decoderring

Evil is as evil does.

winstoner71 said:

All in. I thought the movie was so underrated. 

Same here. Visually, it was incredible; I watched it twice.

I've had a free one-year subscription to Apple TV+ since last December, but I've only just started using it. (I'm not a huge television watcher, so the bit of time I devote to it has gone mostly to Netflix since my partner likes it so much.) I'd watched the first episode of For All Mankind and never got back to it, but Foundation really piqued my interest when it was announced. So I started watching the Earth at Night in Color series and was blown away by the sheer beauty of it and the engaging storytelling. I can't wait to watch the other nature series to see how they are. I also loved the docuseries 1971: The Year that Music Changed Everything and documentary The Velvet Underground.

I've found the first few episodes of Foundation to be a little underwhelming overall, but the last couple of episodes have been much better. And I really enjoyed the first episode of Invasion and am looking forwarding to continuing.

I'm going to renew my subscription in December. It also coincides with my retrying Apple Music and really enjoying it with the increased sound quality now that it offers lossless. (That's not to derail the discussion; I clearly hear a difference on my somewhat higher-end equipment, enough so that it makes Apple Music a real winner for me.) So the Apple One package makes sense, especially since I already pay a bit each month for iCloud storage.

Spitbath said:

I used to like to binge (and I still do occasionally). But more recently, and especially during the pandemic, I've found that I really enjoy looking forward to new episodes each week. I was also talking to a friend recently about how prior to the binge era style of consuming media, a show had the ability to become a milestone for that particular time in your life. If you spend a day or two binging a season (or multiple seasons) of a show, those stories and characters become easily forgettable. Whereas spending many weeks, months, and after multiple seasons, many years with a show, those stories and characters become part of your life... almost like family. And when shows like that end there is a sadness because it represents the end of an era for you and those characters. You don't get that very much anymore with modern streaming shows. 

That's a really keen observation. Thank you for the fresh (for me) perspective.

I bought a pair of HP minis and have been relatively underwhelmed by the whole experience. The sound is okay when the speakers are used as a pair but is really nothing to write home about. The sound fills the relatively large space well, but the sound quality is at best mid-fi. (I take it for what it is given the price.)

But I really find AirPlay a three-quarters-baked technology. I haven't found a way to set my iPhone to play music to the HP minis via AirPlay as a default; I'm not saying that it's something that covers every use case scenario, but it seems to me to be something fundamental that people should be able to do. I've not once been able to successfully select AirPlay via the Control Centre, either while music is playing or before it begins. I have to go into the Music app and choose AirPlay, which is clumsy to say the least. Switching between AirPlay targets (HP minis and a last-generation AppleTV 4K) is a crapshoot and generally doesn't work.

And I feel the same about Siri as many others -- it seems so limited and inaccurate that it's just not worth adopting as a default interface.

The whole system would be fantastic if it worked reliably. It feels like magic when it does, but I have no confidence that it will always work if I go beyond going into the Music app and connecting to an AirPlay source.