g-news

No amount of fanboy defending is going to negate the fact that AppleTV is barely half a product outside of the US:
Apple TV is a neglected disaster of a stepchild. It is most definitely the least refined product in Apple's lineup, and that is saying quite a lot these days. Outside of the US, AppleTV 4 is so broken, it doesn't even deserve the Apple logo. Just a few examples:
-TV app is unavailable
-most cable network apps not available, no streaming services outside of US/English countries
- no single sign on
-no Siri support and dictation is very, very poor even compared to the iPhone.
-at launch, apps needed to work with the rudimentary remote only, killing any gaming momentum
-no 4k was a missed opportunity
-tvOS is tied to the nationality of the AppleID you are using with it, this is an unnecessarily restricting move (and kills workarounds to be able to use Siri as an English Speaker with a non-English AppleID)
-keyboard support was added later, remote app support lagged behind, too
-no more audio out, rendering ist musical appeal pretty much zero

All in all, inside the US AppleTV 4 is basically a beta product and an alpha product outside the US, at best.
I got mine in the hope of having added Siri support a few months later, by now I'm certain it will never be added. As such, it's the most disappointing Apple product I've ever owned, it never got out of that "alpha" state.

AppleTV 4, when it was announced, came with the promise of introducing a real human-computer-voice interface for the TV. That was a great promise to simplify the experience of interacting with a TV, which until today, remains largely unintuitive. Unfortunately, Apple completely failed to live up to that promise, as even where Siri is supported, its functionality is minimal.

TL DR, who are you trying to convince here? Basically the article states that the last time Apple pushed out some significant innovation was in 2014. It's nearly mid 2017 now and still no sign of updated desktops. Apple is turning into a services company, but their margins strategy is still one for a hardware company with 100% control over the manufacturing. They're having a really hard time signing contracts with content producers or even just working outside the US. All fanboyism aside, this is going to bite them in the butt rather sooner than later.

sog35 said:

g-news said:

AppleTV 4, when it was announced, came with the promise of introducing a real human-computer-voice interface for the TV. That was a great promise to simplify the experience of interacting with a TV, which until today, remains largely unintuitive. Unfortunately, Apple completely failed to live up to that promise, as even where Siri is supported, its functionality is minimal.

Apple never promised anything like that.

That's just your fantasy pipe dream.

Promise as in "a promising product" not a vow to deliver. Your nitpicking just proves it's a valid point.

It did turn out to be a pipedream though, because in fact, Apple never even lived up to the promise (actual promise here) to follow with more Siri support in the future. They merely managed to roll it out in a hand full of English speaking countries and never even tried to match iPhone level functionality, let alone expand upon that. How can Apple justify I can tell Siri on my iPhone to play any song in my library, in English OR German, yet I can't tell my ATV to do that in EITHER language. In fact because my AppleID is Swiss, I can't use Siri at all? How does that make ANY sense?

Topic of her speech: How to alienate your most loyal customer base in three easy steps.

Throttling or not, it‘s pretty obvious without having looked at the numbers even that the iMac Pro is another design compromise in a thin enclosure. Running the chip at 90-94°C over extended periods of time is going to cause problems, I can guarantee you that. In a few months to a year, the first heavy users will be sending their units in for repair on either shot cpus or gpus.

Thermals have been an Apple pitfall for years, they just don‘t want to get it. Meanwhile my cheap-ass HP Omen maxes out around 60°C and still is quiet enough to not be annoying. Of course it looks like a black shoebox, but hey, physics are physics.

So to remove a socket, they had to add a socket. Makes perfect sense.

Just remove the battery. Problem solved.

I used to be super passionate about Macs. Upgraded them beyond reason, even did some truly experimental stuff in hardware and enjoyed it a lot. Those were the days between 1998 and maybe 2007 for me. Then I switched to MBPs mostly, as they offered a similar deal in a smaller package.
When the nMP came, I was ready to go back to a desktop machine. But the nMP wasn‘t it. Bought another MBP in 2014 that was on sale and waited for the nnMP.
In 2016 I finally folded and bought a PC.
Apple hasn‘t made a single hardware dollar off me since. And frankly, the probably got me right where they want me: using some of their services and being stuck in their iOS universe.

It‘s a painful realization, but the „pros“ as Apple calls them, simply have too little impact on their immediate bottomline to be considered relevant by the current management. They‘re turning Apple into a services company, no rumors of ditching Intel or some future hardware that may or may not please the pros is going to change that.

Apple doesn't get games. Steve didn't, despite announcing that he was going to make Macs the best gaming machines in the world back in 1999, and Tim doesn't get it either. Years behind in OpenGL development for OS X, restricting games on Apple TV to ones that can be played with the supplied remote only, failing to snatch up Bungie when they could, losing support from Blizzard for Overwatch. Going mobile on desktop and phasing out dGPUs isn't helping.

I've lost hope by now. It's really sad to say that after 20 years of loyal Mac gaming, but my next gaming PC is arguably going to be just that. A PC.