illrigger

verne arase said:

22july2013 said:

The spec bump comes with a spec thump... no Thread.

The higher end model is $149 and includes an A15, thread, ethernet, and 128 GB storage.

What's not to like?

Well, the fact that they neutered the $129 price point model so badly that you can get almost the same functionality from a $50 Roku or FireTV stick, but that's just good news for Apple since their formerly DOA high-end Apple TV 4K is now the only one worth buying. And for that price, I admit it's a good product. It is finally competing with the nVidia Shield TV directly, and given the Shield is 7+ years old at this point, it's good that someone has finally caught up.

caz-adam said:

illrigger said:

Hear that? It's the stampede of people rushing to get the old model before they go out of stock.

Why?

Because the loss of Matter support and the Ethernet port is a pretty big deal for a streaming box that is also your home automation hub, especially considering the extra features added this year aren't super useful for one. Extra storage, CPU and GPU power for the miniscule number of games is not a big selling point, so it's really just HDR10+ support, which only Samsung and TCL TVs can even use.

In effect, the old entry level model is the way to go for most people, and if you want the new one you should really only be considering the $150 one. The new entry level one is basically an expensive Roku.

You can really tell how hard it is getting for Apple to create product strata in the iPad lineup at this point.

We can't make this TOO good, or people won't feel like they want to move up to the next one. We can use the old Facetime camera and limit it to the Apple Pencil, not the 2! But we can't put in an A15, that would be too fast and efficient, and close the gap to the M1 too much. Perfect!

Hear that? It's the stampede of people rushing to get the old model before they go out of stock.

rezwits said:

How in the F, does Microsoft pull this off?  Doesn't Xbox have a similar "streaming" service?  Thru the browser or something?

For MS, it's just a value added subscription for the things they already do. They own the studios that make the games on it, make the operating systems and game consoles it runs on (outside of streaming), and run the server farms that serve it. They just have to attach three people who wouldn't have bought a game for every one who would and they make money on the service. Plus, they don't give away the DLC so they make money on attaching that to the subscribers.

The difference between GamePass and Stadia is that the games come with the subscription on GamePass - over a hundred of them at present and more added and rotated in and out all the time, including every title that their AAA game studios release. Google expected you to pay a monthly fee AND buy the games (other than a few bones they threw at you). GamePass is a good deal - you break even if you were going to buy two games a year that come with it. Stadia was a virtual game console that you had to pay for every month and got nothing else from.

 In between the two is GeForce Now, which is literally a gaming PC you pay a monthly fee to stream, but you play the games you have already bought from Steam, Origin, and Ubisoft so if they ever shut down you at least still have your games to play on a PC elsewhere.