decoderring

Tangential to the discussion but pertaining to piling things into the Apple TV+ app:

Watching movie trailers on Apple TV has always been such a pleasant experience. Tons of trailers for lots of different types of movies, all available to watch at your leisure on a big screen at home (or elsewhere).

Last week, I opened up the Trailers app on Apple TV, and I learned that the trailers had been integrated into the Apple TV+ app. I click the link, and I'm brought to a very discouraging place: There are a total of five trailers to watch but a ton off movies to pre-order. I supposed one can watch previews for movies for pre-order, but I hate this approach:

• As someone more interested in small-production films than in the big blockbusters, my inclination is to think that movies for pre-order aren't going to include movies I'd have seen trailers for otherwise;
• The intent with the change seems to be that you can watch trailers if you like, but the emphasis is on purchasing the movies.

It just completely turned me off and had me being very wistful for an Apple that just doesn't exist anymore.

I don’t think cooking is one of the things I’d do while wearing a computer on my head.

To each his own, I guess.

That color is bananas!

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.

So Mike writes a thoughtful article on an important issue and goes to great lengths to present a balanced view of the issue.