Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
10 New Features and Changes Introduced With 2022 Apple TV
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
As I already have four of the last gen 4K apple TV, there is nothing in the update that makes any sense to update to.
Apple is never going to support VPN on their Apple TV devices. Not to mention with their VPN tunnel leaks it would be a horrible idea anyhow.
I wonder if I can clean the $19 USB-C cable with the Apple Microfiber?
I don't understand how an apple tv is better than my $40 firestick 4k
I can give you plenty of use cases.
For one, I don't want a "smart" TV. I want a DUMB one - one that just WORKs and doesn't depend on 3rd party software. I'll hook up my own devices, thank you very much. I don't want to suddenly discover that my TV is too old for the next version of software and have to replace the whole thing. If one part of the TV goes south, the whole thing is gone.
With the Apple TV, I get guaranteed, timely updates for all the apps. I'll know when the device will be obsoleted IN ADVANCE and don't have to buy a new TV. When the streaming wars started, there were various services who weren't on some of the most popular boxes. HBOmax, Peacock, Amazon Prime and others could be missing from a Roku or Fire box. You know what they weren't missing from? Apple. All those other services (with one notable exception) "play nice" with ATV's "Up Next" feature. The notable exception is Netflix. So my wife, for the most part, doesn't have to remember what streaming service a particular program is on. She can just pick her show and the ATV will fire up the appropriate one.
It doesn't hurt that I'm in the Apple ecosystem and can use my phone for entering passwords or search targets and that the ATV is *very* friendly with my HomePod minis.
My wife and I, at the end of the day, will sit back on the couch and catch a couple of shows on the big screen. A phone or laptop simply Does Not Work for that use case. All my TV has to do is recognize an on/off signal from the HDMI cable and show the screen - that's IT. I've had my current 'big screen' for over 10 years. The main TV I had before that, I had for over 15. If I have to spend $150 a few years from now for some feature I want that requires a new set top box, I'll buy one. Someday, I may decide I want a 4K (or more) screen - and I'll make that purchase based on what the screen looks like, how it performs and the price. I don't want some other single point of failure forcing me into replacing parts I don't want to replace just because the individual part can't be replaced. (I have a network-based HDTV tuner that will have to eventually be replaced when the new HDTV standard hits our area - but my DVR software [Plex] already supports it and it'll simply be swapping out one box for another - not buying a whole new screen just to get a new generation tuner).
I can go on, but I think you get the idea.
> Just about the only reason I've ever seen anybody use an Apple TV is for beaming photos onto the big TV screen. But that's not exactly an everyday thing.
It's an everyday thing for my family - we have holiday (and cat) photos going as a screensaver. Kids and relatives love seeing themselves pop up on the TV.
It's an everyday thing for my family - we have holiday (and cat) photos going as a screensaver. Kids and relatives love seeing themselves pop up on the TV.
I am also interested to know if the new Apple TV supports Hi-Res audio above 48KHz.
Anyone that has it, please check.
Not that the cable is or ever was useable anyway…. There’s no in-box charger.
Well, you are getting a $50 or $30 discount either way…
But, that said, we just recently figured out that no one can figure out how to charge anything without the in-box charger. I have to figure, the chance that consumers nonchalantly figured out how to charge the Apple TV remote without an in-box charger has to be zero, as a result. So why are we including a charge cable for a device that has never shipped with a charger in the first place?
Or are you going to argue that it was trivially easy to put that included cable to use without an in-box charger?
Last edited:
Well, that’s a bit of a misrepresentation. Up until only earlier this year, Apple forbade tvOS developers from making their apps use more than a measly 200MB of data. All other data besides the 200 mb install limit and to be streamed from iCloud and couldn’t be store locally (at least not permanently). So even “big” games could only store 200mb locally unfortunately.
So yes, if you had A LOT of games (as in 100s) then it would have made sense. But you would need 160 apps just to fill up the 32GB size. Have a few big games would not make any differences since they were limited to the same 200mb each.
Now, fortunately, Apple earlier this year has allowed tvOS developers to use up to 4GB per app. However virtually no major apps have yet been updated to reflect this.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Apple upped the app size limit on AppleTV to 4GB back in 2017
So no, get a bunch of big games and you can eat up 64GB pretty quickly. Certainly not 100s of apps. Check file size of a game like NBA2K23. It's not the only one.
Furthermore, while the local storage is capped at 4GB, apps can have up to 20GB on the server to stream down levels (which will need local storage space to hold those levels).
Now, much like the other iDevices, apps you don't use can be unloaded and then re-downloaded from iCloud when needed. But if you have the spare space, you don't need to use that as much... and the game is ready to play vs. waiting for it to download so you can play.
Lastly though, it's a whopping $20 to get double the storage, a very useful ethernet port and thread support. For an Apple crowd with a history of paying $100+ for similar storage upgrades on other Apple products, $20 should seem like a bargain. That's ONE Apple-branded handkerchief.
If $20 is really a pinch, wait just a little while and someone will probably put the $149 version on sale down at $129 or less. Might hit $99 with a little more patience.
So no, get a bunch of big games and you can eat up 64GB pretty quickly. Certainly not 100s of apps. Check file size of a game like NBA2K23. It's not the only one.
Furthermore, while the local storage is capped at 4GB, apps can have up to 20GB on the server to stream down levels (which will need local storage space to hold those levels).
Now, much like the other iDevices, apps you don't use can be unloaded and then re-downloaded from iCloud when needed. But if you have the spare space, you don't need to use that as much... and the game is ready to play vs. waiting for it to download so you can play.
Lastly though, it's a whopping $20 to get double the storage, a very useful ethernet port and thread support. For an Apple crowd with a history of paying $100+ for similar storage upgrades on other Apple products, $20 should seem like a bargain. That's ONE Apple-branded handkerchief.
If $20 is really a pinch, wait just a little while and someone will probably put the $149 version on sale down at $129 or less. Might hit $99 with a little more patience.
Last edited:
A lot depends on your personal situation. We don’t use the Apple TV app at all.
We use the Apple TV for Plex, Netflix, Amazon Video, and Disney+, weather and several games like Skyforce Reloaded and Asphalt 8. It’s loads of fun.
It does make sense to sell things separately to cut down waste - these remotes only need charging for an hour or two every 6 months so you really don’t need a new cable & charger if you’ve already got a portable USB C device. Plus, some people will need USB C-C, others C to A (a lot of TVs have USB A). Personally I’ve got lightning cables and USB A chargers up the wazoo - any more of those would be direct to landfill - and at least 2 options for charging something like this from USB C.
However, while cutting down on wasted iPhone power bricks might be significant, I don’t think a few Apple TV USB C cables will make a difference, and Apple lose the high ground for charging Monster prices for cables and adapters. I think the planet would survive a few bundled USB C charge cables & C to A adapters while Apple transitions from Lightning…
(Of course, any sufficiently old fogeys from the UK will remember the days when most mains appliances came with bare wires and didn’t include a mains plug so, kids these days etc.)
My impression is that HDR10+ is used as an alternative by some TV manufacturers who don't want to pay for the licenses for Dolby Vision.
So, since it's the matter of inclusion with the device that's your main concern, that means you'd be happy in they included the cable in the box and raised the price by $19, yes?
You can buy the cable separately for that price. If you want the cable "for free", then what you're really showing is entitlement - you feel entitled to get a cable in the box. Personally, I'm happy they're shipping with fewer random bits thrown in the box. I have plenty of cables around already - I expect many people are in the same boat - and the new cable would just go in a drawer somewhere.
The intended purpose is home use for streaming video - there's vanishingly little need for a VPN in that scenario.
The confusion ties in heavily to Apple's decision to call their device "Apple TV", their app "TV" (or "Apple TV"), and their streaming service "Apple TV+".
Their app can stream their streaming service, along with any movies or tv shows purchased from Apple (on iOS devices, the app can also download these for offline use, IIRC).
If you have the Apple TV app on a smart TV, it's basically that same app, for streaming things rented/subscribed/bought from Apple.
The Apple TV device, can run a large collection of tvOS apps - not just the Apple TV app - tons of streaming apps and games and such. Many people think the Apple TV app on a smart TV is like a virtual Apple TV device - it's not that at all.
I've got an LG C1. I don't use the TV's built-in apps at all. I use an Apple TV instead. It offers me a very straightforward and very responsive interface that has remained the same over the last 3 TVs, rather than having to adapt to the idiosyncrasies of each TV manufacturer's interface. And it has apps for pretty much every streaming service ever (it's very much in the services' best interests to keep their apps up to date on the Apple TV, because, just like with iPhones, they find the owners of Apple devices tend to be especially willing to spend money on software/services). So it's easy to run Netflix, Apple TV (the app), HBO, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Hulu, PBS, Peacock, etc., all on the same device (and all from the same overall UI regardless of what TV you're using). And if you should buy any apps (a game or something), they'll move over nicely to your next TV just by plugging the same Apple TV into that (and if you should upgrade to a newer Apple TV device, all the apps and settings and such migrate over to that too).
As well, Apple has a pretty straightforward funding model - you pay them a bunch of money upfront, and they sell you a very well made "premium" product. By comparison, a lot of TV manufacturers (LG not quite so much) compete heavily on price, and look for other ways to increase their income - one of those is ads in the interface (some more subtle, some more blatant), and another is collecting data on you to either share with (sell to) interested parties, or use to make you more lucrative to advertisers (either "we can show your commercial to people who like program X and movie Y", or "here's things we can tell you about the people living at this address"). By contrast, Apple makes privacy a major selling point to end users, and if they got caught doing that same kind of thing they'd take a major hit to their bottom line, so I'm persuaded that they'll continue this pattern of not trying to profit off my data.
FWIW, the only time I ever touch my LG remote is if I want to change something in the TV's settings, or on the rare occasions that I watch live over-the-air TV (lately that's basically just the Super Bowl and SNL). Other than that, I use the Apple TV remote for waking the home theater up, watching whatever, and putting it back to sleep. I also have a PS5, and a third party (PDP) PlayStation remote - I use that sometimes to control the volume when gaming, or to switch inputs on the odd occasions when the LG gets confused about which input I'm trying to watch (like if I bump the Apple TV's remote, waking up the Apple TV, and the LG switches to that input while I'm in the middle of a game). I find the LG remote to be adequate, but inferior to the Apple TV's remote - the LG is festooned with buttons I don't need that I have to reach over to get to the ones I want, while the Apple TV remote has just what I need, and I can navigate the buttons easily without looking. And the LG's gyroscopic "mouse like" control is cute, but is frankly a pain to use.
Everyone is right. I am wrong. Go Capitalism.
Last edited:
We are probably approaching a time when more people have usb-c cables in the house than not. Assuming we aren't here already.
And I believe as time goes on, we will see more chargers and cables (and perhaps even both) being omitted from Apple products.
Last edited:
Maybe (?! again - I have 2 USB C cables in my house, and you should see the amount of cables and **** I've collected over the past 40 years) - but even then, you've got issues:
It's 2024 and USB-C is even more of a mess
USB-C phones and devices are billed as the one-stop solution for all our future cable needs, but feature compatibility is a major problem.
www.androidauthority.com
What Europe’s push to simplify chargers means for you
Europe’s push to end cord confusion could extend well beyond its borders.
www.washingtonpost.com
USB-C was supposed to be a universal connector — but it still has a lot of problems
USB-C has caused a lot of confusion. Why do some USB-C cables transfer data slowly? Or how do you know if a USB-C cable will harm your device?
www.businessinsider.com