Nah it means that we just returned to our trusted Peloton app and no more complaints!
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Apple Fitness+ Appears to Be Incompatible With AirPlay
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We'll never know. Apple will know. We'll see what they do.
Yeah, it's a great product if you have an Apple TV, 4th gen or later. And, many workouts (e.g. treadmill, bike) would be great on an iPad. I'm happy you're enjoying it. I'm embarrassed to say that I did go out and buy the 3 year old model of Apple TV. I've done many more workouts than you and they were all fantastic.
Regarding the "no idea" part of your post, I can't answer that; I can only speak for myself. There are two parts to my answer.
Part 1 - Let's see if I can explain my workouts and those aspects that I find impossible with only an iPhone.
I do exclusively the Yoga, Hiit, Core, and Strength workouts. Those workouts have you lying down, sitting down, and standing up at various points. All of those workouts (especially the Yoga which I do the most of) demonstrate various adjustments as slight as small twists to the hands as you place them on the mat. They also have two other trainers in the background (hence much smaller) demonstrating alternate approaches for those with more enthusiasm or challenges.
For me to see all of this easily, my phone needs to be no more than about one foot in front of my face. I don't see any way to make that happen. An iPad would not make it that much easier. The one foot limitation might extend to three. The yoga routines I've tried had me moving smoothly to different parts of my 6 foot long mat.
There's a good chance that I'm just part of a fringe group. I if weren't, then I would expect more complaints on the internet at large.
Part 2 - The whole issue goes away if you have an Apple TV where you want to work out. I believe almost all complaints come from people who don't have that (or are making the case for the benefit of others). You are not in this camp because you have an Apple TV (probably just where you want it).
I believe the outrage comes from the conclusion some people reach, that Apple expects (or is pushing) its customers to buy an Apple TV to make up for this lack. Or, that Apple shares the view expressed by some on this thread, that the people who matter (the true enthusiasts) should already have an Apple TV.
I have not yet reached that conclusion. I still feel that it's either a bug, a temporary compromise they made to get the product out the door, or that there is a significant technical or legal challenge to make AirPlay work. I find it impossible to believe that they didn't consider the AirPlay issue when designing the product offering.
And, without a doubt, Apple support is clueless and we'll never get a straight answer from them.
Ha, well now I don’t have to worry about this too much. Family bought me an Apple TV for xmas! There’s only one telly in the house so now the ipad can rightfully permanently sit in another room and I can use phone for workouts where the telly is. Perfect.
Now if that could happen with just already enabled Airplay on smart TVs....even better!
I am still surprised that so many people are happy to excuse Apple
on this.
Have to say though, fringe benefit of the Arcade on the Apple TV along with instant iCloud photos does take the sting out of it at least a little bit.
There could be some technical barrier but mostly how Apple philosophy wants their Apple Fitness + experience to be.
First, Apple wants you to use an Apple Watch as essential workout device for their service. With that said, it's okay for you to work out without the watch occasionally. However, they don't want you to start their service without their watch first. They also don't want you keep looking at your watch to check your metrics which is why they put everything on the screen. So #1 watch is a must. Sometimes, no watch is okay. But with watch or not, they want you to focus on your workout and the screen not your watch. Idk why. Maybe they want to create whatever sick experience they want to you feel when using their service. I know it's a bit arrogant but hey it's Apple. If you just want to watch the video to workout without any metric measuring, YouTube has a lot of those.
Airplay is not much of an issue. It's the real-time metric overlay on top of the video.
Some might argue why not use iPhone or iPad to process/render those information along with the video feed and then airplay/mirror to the TV?
The thing is that's not how Apple wants the experience to be like. They want it to be only between the watch and the screen (phone/tablet/tv). They don't want to go from the watch to the phone/tablet to render those live metrics into the workout video (Apple Watch only can't do that) then feed them straight back to the TV. Also, they wouldn't want to upload those metrics to the cloud, render, and feed back to the screen like some sort of cloud gaming thingy because it's dealing users health metric which is a privacy concern..... So everything has to be processed down here locally on your devices, and preferably between only 2 devices that are your watch and the device you're viewing the workout.
So what's up with the third-party Airplay TVs like Samsung, LG, etc??? What's the difference between an Airplay-enabled TV vs an Apple TV?
Not much.
It's just about Apple not trusting others and their third-party hardware to be handling more than just passing video and audio feed as originally intended. That real-time overlay is not with the video....It's on top rendered by Apple OS (iOS in case of iPhone, iPadOS in case of iPad, and TVOS with an Apple TV) ...
With Apple, they know their software, hardware and they have control over those. They have no control over Samsung hardware or software. They can't just push a button and every Samsung/LG/Sony/Vizo/Roku TV out there would update to the new software that instantly. I believe Airplay on those TVs is system-level integration which requires OS update.. not just like an App update from the TV app store. And now, you're dealing with working with all of those manufactures, on all different OSes, and different TV specs/models, then asking all of them to update their OS with your latest tech just to support your fitness service? Not that easy. And even if they could do so on the software part, they can't be sure if that works well on those TVs and matches Apple standards since they have different specs. Even Apple TV needs to receive a software update before Apple Fitness + works. You can't use an Apple TV with a version from last month, airplay the workout and expect it to work..... As you can see, even with Apple, they can't just do that without updating their devices first.
I'm not saying they would never consider adding support for third-party TVs in the future....It might take time, perhaps just as much time it took for them to put Airplay on those TVs in the first place. So Airplay is not as simple as it seems.... the tech or restriction behind it is a lot more complicated than its name sake.
First, Apple wants you to use an Apple Watch as essential workout device for their service. With that said, it's okay for you to work out without the watch occasionally. However, they don't want you to start their service without their watch first. They also don't want you keep looking at your watch to check your metrics which is why they put everything on the screen. So #1 watch is a must. Sometimes, no watch is okay. But with watch or not, they want you to focus on your workout and the screen not your watch. Idk why. Maybe they want to create whatever sick experience they want to you feel when using their service. I know it's a bit arrogant but hey it's Apple. If you just want to watch the video to workout without any metric measuring, YouTube has a lot of those.
Airplay is not much of an issue. It's the real-time metric overlay on top of the video.
Some might argue why not use iPhone or iPad to process/render those information along with the video feed and then airplay/mirror to the TV?
The thing is that's not how Apple wants the experience to be like. They want it to be only between the watch and the screen (phone/tablet/tv). They don't want to go from the watch to the phone/tablet to render those live metrics into the workout video (Apple Watch only can't do that) then feed them straight back to the TV. Also, they wouldn't want to upload those metrics to the cloud, render, and feed back to the screen like some sort of cloud gaming thingy because it's dealing users health metric which is a privacy concern..... So everything has to be processed down here locally on your devices, and preferably between only 2 devices that are your watch and the device you're viewing the workout.
So what's up with the third-party Airplay TVs like Samsung, LG, etc??? What's the difference between an Airplay-enabled TV vs an Apple TV?
Not much.
It's just about Apple not trusting others and their third-party hardware to be handling more than just passing video and audio feed as originally intended. That real-time overlay is not with the video....It's on top rendered by Apple OS (iOS in case of iPhone, iPadOS in case of iPad, and TVOS with an Apple TV) ...
With Apple, they know their software, hardware and they have control over those. They have no control over Samsung hardware or software. They can't just push a button and every Samsung/LG/Sony/Vizo/Roku TV out there would update to the new software that instantly. I believe Airplay on those TVs is system-level integration which requires OS update.. not just like an App update from the TV app store. And now, you're dealing with working with all of those manufactures, on all different OSes, and different TV specs/models, then asking all of them to update their OS with your latest tech just to support your fitness service? Not that easy. And even if they could do so on the software part, they can't be sure if that works well on those TVs and matches Apple standards since they have different specs. Even Apple TV needs to receive a software update before Apple Fitness + works. You can't use an Apple TV with a version from last month, airplay the workout and expect it to work..... As you can see, even with Apple, they can't just do that without updating their devices first.
I'm not saying they would never consider adding support for third-party TVs in the future....It might take time, perhaps just as much time it took for them to put Airplay on those TVs in the first place. So Airplay is not as simple as it seems.... the tech or restriction behind it is a lot more complicated than its name sake.
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It seems to me that apple has the technical skill to have all the heavy lifting done on the device doing the casting.
Thanks for this thoughtful post. There's a lot to unpack, but I just want to ask about a piece of it. You do focus on the real-time overlay as being a factor. You say...
and...
Are you saying that the real-time overlay is problematic for AirPlay to display, or considered somehow beyond what AirPlay is intended to support?
An iPad with USB-C can display to a TV with an HDMI cable and it shows the overlay just fine. I would have thought the HDMI was just passing video and audio and not doing something special with the overlay. If that's the case, then this is exactly what AirPlay is intended to support.
I agree. At least let the user mirror Apple fitness + to a tv. The peloton app lets you do it
This
Let’s not make this too complicated people. Apple sells hardware, first and foremost. You really can’t blame them if they roll this out in such a way as to promote the sale of more hardware. Once they see saturation there - poof - on will go the AirPlay capability to get the marginal sales of the service.
This
Let’s not make this too complicated people. Apple sells hardware, first and foremost. You really can’t blame them if they roll this out in such a way as to promote the sale of more hardware. Once they see saturation there - poof - on will go the AirPlay capability to get the marginal sales of the service.
It is actually complicated. As a shareholder, I would be very angry if Apple viewed the situation so simplistically.
The primary goal might be long-term profit, but so many things feed into that. In this case, there's a delicate balance between services revenue, Apple TV revenue, customer loyalty, and brand image. Of those four, I suspect the Apple TV revenue is the least important by far.
P.S. I'm happy to blame a company even if I understand its motives.
Why would this be self explanatory? Your snark lacks common sense. Casting from a compatible device is loke plugging your macbook into an external monitor.
even the apple tv app on my visio should quite easily be able to pull off what a physical apple tv box does. The atv is making a connection to the apple watch. Hello wifi netowrks that power connectivity to speakers, security systems, smart locks, etc.
Its called half baked, which i think is rather self explanatory
As a shareholder who should want subscription revenue driving growth to your investment, i don’t understand your point of view.
ATV hardware drives far less than a 1 year subscription. No one is doing a work out on a laptop screen or an iPhone screen. Apple has invested heavily in getting the Apple TV experience on smart TVs without a physical box and that’s not an accident. It’s to drive subscription revenue and bring in revenue from non-Apple device owners. In this case the service requires Apple devices but this is what you call a poor implementation. This does not help your stock. These half assed move the Apple make other things that usually causes a stock to dip a little.
The technology to pull this off has been around for 15 years and has been well used by other companies there is no excuse for this. This actually shows apples weakness by trying to push everything to devices versus rendering things in the cloud
I was betting they sunset atv hardware until this happened. It’s the worst selling streamer with the lowest market share and is unforgivably overpriced. With a smart TVs finally offering an experience that you wanna use it makes streaming boxes questionable. I have two TVs with two different streamers attached but they’re old TVs. If I cared about Apple TV content now the Apple TV app is on my main TV natively.
Makes no difference. Your iphone and ipad do and youre just using a tv as a display.
the lack of airplay support does explain why the fitness app isnt on macs. Not even m1 macs.
The op also said “siri voice smarts”. Roflmao. Siri, play game of thrones. “Playing the gong show”.... I got to address this...
- Elegant and intuitive UI - the Apple TV app on my Samsung TV mirrors this interface.
- Login across services? Like how I'm currently logged into Netflix, Prime, Disney and Apple on my TV without ever having to think about it ever?
- Siri voice smarts.... ok... touche on this...but like...seriously how useful is it?
- Intelligent content recommendations. We all get this.
- The best AppleTV+ experience... ok thats' a stretch. What shows do you get to watch that I don't...also in 4K HDR..
- Seamless integration with Apple devices. I get this too on my Samsung TV... resume play, Airplay 2....
- Phenomenal picture quality??? seriously?? better than 4K HDR??
- Fitness+...ah finally... that's what we don't get... I better dig up my AppleTV for this then..
I had the 4th gen and didn't upgrade to the AppleTV 4K when I realize I can get a Samsung TV with an Apple TV built in that has all of the features. I don't miss needing yet another box at all...
Apple TV app - Devices
The Apple TV app and Apple TV+ are available on a wide variety of streaming platforms, popular smart TVs and AirPlay-enabled TVs.www.apple.com
Only an idiot would buy an atv box today. The only thing it ever had going for it was airplay thats now built in to most newer tvs that have superior smart platforms. Even if apple updates the atv, $50 for better devices gets you dolby atmos, hdr, 4k, device control of your tv and sound bars, and better ui. Unless you have a dinosaur of a tv set, most streaming boxes are a stupid purchase. The processor in memory and my current Visio is 10 times better than what’s in the current Apple TV. My Apple TV is sitting in a box because I despise it. The fact that the Apple TV consistently want you to re-log into it every time you do some thing makes you want to hurl a little cross the room and nevermind the remote and the **** show that is siri. The new $50 Chromecast with Google TV would be a much better buy for anyone that does need a streaming box. And we know Apple is not gonna release a bargain basement price on the next Apple TV if they come out with one they’ll probably jack the price up. $149 today is pure insanity And it’s fairly obvious why it’s the worst selling streaming box ever put on the market
Yes. It is his duty as a ceo. This is how you do the opposite of that because it will lead to everyone cancelling their free trials and no paid subscription revenue. Subscription revenue is needed to fund the service. An Apple TV purchase is a one time revenue generator and far less margin dollars than an annual subscription that keeps bringing in money. These comments are driving me nuts. People that obviously don’t understand how business works keeps making them. Would you rather make 50 or $60 selling an Apple TV device or would you rather make $100-$120 a year selling your subscription over the course of multiple years? In business you want the larger number. The Apple TV has less than 2% market share. That is not going to change and requiring the use of it at only 2% market share is not going to drive subscription revenue.
If you don't understand my point of view, then I stated it very poorly. Sorry about that. From what I can tell, we are in complete agreement.
My post was a response to another post, which I understood to be asserting that Apple's desire to sell Apple TVs was what motivated them to disable AirPlay. I was trying to disagree with that by saying that the Apple TV revenue was the least important compared to other considerations, services revenue chief among them. So, I think we are in complete agreement. Do you agree?
As a shareholder, if Apple had really disabled AirPlay in order to sell Apple TVs, then I would be mad because it would have been very short sighted.
Adding a bit to my last post - if Apple disabled AirPlay because they felt the user experience would suffer using Fitness+ that way, then I'd be less critical but still wish they had made a different decision. This is the brand image part of the equation. I believe this was one point of s3enthlight's excellent post above.
You know, you can disagree with people here without being a jack*ss about it. I suspect I have been in “business” longer than you’ve been alive. But keep hurling your insults. You have no idea what Apple’s go to market strategy is for this service.
I wish Apple would officially address this already. I am holding off on signing up due to this missing "feature", if that's what it is. If they are not going to add it, I can move on.
I still am optimistic that this is a bug and not a feature though.
I still am optimistic that this is a bug and not a feature though.