apple is failing because it only has 16% of streaming device market share. If you remove sticks (50% in 2015) from the equation they have 32%. Amazon's share was reported to be 75% sticks in 2015 and I doubt that number has dropped.
If you remove low and medium end streaming boxes and looked at just the flagship models Apple likely has the same dominant 90% share in both units and profit as it does for Macs.
If Apple is failing with aTV it is equally failing with computers and smartphones.
i’ve seen Apple’s history from the beginning, real time, and I knew all of these guys from the Homebrew Computer Club before most people here were out of kindergarten. I understand their talk about marketshare quite well. If you disagree, come back and talk about it. Don’t slink away.
Lol, when you run out of everything else argue that age and experience trumps logic and facts...
If you take eMarketer active user share numbers and apply the 2015 50% of the market are sticks metric you end up with a market of 132.9M active streaming boxes of which 66.45M were sticks.
So Apple had 21.3M active users out of the non-stick market of 66.45M users and had #1 share among the top 4 families of non-stick streamers including the mid-tier and low tier non-stick models that cost far less than $149.
I'm guessing you're the one thats going to slink away.
I tell of my experience, because when people just use public marketing statements of supposed “facts”, which they are not, and I’ve lived through it, and spoken to a number of those very people, I do think I have a handle on what they think.
No reason to slink away. Those 2015 stats are out of date. The stick market has expanded since then. But even using those numbers, Apple had 21.3 million active users out of a total of 132.9 million active users of streaming boxes. In other words, 16% of the market. It’s less now. That’s supposed to be good? Is that the direction they want to be going in?
You clearly claimed that Apple cares about specific market share (i.e. high end handsets) and then claim that Apple is a failure because they aren't #1 in total market share of streaming boxes. The 132M active subscribers are from 2017 for the entire market including sticks which you claim has expanded beyond 50% of the total streaming market and makes your argument worse not better.
If you remove sticks, like we remove low-end android handset sales, you see that Apple still maintains #1 share in the streaming device market segment it cares about with 32% EVEN when including mid-tier streaming boxes that cost half what an Apple TV costs. That's like comparing the iPhone against $200-$300 android phones.
You talk out both sides of your mouth and you can't have it both ways. Apple DOESN'T care about total market share. It DOES care about marketshare within its target segment in computers, smart phones and streamers. When you look at these segments Apple is usually #1 in market share and completely dominates the profit share.
You really are mixing things up. Is this on purpose? We’re talking about Tv streaming, and then, in other posts, in particular, I’m also talking about gaming as being a reason why this hardware heavy box costs more. But your post didn’t address that, just streaming.
i very clearly responded to your marketshare assertions about streaming. Since the extra hardware specs are needed for gaming, and not for streaming high quality 4K, Apple’s box is still just a streaming box for people looking to buy a streaming box, and therefor, since it offers no more than some small advantage for streaming, if any, it can be packed in with other streaming boxes.
if we look at it as an Apple box with Apple’s OS and Tv software, then, if people think that’s important, they would buy it for that, but that alone doesn’t account for the price difference. So where is the value to most people? It’s in gaming and apps, should they want that. And since Apple’s marketshare in 2015, when the gen 4 box was out for a year, and Apple was already pushing apps and gaming for it, was just 16%, it’s clear that most people weren’t interested in anything other than video from their boxes. Or buying an Apple product that cost more, or even just an Apple product.
you really need to understand what markets there are, and the differences between them. Performance that isn’t needed for a particular purpose serves no purpose. It’s not like smartphones, tablets and computers. It’s totally different. If the Fire can handle 4K as well as the aTv gen 5, and that’s all people want it for, then you really can’t talk about a premium product, because operationally, they’re the same, as well as the quality of the content coming out. Though we’ll have to wait for reviews of both products to see the reality.
i’ve seen Apple’s history from the beginning, real time, and I knew all of these guys from the Homebrew Computer Club before most people here were out of kindergarten. I understand their talk about marketshare quite well. If you disagree, come back and talk about it. Don’t slink away.
Lol, when you run out of everything else argue that age and experience trumps logic and facts...
If you take eMarketer active user share numbers and apply the 2015 50% of the market are sticks metric you end up with a market of 132.9M active streaming boxes of which 66.45M were sticks.
So Apple had 21.3M active users out of the non-stick market of 66.45M users and had #1 share among the top 4 families of non-stick streamers including the mid-tier and low tier non-stick models that cost far less than $149.
I'm guessing you're the one thats going to slink away.
I tell of my experience, because when people just use public marketing statements of supposed “facts”, which they are not, and I’ve lived through it, and spoken to a number of those very people, I do think I have a handle on what they think.
No reason to slink away. Those 2015 stats are out of date. The stick market has expanded since then. But even using those numbers, Apple had 21.3 million active users out of a total of 132.9 million active users of streaming boxes. In other words, 16% of the market. It’s less now. That’s supposed to be good? Is that the direction they want to be going in?
You clearly claimed that Apple cares about specific market share (i.e. high end handsets) and then claim that Apple is a failure because they aren't #1 in total market share of streaming boxes. The 132M active subscribers are from 2017 for the entire market including sticks which you claim has expanded beyond 50% of the total streaming market and makes your argument worse not better.
If you remove sticks, like we remove low-end android handset sales, you see that Apple still maintains #1 share in the streaming device market segment it cares about with 32% EVEN when including mid-tier streaming boxes that cost half what an Apple TV costs. That's like comparing the iPhone against $200-$300 android phones.
You talk out both sides of your mouth and you can't have it both ways. Apple DOESN'T care about total market share. It DOES care about marketshare within its target segment in computers, smart phones and streamers. When you look at these segments Apple is usually #1 in market share and completely dominates the profit share.
You really are mixing things up. Is this on purpose? We’re talking about Tv streaming, and then, in other posts, in particular, I’m also talking about gaming as being a reason why this hardware heavy box costs more. But your post didn’t address that, just streaming.
There is no mix up at all.
You clearly claim that Apple is failing in the TV streaming market which includes the $99 Roku Ultra, the $69 Chromecast Ultra and the $79 Fire TV+ Echo Dot which don't have gaming. These are the "flagship" models that the $179 aTV competes against.
When you remove the $35 streaming sticks (FireTV Stick, Roku Stick, and Chomecast) that the aTV doesn't compete against then 50% of the streaming market doesn't count in the market segment that Apple competes in. Apple's share, even when including the $60 Roku Premier is 32%.
That doesn't have anything to do with gaming. Zero. None. Nada. None of the current Apple TV competitors have gaming as a marketed feature.
i very clearly responded to your marketshare assertions about streaming. Since the extra hardware specs are needed for gaming, and not for streaming high quality 4K, Apple’s box is still just a streaming box for people looking to buy a streaming box, and therefor, since it offers no more than some small advantage for streaming, if any, it can be packed in with other streaming boxes.
The aTV competes solely on the streaming features (4K, voice control, remote, rental features, studio and TV content, etc) in this discussion. Especially since you are claiming that the gaming features don't matter anyway. The marketshare numbers clearly indicates Apple is winning in the flagship streamer market segment despite a $179 price point that is far greater than it's closest competitor the $99 Roku Ultra.
if we look at it as an Apple box with Apple’s OS and Tv software, then, if people think that’s important, they would buy it for that, but that alone doesn’t account for the price difference. So where is the value to most people? It’s in gaming and apps, should they want that. And since Apple’s marketshare in 2015, when the gen 4 box was out for a year, and Apple was already pushing apps and gaming for it, was just 16%, it’s clear that most people weren’t interested in anything other than video from their boxes. Or buying an Apple product that cost more, or even just an Apple product.
you really need to understand what markets there are, and the differences between them. Performance that isn’t needed for a particular purpose serves no purpose. It’s not like smartphones, tablets and computers. It’s totally different. If the Fire can handle 4K as well as the aTv gen 5, and that’s all people want it for, then you really can’t talk about a premium product, because operationally, they’re the same, as well as the quality of the content coming out. Though we’ll have to wait for reviews of both products to see the reality.
This is the reality:
The streamer market is segmented between sticks and boxes. Given the 2017 usage numbers provided by eMarket Apple currently has 21.3M active monthly users the streaming box market in comparison to the estimated Roku's 19.5M, Google's 18.45M and Amazon's 17.8M based on the 2015 assessment that 50% of the total streaming device market are $35 sticks.
Given that probably more than 50% of the total market are sticks the 32% share is conservative.
It doesn't matter why users are willing to pay $179 for an aTV. They do and in greater number than they are willing to pay for a $99 Roku Ultra. Both are premium products that you claim don't exist.
Apple is approaching the set top streaming market in exactly the same way it approaches the smartphone, tablet and computer markets with roughly the same results. A point you are desperately avoiding.
If you qualify market share to mean “market share in this much smaller segment of the market” then you’ve redefined the term to mean something else. Apple strategy has not been to claim product category market share at the expense of profit. It’s profit first. If market share for a small segment of the market that is high end and very profitable is what you mean, then sure ok.
No, I haven’t. It’s been simplistic to think in terms of everything included when thinking in terms of marketshare. Haven’t you ever heard of segmented markets? Every industry has them. The auto industry does. The Tv industry does. So does every other industry. We read that the Mac has a USA marketshare of about 15%, but we also read that they have a marketshare of about 90% when talking about computers over $1,000 (I don’t know if that number is accurate now, it was from two years ago). That’s market segmentation.
we can’t talk about marketshare without taking this into consideration.
You just did that when you claimed that Apple is failing because it only has 16% of streaming device market share. If you remove sticks (50% in 2015) from the equation they have 32%. Amazon's share was reported to be 75% sticks in 2015 and I doubt that number has dropped.
If you remove low and medium end streaming boxes and looked at just the flagship models Apple likely has the same dominant 90% share in both units and profit as it does for Macs.
If Apple is failing with aTV it is equally failing with computers and smartphones.
Because this is a totally different market from computing. All it has to do is what the Fire will do. You keep talking about flagship models. The only real flagship model is the Tv. But it doesn’t matter.
i’ve seen Apple’s history from the beginning, real time, and I knew all of these guys from the Homebrew Computer Club before most people here were out of kindergarten. I understand their talk about marketshare quite well. If you disagree, come back and talk about it. Don’t slink away.
Lol, when you run out of everything else argue that age and experience trumps logic and facts...
If you take eMarketer active user share numbers and apply the 2015 50% of the market are sticks metric you end up with a market of 132.9M active streaming boxes of which 66.45M were sticks.
So Apple had 21.3M active users out of the non-stick market of 66.45M users and had #1 share among the top 4 families of non-stick streamers including the mid-tier and low tier non-stick models that cost far less than $149.
I'm guessing you're the one thats going to slink away.
I tell of my experience, because when people just use public marketing statements of supposed “facts”, which they are not, and I’ve lived through it, and spoken to a number of those very people, I do think I have a handle on what they think.
No reason to slink away. Those 2015 stats are out of date. The stick market has expanded since then. But even using those numbers, Apple had 21.3 million active users out of a total of 132.9 million active users of streaming boxes. In other words, 16% of the market. It’s less now. That’s supposed to be good? Is that the direction they want to be going in?
You clearly claimed that Apple cares about specific market share (i.e. high end handsets) and then claim that Apple is a failure because they aren't #1 in total market share of streaming boxes. The 132M active subscribers are from 2017 for the entire market including sticks which you claim has expanded beyond 50% of the total streaming market and makes your argument worse not better.
If you remove sticks, like we remove low-end android handset sales, you see that Apple still maintains #1 share in the streaming device market segment it cares about with 32% EVEN when including mid-tier streaming boxes that cost half what an Apple TV costs. That's like comparing the iPhone against $200-$300 android phones.
You talk out both sides of your mouth and you can't have it both ways. Apple DOESN'T care about total market share. It DOES care about marketshare within its target segment in computers, smart phones and streamers. When you look at these segments Apple is usually #1 in market share and completely dominates the profit share.
You really are mixing things up. Is this on purpose? We’re talking about Tv streaming, and then, in other posts, in particular, I’m also talking about gaming as being a reason why this hardware heavy box costs more. But your post didn’t address that, just streaming.
There is no mix up at all.
You clearly claim that Apple is failing in the TV streaming market which includes the $99 Roku Ultra, the $69 Chromecast Ultra and the $79 Fire TV+ Echo Dot which don't have gaming. These are the "flagship" models that the $179 aTV competes against.
When you remove the $35 streaming sticks (FireTV Stick, Roku Stick, and Chomecast) that the aTV doesn't compete against then 50% of the streaming market doesn't count in the market segment that Apple competes in. Apple's share, even when including the $60 Roku Premier is 32%.
That doesn't have anything to do with gaming. Zero. None. Nada. None of the current Apple TV competitors have gaming as a marketed feature.
i very clearly responded to your marketshare assertions about streaming. Since the extra hardware specs are needed for gaming, and not for streaming high quality 4K, Apple’s box is still just a streaming box for people looking to buy a streaming box, and therefor, since it offers no more than some small advantage for streaming, if any, it can be packed in with other streaming boxes.
The aTV competes solely on the streaming features (4K, voice control, remote, rental features, studio and TV content, etc) in this discussion. Especially since you are claiming that the gaming features don't matter anyway. The marketshare numbers clearly indicates Apple is winning in the flagship streamer market segment despite a $179 price point that is far greater than it's closest competitor the $99 Roku Ultra.
if we look at it as an Apple box with Apple’s OS and Tv software, then, if people think that’s important, they would buy it for that, but that alone doesn’t account for the price difference. So where is the value to most people? It’s in gaming and apps, should they want that. And since Apple’s marketshare in 2015, when the gen 4 box was out for a year, and Apple was already pushing apps and gaming for it, was just 16%, it’s clear that most people weren’t interested in anything other than video from their boxes. Or buying an Apple product that cost more, or even just an Apple product.
you really need to understand what markets there are, and the differences between them. Performance that isn’t needed for a particular purpose serves no purpose. It’s not like smartphones, tablets and computers. It’s totally different. If the Fire can handle 4K as well as the aTv gen 5, and that’s all people want it for, then you really can’t talk about a premium product, because operationally, they’re the same, as well as the quality of the content coming out. Though we’ll have to wait for reviews of both products to see the reality.
This is the reality:
The streamer market is segmented between sticks and boxes. Given the 2017 usage numbers provided by eMarket Apple currently has 21.3M active monthly users the streaming box market in comparison to the estimated Roku's 19.5M, Google's 18.45M and Amazon's 17.8M based on the 2015 assessment that 50% of the total streaming device market are $35 sticks.
Given that probably more than 50% of the total market are sticks the 32% share is conservative.
It doesn't matter why users are willing to pay $179 for an aTV. They do and in greater number than they are willing to pay for a $99 Roku Ultra. Both are premium products that you claim don't exist.
Apple is approaching the set top streaming market in exactly the same way it approaches the smartphone, tablet and computer markets with roughly the same results. A point you are desperately avoiding.
I’ve been saying that none of those have gaming and apps. Don’t try to make it sound as though you just came up with that. Those so called flagship models are still well below Apple’s pricing. The aTV doesn’t compete against them any more than the $35 dollar models, or any less. It generally about buying an aTV, or not. What happens elsewhere doesn’t matter. These aren’t being used as computers, and so Apple’s advantage there isn’t important, unless someone wants to use it that way, then the aTV is the only real choice.
i’ve seen Apple’s history from the beginning, real time, and I knew all of these guys from the Homebrew Computer Club before most people here were out of kindergarten. I understand their talk about marketshare quite well. If you disagree, come back and talk about it. Don’t slink away.
Lol, when you run out of everything else argue that age and experience trumps logic and facts...
If you take eMarketer active user share numbers and apply the 2015 50% of the market are sticks metric you end up with a market of 132.9M active streaming boxes of which 66.45M were sticks.
So Apple had 21.3M active users out of the non-stick market of 66.45M users and had #1 share among the top 4 families of non-stick streamers including the mid-tier and low tier non-stick models that cost far less than $149.
I'm guessing you're the one thats going to slink away.
I tell of my experience, because when people just use public marketing statements of supposed “facts”, which they are not, and I’ve lived through it, and spoken to a number of those very people, I do think I have a handle on what they think.
No reason to slink away. Those 2015 stats are out of date. The stick market has expanded since then. But even using those numbers, Apple had 21.3 million active users out of a total of 132.9 million active users of streaming boxes. In other words, 16% of the market. It’s less now. That’s supposed to be good? Is that the direction they want to be going in?
You clearly claimed that Apple cares about specific market share (i.e. high end handsets) and then claim that Apple is a failure because they aren't #1 in total market share of streaming boxes. The 132M active subscribers are from 2017 for the entire market including sticks which you claim has expanded beyond 50% of the total streaming market and makes your argument worse not better.
If you remove sticks, like we remove low-end android handset sales, you see that Apple still maintains #1 share in the streaming device market segment it cares about with 32% EVEN when including mid-tier streaming boxes that cost half what an Apple TV costs. That's like comparing the iPhone against $200-$300 android phones.
You talk out both sides of your mouth and you can't have it both ways. Apple DOESN'T care about total market share. It DOES care about marketshare within its target segment in computers, smart phones and streamers. When you look at these segments Apple is usually #1 in market share and completely dominates the profit share.
You really are mixing things up. Is this on purpose? We’re talking about Tv streaming, and then, in other posts, in particular, I’m also talking about gaming as being a reason why this hardware heavy box costs more. But your post didn’t address that, just streaming.
There is no mix up at all.
You clearly claim that Apple is failing in the TV streaming market which includes the $99 Roku Ultra, the $69 Chromecast Ultra and the $79 Fire TV+ Echo Dot which don't have gaming. These are the "flagship" models that the $179 aTV competes against.
When you remove the $35 streaming sticks (FireTV Stick, Roku Stick, and Chomecast) that the aTV doesn't compete against then 50% of the streaming market doesn't count in the market segment that Apple competes in. Apple's share, even when including the $60 Roku Premier is 32%.
That doesn't have anything to do with gaming. Zero. None. Nada. None of the current Apple TV competitors have gaming as a marketed feature.
i very clearly responded to your marketshare assertions about streaming. Since the extra hardware specs are needed for gaming, and not for streaming high quality 4K, Apple’s box is still just a streaming box for people looking to buy a streaming box, and therefor, since it offers no more than some small advantage for streaming, if any, it can be packed in with other streaming boxes.
The aTV competes solely on the streaming features (4K, voice control, remote, rental features, studio and TV content, etc) in this discussion. Especially since you are claiming that the gaming features don't matter anyway. The marketshare numbers clearly indicates Apple is winning in the flagship streamer market segment despite a $179 price point that is far greater than it's closest competitor the $99 Roku Ultra.
if we look at it as an Apple box with Apple’s OS and Tv software, then, if people think that’s important, they would buy it for that, but that alone doesn’t account for the price difference. So where is the value to most people? It’s in gaming and apps, should they want that. And since Apple’s marketshare in 2015, when the gen 4 box was out for a year, and Apple was already pushing apps and gaming for it, was just 16%, it’s clear that most people weren’t interested in anything other than video from their boxes. Or buying an Apple product that cost more, or even just an Apple product.
you really need to understand what markets there are, and the differences between them. Performance that isn’t needed for a particular purpose serves no purpose. It’s not like smartphones, tablets and computers. It’s totally different. If the Fire can handle 4K as well as the aTv gen 5, and that’s all people want it for, then you really can’t talk about a premium product, because operationally, they’re the same, as well as the quality of the content coming out. Though we’ll have to wait for reviews of both products to see the reality.
This is the reality:
The streamer market is segmented between sticks and boxes. Given the 2017 usage numbers provided by eMarket Apple currently has 21.3M active monthly users the streaming box market in comparison to the estimated Roku's 19.5M, Google's 18.45M and Amazon's 17.8M based on the 2015 assessment that 50% of the total streaming device market are $35 sticks.
Given that probably more than 50% of the total market are sticks the 32% share is conservative.
It doesn't matter why users are willing to pay $179 for an aTV. They do and in greater number than they are willing to pay for a $99 Roku Ultra. Both are premium products that you claim don't exist.
Apple is approaching the set top streaming market in exactly the same way it approaches the smartphone, tablet and computer markets with roughly the same results. A point you are desperately avoiding.
I’ve been saying that none of those have gaming and apps. Don’t try to make it sound as though you just came up with that. Those so called flagship models are still well below Apple’s pricing. The aTV doesn’t compete against them any more than the $35 dollar models, or any less. It generally about buying an aTV, or not. What happens elsewhere doesn’t matter. These aren’t being used as computers, and so Apple’s advantage there isn’t important, unless someone wants to use it that way, then the aTV is the only real choice.
again, it doesn’t matter.
How is aTV a failure when it sells more units at $179 than Roku sells at $99 or less?
Are you claiming there is zero market segmentation between sticks and box streamers? Then why does Roku offer a $99 ultra version? Or even a $69 version?
Actually Roku still supports gaming but they simply don't bother to market that except as the generic term "apps".
You are desperately dancing around the fact that Apple sells more non-stick streamers than anyone else and when you remove sticks from the equation the sales numbers clearly shows that Apple ISN'T failing as you claim.
Comments
I think Apple charges more for things like the ATV because they can, and they can because of their ecosystem. The Amazon TV is a better value, even with the ads, if it was not for the easy integration between all things IOS and MacOS and the media in the cloud you bought from Apple.
Amazon is not getting into gaming with their TV, but neither is Apple getting into it seriously, let's be honest. Not with that remote as a controller. The best gaming platform so far is the Nintendo Wii, if you want not just sit your ass on the couch and work out your thumbs. My kids love it, my 2 year-old actually just got into it. There is nothing else yet to replace the Wii experience, out there, unless you count the Kinect or Sony with those lightbulb controllers, which I've heard are not as reliable as the Wii.
I think Amazon is doing some good things, and they will put pressure on Apple to lower their prices. Like someone said above, market share is not a monolithic thing. You can't only count your profits, if you won't have the critical mass in numbers for your ecosystem, to make it sticky. You need market share for that.
i’ve seen this argument here when Apple wasn’t doing well. It was a great mantra then, because it gave a great excuse for poor sales. But developers don’t respond the same way. When Apple had problems in the late ‘90’s, because of some terrible decisions their then, short lived CEO, Michael Spindler made, Adobe moved their products from pure Mac, to Windows development. They then moved development off the Mac platform entirely to the Windows platform, and Mac users had to wait some months before the software became available, and then, for greater insult, Adobe refused to support Mac only hardware and OS features, because they said that they wanted feature parity between platforms, which led to people abandoning the Mac for Windows. Since this was my business; a commercial film lab, I noticed it right away.
they weren’t the only ones. When I was on the executive board of NYMUG, the New York Mac Users Group, which, at its peak had 5,400 members, I spoke to a lot of software developers about why their Mac version had less features, no printed manuals (in the days when multi hundred page manuals were still common, and there’s a story there too), and came out later. The replies were that with a small marketshare, it didn’t pay to spend as much on the Mac product. And yes, marketshare was the stated reason. And that’s because if sales all around were much lower, their prices would have been higher, and they would maintain profits. But they couldn’t raise Mac related prices, because it doesn’t work that way, and so, they took out features, and didn’t supply manuals.
now for that story. The main reason why Apple was the first to embrace online manuals was because of this problem Apple had with developers. They figured that if a developer could put the manual on line, it wouldn’t cost much to give Mac users a full manual. It worked.
I have no argument that the aTV is best in class. I’ve said that in several threads here since we first began discussing it. I ordered the 64GB version the first day it became available, just like I did with the 4. But that wasn’t the point I was making. There are two types of customers. The first, in no particular order, wants a device for a specific purpose. If there are two or more devices that accomplish that, they will often buy the least expensive one, and that’s ok. The other type of customer will look for the high end device that does the same thing, and that may have features that they may want, but may not want. They just want, as a friend constantly tells me about everything he buys, no matter how crappy it is; “the best”. I’m not saying, before you accuse me of it, that the aTv is crappy. Just giving a state of mind that some people have.
but if the new Fire Tv does everything needed for 4K, such as auto 5.1, 7.1, Atmos, etc, then why does it matter what hardware is inside for most people? As I said earlier, it’s not a device for gaming, or software, whereas the aTV is.
my argument about the aTV with Apple’s direction, is that other than for iPhone gaming, they just don’t understand the market. They’ve been making a major public push for gaming, and for app use there, and it hasn’t been successful. That doesn’t mean that no one does it, but that it just hasn’t taken off. There’s no buzz whatsoever in gaming circles. Apple’s gaming excitement, as I said, is on and off. Since you related to us your own experience there, You should know what I’m talking about.
While you say you weren’t talking about gaming, my posts have been talking about that, because Apple is talking about that, and it’s obvious that the new hardware isn’t required simply for any 4K Tv needs, hence the higher price relative to other devices competitors have, or will be coming out with. You can just talk about the Tv aspect, but then, why so much hardware? It only makes sense in relation to gaming and app use, which is something its competitors aren’t doing.
my opinion on this, which I suppose you disagree with, from what I read of your statements, is that if Apple wanted to just make a Tv device, they could have made a less expensive one, because of lower hardware needs. Notice I didn’t say cheaper, because that denotes a not always true relationship between hardware and software quality and price. Lower hardware requirements in line with the product’s needs doesn’t mean it’s a cheap product, with all of the implied crappiness. I don’t regardc the Mac Mini to be a cheap product, even though Apple has allowed it to fall behind. It’s less expensive because of lower hardware costs because it’s use category doesn’t require much more.
I also don’t understand why you think I have a lack of vision regarding this product. You need to expand on that. I think I have a pretty good idea of where Apple wants to go here. I just don’t feel they are going about it the right way. I know that Sol feels that we’re not allowed to question, or criticize what Apple does, because they know best, but he’s wrong. I hope you’re not getting that same idea.
what I said to you wasn’t an ad hominem. That would be when someone calls another “an idiot”.
Your last sentence makes no sense. Of course I understand it. But rising sales that are falling further behind its competitors does not make for a good position. One reason what Apple has been having so much trouble in making deals, as has been widely reported, including here, is that their clout in the industry is dropping.
do you understand that?
I agree. Sometimes marketshare isn’t all important. But sometimes it’s very important. Why do we see XBox with developers abandoning it, even though sales are higher than the last generation? Because Sony is killing it in sales and that also denotes marketshare. I don’t know why this is so hard for some people to understand.
No reason to slink away. Those 2015 stats are out of date. The stick market has expanded since then. But even using those numbers, Apple had 21.3 million active users out of a total of 132.9 million active users of streaming boxes. In other words, 16% of the market. It’s less now. That’s supposed to be good? Is that the direction they want to be going in?
No, I haven’t. It’s been simplistic to think in terms of everything included when thinking in terms of marketshare. Haven’t you ever heard of segmented markets? Every industry has them. The auto industry does. The Tv industry does. So does every other industry. We read that the Mac has a USA marketshare of about 15%, but we also read that they have a marketshare of about 90% when talking about computers over $1,000 (I don’t know if that number is accurate now, it was from two years ago). That’s market segmentation.
we can’t talk about marketshare without taking this into consideration.
Shame there being no 10 dollar more expensive option to remove the ads though. So 70 or more than double that for one that's a bit faster with no ads. An 80 dollar Fire dongle with no ads would be the sweet spot.
https://daringfireball.net/2017/09/cultural_insularity_and_apple_tv
https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/25/16359798/apple-television-justification
If you remove sticks, like we remove low-end android handset sales, you see that Apple still maintains #1 share in the streaming device market segment it cares about with 32% EVEN when including mid-tier streaming boxes that cost half what an Apple TV costs. That's like comparing the iPhone against $200-$300 android phones.
You talk out both sides of your mouth and you can't have it both ways. Apple DOESN'T care about total market share. It DOES care about marketshare within its target segment in computers, smart phones and streamers. When you look at these segments Apple is usually #1 in market share and completely dominates the profit share.
If you remove low and medium end streaming boxes and looked at just the flagship models Apple likely has the same dominant 90% share in both units and profit as it does for Macs.
If Apple is failing with aTV it is equally failing with computers and smartphones.
i very clearly responded to your marketshare assertions about streaming. Since the extra hardware specs are needed for gaming, and not for streaming high quality 4K, Apple’s box is still just a streaming box for people looking to buy a streaming box, and therefor, since it offers no more than some small advantage for streaming, if any, it can be packed in with other streaming boxes.
if we look at it as an Apple box with Apple’s OS and Tv software, then, if people think that’s important, they would buy it for that, but that alone doesn’t account for the price difference. So where is the value to most people? It’s in gaming and apps, should they want that. And since Apple’s marketshare in 2015, when the gen 4 box was out for a year, and Apple was already pushing apps and gaming for it, was just 16%, it’s clear that most people weren’t interested in anything other than video from their boxes. Or buying an Apple product that cost more, or even just an Apple product.
you really need to understand what markets there are, and the differences between them. Performance that isn’t needed for a particular purpose serves no purpose. It’s not like smartphones, tablets and computers. It’s totally different. If the Fire can handle 4K as well as the aTv gen 5, and that’s all people want it for, then you really can’t talk about a premium product, because operationally, they’re the same, as well as the quality of the content coming out. Though we’ll have to wait for reviews of both products to see the reality.
You clearly claim that Apple is failing in the TV streaming market which includes the $99 Roku Ultra, the $69 Chromecast Ultra and the $79 Fire TV+ Echo Dot which don't have gaming. These are the "flagship" models that the $179 aTV competes against.
When you remove the $35 streaming sticks (FireTV Stick, Roku Stick, and Chomecast) that the aTV doesn't compete against then 50% of the streaming market doesn't count in the market segment that Apple competes in. Apple's share, even when including the $60 Roku Premier is 32%.
That doesn't have anything to do with gaming. Zero. None. Nada. None of the current Apple TV competitors have gaming as a marketed feature.
The aTV competes solely on the streaming features (4K, voice control, remote, rental features, studio and TV content, etc) in this discussion. Especially since you are claiming that the gaming features don't matter anyway. The marketshare numbers clearly indicates Apple is winning in the flagship streamer market segment despite a $179 price point that is far greater than it's closest competitor the $99 Roku Ultra.
This is the reality:
The streamer market is segmented between sticks and boxes. Given the 2017 usage numbers provided by eMarket Apple currently has 21.3M active monthly users the streaming box market in comparison to the estimated Roku's 19.5M, Google's 18.45M and Amazon's 17.8M based on the 2015 assessment that 50% of the total streaming device market are $35 sticks.
Given that probably more than 50% of the total market are sticks the 32% share is conservative.
It doesn't matter why users are willing to pay $179 for an aTV. They do and in greater number than they are willing to pay for a $99 Roku Ultra. Both are premium products that you claim don't exist.
Apple is approaching the set top streaming market in exactly the same way it approaches the smartphone, tablet and computer markets with roughly the same results. A point you are desperately avoiding.
i just used your numbers.
again, it doesn’t matter.
Are you claiming there is zero market segmentation between sticks and box streamers? Then why does Roku offer a $99 ultra version? Or even a $69 version?
Actually Roku still supports gaming but they simply don't bother to market that except as the generic term "apps".
You are desperately dancing around the fact that Apple sells more non-stick streamers than anyone else and when you remove sticks from the equation the sales numbers clearly shows that Apple ISN'T failing as you claim.