Apple TV needs a couple of USB ports to support user interaction devices and frankly better bluetooth support. Simulators and the like most certainly benefit from wired connections.
Despite being a pioneer, AppleTV is now a massive underachiever. They’ve been pretty convincingly overtaken by Roku. If it weren’t for my photos and my music, I’d pretty much jettison both mine. The remote is an insufferable joke.
Faster processors and Arcade and Jennifer Anniston and such ain’t going to cut it.
Could you elaborate? How is the Apple TV an underachiever? What is superior about the Roku other than unit sales? My Apple TV HD does precisely what it was designed to do, that being streaming music and video, providing a plethora of apps from which to choose, games. Back in the day the Windows people used to mock Apple users over how much software was available for Windows compared to OS X, leaving out the fact that most of that Windows software was cheap crap. In my opinion you are dead wrong and the Roku is the streaming world’s Windows, market share and nothing superior about it.
I've not tried Roku. I had a friend who demo'd his to me a few years back and it didn't impress, so I've stayed with Apple TV. Mostly I love Apple TV, although the remote was a bother until I bought a silicone case for it (about US$5.00). I bought one with a wrist strap, because it means you can feel which way is up without thinking about it. I later discovered that, if I'm feeling lazy, I can snag the remote with my big toe - avoiding leaning over to the coffee table (yea, I know - too much information!). I'm too busy to play games, so I'm using it for TV and music, and as a family photo album (about 1000 of our best of the best photos set up as the screensaver). YouTube and Mubi are my favourite apps, so far. The only downside for me is that the interface is inconsistent (which I put down to us being used as guinea pigs while they sort out how best to deliver the TV App across devices and systems. My wish list includes the ability to have a music visualizer, like in iTunes on the Mac, the ability to set different screen savers and/or visualizers to engage, depending on what App you are in and an algorithm that pushes the stuff that I like (and haven't already seen) to the top of the selection in the Movies and TV apps. PS: I've noticed that if you search for something and it's not available then, sometimes, it is available a week or so later, so big kudos for that.
Apple has been getting free advice for years that the secret to selling more devices is to drive selling prices down into loss-leader territory. Analysts began demanding consumers have access to $300 iPhones straight from Apple and not used many years ago, and have repeated the same refrain for iPads, HomePod, and of course, Apple TV.
Yet, Apple has since proven that it is far more valuable to sell fewer units in the premium tier in phones, tablets, PCs and elsewhere. That indicates that the idea of it selling a super-cheap Apple TV model is very unlikely to ever happen.
Ok.... MY "free advice": Bull! I have not seen any evidence that "Apple has since proven that it is far more valuable to sell fewer units in the premium tier"
Perhaps you’ve been living in the multiverse. Here in our dimension, Apple became the most valuable and successful company in the history of humanity, thanks to iPhone. Their iPads rule tablets, and Macs lead PC profit. iPods were king as well.
That’s the evidence. If you haven’t seen it, get those eyes checked.
LOL.... If you want to refute what I said, then you should probably refute what I said rather than what YOU said if you want it to make any sense. Otherwise it comes off as just complaining and whining.
Apple has been getting free advice for years that the secret to selling more devices is to drive selling prices down into loss-leader territory. Analysts began demanding consumers have access to $300 iPhones straight from Apple and not used many years ago, and have repeated the same refrain for iPads, HomePod, and of course, Apple TV.
Yet, Apple has since proven that it is far more valuable to sell fewer units in the premium tier in phones, tablets, PCs and elsewhere. That indicates that the idea of it selling a super-cheap Apple TV model is very unlikely to ever happen.
Ok.... MY "free advice": Bull! I have not seen any evidence that "Apple has since proven that it is far more valuable to sell fewer units in the premium tier " Further, why does it have to be either / or? Either very cheap or very expensive. That's kind of black and white argument is the sign of a weak argument.
You haven't seen any evidence that Apple is doing far better than everyone else in the phone or tablet or PC markets?
Samsung sells +300M phones a year compared to Apple's +200M, but Apple earns far more and its profits are far higher and more resilient. When iPhone sales dipped due to the economic downturn in China, Apple maintained things pretty well. Meanwhile Samsung's volumes stayed about the same but its product mix dropped precipitously, and the result was a devastating blow to revenues and profitability. So Samsung is being forced to back out of the high end, hurting things further.
The same thing is playing out in every category Apple does business in.
There is no "black and white argument" going on, it's just black and white facts. And it's obviously true regardless of whether you "see any evidence" or not.
LOL....
How about the next time you reply to something I said, why don't you make it a reply to something that I ACTUALLY said -- rather than something YOU said!
Admittedly, it's a good way to win an argument. But it's nonsense.
But you did say it. DED said we have plenty of evidence that it’s more valuable to sell fewer but more expensive products. Evidence: Apple’s historic success. You claimed you don’t see evidence of it. That’s exactly what you said.
You feeling okay, buddy? Staying cool in this heat?
So you rephrase what he said to prove he is correct? Got it.
Despite being a pioneer, AppleTV is now a massive underachiever. They’ve been pretty convincingly overtaken by Roku. If it weren’t for my photos and my music, I’d pretty much jettison both mine. The remote is an insufferable joke.
Faster processors and Arcade and Jennifer Anniston and such ain’t going to cut it.
Could you elaborate? How is the Apple TV an underachiever? What is superior about the Roku other than unit sales? My Apple TV HD does precisely what it was designed to do, that being streaming music and video, providing a plethora of apps from which to choose, games. Back in the day the Windows people used to mock Apple users over how much software was available for Windows compared to OS X, leaving out the fact that most of that Windows software was cheap crap. In my opinion you are dead wrong and the Roku is the streaming world’s Windows, market share and nothing superior about it.
If we’re talking about gaming here, and we are, then that old bit of nonsense about marketshare not being important dies yet again. [...]
the only way the billions they are spending on Tv programming will be successful, is if massive numbers of people watch it regularly. And most people watch Tv not on their phones, but on their TVs.
You’re comparing apples to oranges, I’m afraid. When it comes to device sales, market share is less important than profit generation. Apple devices, rarely majority market leaders, do lead at profit generation. Historically and spectacularly. When people say that Apple is more interested in ASP and profit for its hardware (macs, iphones, ipads, watches, etc) that is completely true.
You’re now talking about a gaming service and television service of original programming. That’s a different product, a different market, and different consumer model.
When it comes to the typical computing devices argued about on this site for over a decade, worshipping at the church of market share is less important than revenue and profit generation. That hasn’t changed.
You should be afraid, because you’re wrong. You don’t understand the gaming market, that’s clear. Marketshare is everything there. Developers write first for the biggest platform, then they MAY write for the next biggest. The XBox hasn’t gotten much love this generation because they’re so far behind Sony they stopped giving sales numbers for their consoles back in 2015! Most game development is on the PlayStation market, just as it was the opposite the generation before when ms was killing Sony, amd when the Wii was the biggest.Microsoft bought its own game companies years ago to feed them with major games. If it weren’t for that, the XBox would be a dead platform just as the Wii is.
apple should have bought a major studios years ago, and let them develop whatever they wanted to, just giving the funds. But they haven’t, because they’re not serious. So y develops its own games, as does Nintendo. If you’re going to try to be a gaming platform, you need to develop your own games. Apple finally understands that for TV.
Yeh, but they passed out welfare payments to their shareholders. Does that count? Now they're an also-ran in both the software and hardware ends of gaming. The arcade and upgraded Apple TV is an effort at catch-up but it still seems a half hearted effort. Perhaps they are in the process of developing a strong base, but we will see....
Apple has been getting free advice for years that the secret to selling more devices is to drive selling prices down into loss-leader territory. Analysts began demanding consumers have access to $300 iPhones straight from Apple and not used many years ago, and have repeated the same refrain for iPads, HomePod, and of course, Apple TV.
Yet, Apple has since proven that it is far more valuable to sell fewer units in the premium tier in phones, tablets, PCs and elsewhere. That indicates that the idea of it selling a super-cheap Apple TV model is very unlikely to ever happen.
Ok.... MY "free advice": Bull! I have not seen any evidence that "Apple has since proven that it is far more valuable to sell fewer units in the premium tier " Further, why does it have to be either / or? Either very cheap or very expensive. That's kind of black and white argument is the sign of a weak argument.
You haven't seen any evidence that Apple is doing far better than everyone else in the phone or tablet or PC markets?
Samsung sells +300M phones a year compared to Apple's +200M, but Apple earns far more and its profits are far higher and more resilient. When iPhone sales dipped due to the economic downturn in China, Apple maintained things pretty well. Meanwhile Samsung's volumes stayed about the same but its product mix dropped precipitously, and the result was a devastating blow to revenues and profitability. So Samsung is being forced to back out of the high end, hurting things further.
The same thing is playing out in every category Apple does business in.
There is no "black and white argument" going on, it's just black and white facts. And it's obviously true regardless of whether you "see any evidence" or not.
While admittedly, Apple transitioning to cheap products ($300 iPhones) would have multiple negative effects, that does not mean that they have to or even should rely only on premium products. Apple has both the ability to produce moderately priced products (the Xr is an excellent example) as well as the customer base to support it. Plus, selling last year's products at reduced prices leverages their fixed investments into the development and manufacture of those devices -- which is a win-win for everybody.
Again, the situation is that Apple was selling iPhones around $650 and pundits where demanding a $300 iPhone. This occured from 2010-2016.
Apple responded by making a more expensive Plus in 2014, higher capacity tiers at a premium, and iPhone X at $999. Apple raised its ASP to nearly $800. And that came despite also offering increasingly cheap iPhone options like the SE and older models offered at a discount.
You're holding up the $750 XR as an example of "mid priced" but it's higher that any new iPhone Apple was selling during the period of analysts demanding $300 phones. What do you mean by that? The XR is a massively premium priced high end phone, Apple just also offers even more expensive models.
Also, Apple has been "selling last year's products at reduced prices" for over a decade now, so what does that even mean?
What the article is saying is that Apple's forward strategy involves introducing new models at premium prices with features to match.
Samsung tried to do this and failed. Nows it's focused on new $300 Galaxy A models. Every other Android maker is similarly dumping out mostly $250 models, even if they hope or would like to sell some of their iPhone-priced devices, or even much more expensive Fold or diamond bedazzled versions.
That said, the current AppleTV seems locked into a no-man's land: it is moderately to high priced but offers little more functionality than far cheaper competitor's products. Apple and its customers could benefit by producing a "pro" model AppleTV -- while leaving lower priced model for those who do just fine watching the evening news of Sunday game on their AppleTV.
That's just not true. As the article points out, the cheap./free things people might want to do with a low priced dongle are now available: you can AirPlay and stream iTunes from many devices now. Apple doesn't need to introduce one and try to sell it at a loss just to have a low end product category. Same with HomePod. Apple doesn't have to make a $30 Siri Dot just because that's what Amazon and Google are doing. They're making zero money and just hoping to create an installed base among affluent users.
Apple already has that.
Apple doesn’t “already have that”. When everyone in my house and my parents house and the house of everyone I know has all Apple products except HomePod, and has dozens of Alexa devices or Sonos/Alexa devices between us...Apple done f’d up. They absolutely should have ensured their place there, and failed.
Their arrogance is why they didn’t. And also because Siri is a pathetically inferior product to Alexa, so they couldn’t compete even if they wanted to.
So true. Siri has been so bad for so long compared to Alexa that I shy away from Apple TV now when it should be the natural way to control my TV. What happened to "It just works"?
Despite being a pioneer, AppleTV is now a massive underachiever. They’ve been pretty convincingly overtaken by Roku. If it weren’t for my photos and my music, I’d pretty much jettison both mine. The remote is an insufferable joke.
Faster processors and Arcade and Jennifer Anniston and such ain’t going to cut it.
Could you elaborate? How is the Apple TV an underachiever? What is superior about the Roku other than unit sales? My Apple TV HD does precisely what it was designed to do, that being streaming music and video, providing a plethora of apps from which to choose, games. Back in the day the Windows people used to mock Apple users over how much software was available for Windows compared to OS X, leaving out the fact that most of that Windows software was cheap crap. In my opinion you are dead wrong and the Roku is the streaming world’s Windows, market share and nothing superior about it.
If we’re talking about gaming here, and we are, then that old bit of nonsense about marketshare not being important dies yet again. [...]
the only way the billions they are spending on Tv programming will be successful, is if massive numbers of people watch it regularly. And most people watch Tv not on their phones, but on their TVs.
You’re comparing apples to oranges, I’m afraid. When it comes to device sales, market share is less important than profit generation. Apple devices, rarely majority market leaders, do lead at profit generation. Historically and spectacularly. When people say that Apple is more interested in ASP and profit for its hardware (macs, iphones, ipads, watches, etc) that is completely true.
You’re now talking about a gaming service and television service of original programming. That’s a different product, a different market, and different consumer model.
When it comes to the typical computing devices argued about on this site for over a decade, worshipping at the church of market share is less important than revenue and profit generation. That hasn’t changed.
You should be afraid, because you’re wrong. You don’t understand the gaming market, that’s clear. Marketshare is everything there. Developers write first for the biggest platform, then they MAY write for the next biggest. The XBox hasn’t gotten much love this generation because they’re so far behind Sony they stopped giving sales numbers for their consoles back in 2015! Most game development is on the PlayStation market, just as it was the opposite the generation before when ms was killing Sony, amd when the Wii was the biggest.Microsoft bought its own game companies years ago to feed them with major games. If it weren’t for that, the XBox would be a dead platform just as the Wii is.
apple should have bought a major studios years ago, and let them develop whatever they wanted to, just giving the funds. But they haven’t, because they’re not serious. So y develops its own games, as does Nintendo. If you’re going to try to be a gaming platform, you need to develop your own games. Apple finally understands that for TV.
Yeh, but they passed out welfare payments to their shareholders. Does that count? Now they're an also-ran in both the software and hardware ends of gaming. The arcade and upgraded Apple TV is an effort at catch-up but it still seems a half hearted effort. Perhaps they are in the process of developing a strong base, but we will see....
Apple has more than enough money to buy Electronic Arts, which is the biggest, if they wanted to. Smaller studios would be much cheaper. I’m not in favor of stock buybacks, though I’m am in favor of dividends, which are much cheaper.
What would be great is if Apple surprised us and released a new Apple TV unit incorporating the newest upcoming A13X SoC instead.
That would likely cost too much. Saying that, there are a number of people, including me, who believe that Apple has very small margins on this already. Estimates (by Microprocessor Reports) as to the cost of a new generation of Apple SoC is. Between $38-$45, which is a lot for even a latest generation of SoC, higher than for the most expensive Android SoCs. That would be too big a chunk of the aTv price. The SoC pricing is again estimated to drop about 20-30% the second year of production, and further yet, by smaller percentages, after that.
after having said all that, yes, I would love to see it.
If they; - house it in a simple female USB-C stick branded ‘TV’ for use in a Mac Mini/Nano-style enclosure designed just for such sticks, - release standard and gaming versions, - strike a deal with Sony & LG etc. to provide slots in their TVs for these sticks, - release storage sticks to accelerate all iCloud devices on your network (including the ATV), - release graphics sticks to boost ATV & Mac graphics performance (eGPU), - release ThunderboltX, 1-Tbit optical connectors, - release i-series based Macs on a stick, - release display and notebook enclosures.
I feel like Apple has historically dropped the ball so hard on the Apple TV. They could have had an iPod level success on their hands if they would have just made it a bit more piracy friendly. It should have been able to stream any video from your Mac or PC from the start. Plex finally allows a pretty good solution, but it took years before there was a genuinely good solution. (AirVideo was another good one back in the day.)
For whatever reason they hobbled it so that it could only play mpeg related files, even though most torrent sites were using divx/avi files. They could have opened it up to allowing the box to use other codecs but they refused for 'reasons'. This meant that instead of the Apple TV being able to use pirated content and exploding in hardware sales, it only worked with the video content available for purchase from Apple.
Eventually it got better once Netflix became a thing, but early on the Apple TV was this device with so much unmet potential.
Then the version that actually allowed apps came out, and the only good thing to come out of that was a more chaotic Netflix app, a terrible Amazon Prime Video app, and the Plex App. (Plex is fantastic though. Even if I don't love the UI.) I really wish Apple would make a set of Human Interface Guidelines that app makes HAVE to stick with, because the Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon apps are all going to be different and gross to jump between. Apple should really just offer to spend a bit of money and design good apps for these companies because they suck at making them.
In the end now that I have Plex, I'm quite happy with my Apple TV 4K. But it took a long time to get to there, and it's mostly because of non-Apple software that I'm running on it. (Though I did play around with the 'Smart features' on my Vizio TV and I nearly threw up, so I'm happy that with HomeKit Siri can turn off the TV or change inputs and other than that I'll stick with using the Apple TV box.
Still, Apple needs to push hard to have games that work with legit game pads and that aren't just tap tap tap bullshit games.
I feel like Apple has historically dropped the ball so hard on the Apple TV. They could have had an iPod level success on their hands if they would have just made it a bit more piracy friendly. It should have been able to stream any video from your Mac or PC from the start. Plex finally allows a pretty good solution, but it took years before there was a genuinely good solution. (AirVideo was another good one back in the day.)
For whatever reason they hobbled it so that it could only play mpeg related files, even though most torrent sites were using divx/avi files. They could have opened it up to allowing the box to use other codecs but they refused for 'reasons'. This meant that instead of the Apple TV being able to use pirated content and exploding in hardware sales, it only worked with the video content available for purchase from Apple.
Eventually it got better once Netflix became a thing, but early on the Apple TV was this device with so much unmet potential.
Then the version that actually allowed apps came out, and the only good thing to come out of that was a more chaotic Netflix app, a terrible Amazon Prime Video app, and the Plex App. (Plex is fantastic though. Even if I don't love the UI.) I really wish Apple would make a set of Human Interface Guidelines that app makes HAVE to stick with, because the Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon apps are all going to be different and gross to jump between. Apple should really just offer to spend a bit of money and design good apps for these companies because they suck at making them.
In the end now that I have Plex, I'm quite happy with my Apple TV 4K. But it took a long time to get to there, and it's mostly because of non-Apple software that I'm running on it. (Though I did play around with the 'Smart features' on my Vizio TV and I nearly threw up, so I'm happy that with HomeKit Siri can turn off the TV or change inputs and other than that I'll stick with using the Apple TV box.
Still, Apple needs to push hard to have games that work with legit game pads and that aren't just tap tap tap bullshit games.
Not sure about advocating Piracy (especially as if downloads had been in standard ASP/AVC, rather than forks like Divx/Xvid, they would have been perfectly supported) but you’re right on lost opportunity/poor UI enforcement. Cook got it wrong, they should have forced content providers to stick to content as with ATV1-3.
Even now they should insist all TV Show/Movies Apps provide extensions for Channels for approval. tvOS is a mess.
I'd like to see Apple work with Unity or Unreal on supporting Swift. Maybe even develop their own advanced game engine. Certainly there's much that can be shared between ARKit and the future of gaming. Game engines these days are be utilized for far more than just games. This should be an area of interest for Apple, perhaps in c Maybe Reality Composer is laying the foundation for this. An Apple TV, perhaps in conjunction with Apple glasses, tuned to work with their own Swift based engine could be exciting. If this were a goal, Swift might need another year or two to develop.
I'm not sure even the A12X will be enough to smooth out the gaming. At 4K HDR the Apple TV box is throwing around over double the amount of data. The A12X GPU is impressive but falls short of the latest consoles which struggle with that. The latest Shield uses ML-enhanced upscaling, which is something Apple should copy for video and games. Let developers determine a best/max resolution (some games already work well enough at 4K HDR) and then the Apple TV scales the output. Not sure the A10X can do that, but I'm more confident the A12X could...
Comments
Now they're an also-ran in both the software and hardware ends of gaming. The arcade and upgraded Apple TV is an effort at catch-up but it still seems a half hearted effort. Perhaps they are in the process of developing a strong base, but we will see....
after having said all that, yes, I would love to see it.
- house it in a simple female USB-C stick branded ‘TV’ for use in a Mac Mini/Nano-style enclosure designed just for such sticks,
- release standard and gaming versions,
- strike a deal with Sony & LG etc. to provide slots in their TVs for these sticks,
- release storage sticks to accelerate all iCloud devices on your network (including the ATV),
- release graphics sticks to boost ATV & Mac graphics performance (eGPU),
- release ThunderboltX, 1-Tbit optical connectors,
- release i-series based Macs on a stick,
- release display and notebook enclosures.
Apple might just clean up.
Even now they should insist all TV Show/Movies Apps provide extensions for Channels for approval. tvOS is a mess.