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If they kill all of the functionality, then that's greed.

I have ATV3 and can access my HK Elgato power plug using Elgato app. I also have Ecobee thermostat and this better continue to work remotely.

I have toyed a little with ATV4 and I am not set on the interface (navigation).
 
Glad to see this addressed in an article. Using my ATV3, I can't access HomeKit outside of my network.

I have no reason to purchase an ATV4, especially because I use optical audio out and ATV4 is missing that port.
 
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You assume everyone buying Apple products knows the history and naming conventions. That's not even close to being true. It could be easily assumed the 3 and 4 are differing levels of the same product. Nothing silly about it.

What's silly is thinking a product, purchased as late as last week, will lose some of it's functionality with a software update. To be clear, it's Apple's prerogative to whatever they want with their software. However it is pretty crappy to retroactively notify customers of changes that remove functionality. A simple heads up would have been a better thing to do.

That's interesting since was clearly described as the 3rd generatjon
You assume everyone buying Apple products knows the history and naming conventions. That's not even close to being true. It could be easily assumed the 3 and 4 are differing levels of the same product. Nothing silly about it.

What's silly is thinking a product, purchased as late as last week, will lose some of it's functionality with a software update. To be clear, it's Apple's prerogative to whatever they want with their software. However it is pretty crappy to retroactively notify customers of changes that remove functionality. A simple heads up would have been a better thing to do.
 
This is kinda dirty. I understand phasing out technology, but it would have been nice for them to let people know ahead of time so they could make a decision before upgrading. This shows that Apple isn't serious about home automation. Why you might ask? Many people use these systems in remote homes for monitoring while they're away. They upgrade to iOS 10 and boom, suddenly nothing works and they don't know why. If you're a company serious about home automation, you don't do that to your customers. Especially since the ATV needs to be in range to work. I personally know people who have purchased an ATV 3 this very summer only to extend the range of their HomeKit to locks and things that are at the fringe of their house. I wish Apple would just sell HomeKit range extenders with powerful bluetooth antennas that are small and which you can plug right into an outlet. Bonus points if they have mics for "Hey, Siri" functionality anywhere in your house.
 
No. that assumption would be wrong. One is named Apple TV 3. And the other is named Apple TV 4. Since everything Apple sells, except Macs, has a numerical indication of generation. It would be silly to think the ATV3 is a new product
Like Apple Watch Series 1?
 
This situation irritates me (perhaps more than it logically should) ... We own two of the 3rd. gen. Apple TV's in our household, and we considered upgrading to the 4th. gen. -- except realized it just wasn't financially justified given what we do with them. (We already own an Amazon Fire and have a Prime subscription, so a lot of our movie or TV watching happens on that unit. We also own a Roku 3 that sits on the big TV in the living room. It, honestly, doesn't get a *lot* of use, but it runs Plex so it can talk to a dedicated Plex media server I run - and that justifies its existence by itself.) The AppleTVs are both on small LCD sets in bedrooms and mainly get used if someone wants to watch NetFlix on one of them, plus the ability to AirPlay to them on rare occasions that's desired.

I had hoped that support for HomeKit would be extended to the 3rd. gen AppleTV with the new "Home" app, since Apple didn't say much of anything indicating otherwise. As they cost a lot less than 4th. gen models, it would actually make a lot of sense if Apple kept them available *mainly* for HomeKit hub purposes. I get that right now, it's only the Home APP that's not being supported -- but that's still a piece of the whole HomeKit eco-system, the way Apple envisions it all coming together.

A lot of people got screwed over already, when Apple announced that a lot of home automation gear people ASSUMED would be compatible was in fact, NOT, thanks to not having a hardware chip with enough bits of security encryption to meet Apple's requirements for the standard. I knew people who spent hundreds on EcoBee 3 thermostats, for example, only to find out they had to get rid of them and buy them over again to get the HomeKit approved editions of the same things.

(I *think* my Chamberlain MyQ garage door opener has one of the Broadcom chips in it that's actually HomeKit compliant -- yet so far, no word of it getting HomeKit support either.)

This entire HomeKit roll-out has been a mess, IMO. Apple released something half-baked and then slowly improved it without much explanation of what was going on. You had to be really into home automation and following multiple blogs and support sites to figure out the status of all of it.


read people, its just not home app compatible, it never was !
 
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Fortunately i've upgraded to all aTV4's and have several home kit items in place.

Has anyone running HK and the Home app noticed that "Automations" aren't really automatic? When you set up an automation to trigger on location or time, it results in you getting a notification asking to run or not run that automation.

That's not really automatic.
 
I can use the home app remotely with my Apple TV 3. I had some glitches last week but it has work all iOS10 beta. If it suddenly doesn't work anymore, it's Apple ******** on their customers. I'll never upgrade my ATV if so. Ditching HomeKit altogether if so.
 
Why would I want to buy APTV 4 when there is nothing special like 4K and DTS-HD Tim Cook all he wants is everything to be big with nothing in them. At this rate Xbox is looking even better for gaming, streaming movies and music.
 
Just spoke with Apple Support and they seemed to be just as confused about ATV 3rd gen / ATV 4th gen compatibility with Home Kit. They've promised to look deeper into the issue and even escalate it to engineering to get me an answer in 3-4 business days.... but the rep on the phone seemed to read the support article as to say that only the 4th gen ATV will work for remote home kit commands.
 
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"Apple removes (fill in the blank) support from latest release of (fill in the blank)". Jon Ive believes the best feature is one that has been REMOVED. Buttons, features, and backwards compatibility are relics from the past that only CHUMPS care about. Keep fiddling, Nero !!!
 
I've been trying to figure this out for days. Damned if I know what I'm doing wrong. Everything's updated. ATV4. iOS10. iDevices switch. Everything works swimmingly in house, leave and it's a big ol' nothing.

For remote access, you have to disable sleep on your Apple TV. It uses very little power (confirmed via a killawatt meter).
 
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