ATV4 still has no Bluetooth keyboard support... how do I search for stuff easily on YouTube?

[tomekosiowy]

Use Siri.

Someone asked me (about Apple Watch):
– can you send SMSes?
– yes.
– so how do you type on such small screen?
– I do not type. I dictate messages.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I have more concern over the typing accuracy of individual letters than I do in going all the way left or right.

The old on-screen keyboard was no joy but at least it was a) triple-stacked and b) had a click-click-click remote that made it somewhat easy to nail a letter in a word. The new on-screen keyboard is a single line and the remote doesn't 'click', it slides around. It's not easy, lots of misses.

BJ

The new one also doesn't allow you to go all the way to one side and have the cursor pop out the other side does it?

(mine got returned, so can't test myself, sorry)

 

[turbineseaplane]

Use Siri.

Someone asked me (about Apple Watch):
– can you send SMSes?
– yes.
– so how do you type on such small screen?
– I do not type. I dictate messages.

Siri for what?

You can't dictate with voice on the ATV4 - How would you use Siri to type in passwords or search in YouTube? (as an example)

 

[TrueBlou]

How do you do this shortcut? Haven't figured it out.

There's a couple. The first one is if you click and hold down the touchpad on any letter a menu will pop up with the uppercase letter, accents and most useful, a backspace key.

If you click the play/pause button when using the keyboard it toggles between uppercase and lowercase letters also.

 

[DNichter]

There's a couple. The first one is if you click and hold down the touchpad on any letter a menu will pop up with the uppercase letter, accents and most useful, a backspace key.

If you click the play/pause button when using the keyboard it toggles between uppercase and lowercase letters also.

Very good to know! Thanks.

 

[TrueBlou]

I have more concern over the typing accuracy of individual letters than I do in going all the way left or right.

The old on-screen keyboard was no joy but at least it was a) triple-stacked and b) had a click-click-click remote that made it somewhat easy to nail a letter in a word. The new on-screen keyboard is a single line and the remote doesn't 'click', it slides around. It's not easy, lots of misses.

BJ

Well instead of using slide all the time, what I do is swipe to the general area I need, then by tapping either the left or right side of the touchpad the cursor moves one space at a time, better for accuracy.

Very good to know! Thanks.

Oh, and it's maybe not immediately obvious, but when you use this pop-up menu, you can use the backspace key as much as you like. Just slide from right to left and it will delete a letter, then return to it's position, allowing you to swipe again for more letters without closing the pop-up.

 

[chiwaw]

Please no "they'll get to it" - Get to it? Why was it removed? It is not a new science to pair up a BT keyboard, and tvOS is extremely close to iOS which has BT keyboard support throughout.

ATV4 is a completelly new software versus the older ATVs. So they didn't "removed" anything from the old ATV software.

And yes, internally tvOS has all the bits to support BT keyboards (because it's an iOS). But that doesn't mean the UI (which is *brand new*) is hooked up to support it.

That means two, and only two things:

1) They didn't get around to hookup the UI yet, but it's coming shortly.

- or -

2) They purposely didn't include it for some reason. Maybe they want to force everyone into the Siri, or they are planning a smartphone keyboard app integration, whatever. Maybe their reason suck and they will change their mind and add it in a future update. Maybe they found out that less than 1% of the older Apple TV users were using a BT keyboard, so they decided not to design the new tvOS around it. Who knows?

 

[turbineseaplane]

ATV4 is a completelly new software versus the older ATVs. So they didn't "removed" anything from the old ATV software.

And yes, internally tvOS has all the bits to support BT keyboards (because it's an iOS). But that doesn't mean the UI (which is *brand new*) is hooked up to support it.

Man - You are really really trying hard to support Apple on this...

iOS devs have repeatedly talked about how extremely similar tvOS and iOS are. It took actual effort to not include BT keyboard support as it's in all of iOS. There is simply nothing complicated in the UI about having a BT keyboard be a text input option anytime an input field is selected - Nothing.

Please people - There is no excuse for this one - The excuses have to stop. This is nauseating even for the usual "Apple can do no wrong" crowd.

 

[TrueBlou]

Man - You are really really trying hard to support Apple on this...

iOS devs have repeatedly talked about how extremely similar tvOS and iOS are. It took actual effort to not include BT keyboard support as it's in all of iOS. There is simply nothing complicated in the UI about having a BT keyboard be a text input option anytime an input field is selected - Nothing.

Please people - There is no excuse for this one - The excuses have to stop. This is nauseating even for the usual "Apple can do no wrong" crowd.

Yup, for whatever reason not having BlueTooth keyboards in tvOS HAD to be a deliberate decision. There's no getting away from it, I'm sure they had a reason, however mind-numbingly dumb it was. But there absolutely, without question, had to have been a decision not to include them. tvOS is so largely iOS based and so close to it technically that the code and the hardware already supported them, they were removed, not, not included I've no doubt about that.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Yup, for whatever reason not having BlueTooth keyboards in tvOS HAD to be a deliberate decision. There's no getting away from it, I'm sure they had a reason, however mind-numbingly dumb it was. But there absolutely, without question, had to have been a decision not to include them. tvOS is so largely iOS based and so close to it technically that the code and the hardware already supported them, they were removed, not, not included I've no doubt about that.

Very true. The thing that's sort of mindbending is I can't come up with a single reason to not continue to include the keyboard support as an option for people. There simply no drawback.

 

[TrueBlou]

Very true. The thing that's sort of mindbending is I can't come up with a single reason to not continue to include the keyboard support as an option for people. There simply no drawback.

Yeah, I've been trying to wrap my head around it as well. I can't think of a single good reason, the closest I got was them wanting to distance it as much as possible from any "mini computer" comparisons. But even that's a stretch.

 

[Xenomorph]

It's fine if all I want to search for are short terms, such as CATS or BOOBS.

This is all I use YouTube for, so that is perfect.

 

[watermelonbook]

Yup, for whatever reason not having BlueTooth keyboards in tvOS HAD to be a deliberate decision. There's no getting away from it, I'm sure they had a reason, however mind-numbingly dumb it was. But there absolutely, without question, had to have been a decision not to include them. tvOS is so largely iOS based and so close to it technically that the code and the hardware already supported them, they were removed, not, not included I've no doubt about that.

exactly what I was thinking. I am really curious as to what the reason it. I don't think Apple engineers are that dumb, especially not on something this simple. If my $10 Bluetooth keyboard from eBay worked perfectly with ATV3, it should just work with the ATV4. A bunch of them held a meeting and decided not to enable this. I would even respect it if they did it to force people to buy official Apple $99 wireless keyboards, but that's not the case here.

 

[TrueBlou]

exactly what I was thinking. I am really curious as to what the reason it. I don't think Apple engineers are that dumb, especially not on something this simple. If my $10 Bluetooth keyboard from eBay worked perfectly with ATV3, it should just work with the ATV4. A bunch of them held a meeting and decided not to enable this. I would even respect it if they did it to force people to buy official Apple $99 wireless keyboards, but that's not the case here.

You say that, be prepared for the official, force touch enabled trackpad Apple keyboard. The first in a new line of products to improve and enhance your Apple TV experience

 

[boltjames]

The new one also doesn't allow you to go all the way to one side and have the cursor pop out the other side does it?

(mine got returned, so can't test myself, sorry)

No, it doesn't.

BJ

 

[ricktat]

The 64GB has the option for keyboard.

 

[chiwaw]

Man - You are really really trying hard to support Apple on this... iOS devs have repeatedly talked about how extremely similar tvOS and iOS are.

It's precisely as an iOS developer why I'm looking at it this way. A product's next release version may need 100 very simple tweaks/features in. But turns out we only have time for 60 for this release, and having to push 40 of them to the next sprint. Producers and stakeholders meets, discuss this, and have to make a decision. One of these missing simple feature may irritate greatly some of the customers, but the stakeholders had to make the call.

The lack of a BT keyboard may be a HUGE deal to you, but it's entirely possible there's so few people using one, the stakeholders decided it could wait and wasn't a priority.

It took actual effort to not include BT keyboard support as it's in all of iOS.

Like I mentioned in my post it is possible, and I would add for sake of clarity, very probable, that they don't want a BT keyboard support on purpose. The reason? I can't think of one. I wish I had an ear at Apple's engineering meeting rooms.

All I'm saying is, until they make an official comment about it, as a programmer myself, I see it as potentially the kind of feature-bumped-to-next-sprint I had/have to deal with every single day for the last 25 years.

 

[turbineseaplane]

It's precisely as an iOS developer why I'm looking at it this way. A product's next release version may need 100 very simple tweaks/features in. But turns out we only have time for 60 for this release, and having to push 40 of them to the next sprint. Producers and stakeholders meets, discuss this, and have to make a decision. One of these missing simple feature may irritate greatly some of the customers, but the stakeholders had to make the call.

The lack of a BT keyboard may be a HUGE deal for you, but it's entirely possible that there's so few people using one, that the stakeholders decided it could wait for the next release.



Like I mentioned in my post it is possible, and I would add for sake of clarity, very probable, that they don't want a BT keyboard support on purpose. The reason? I can't think of one. I wish I had an ear at Apple's engineering meeting rooms.

All I'm saying is, until they make an official comment about it, as a programmer myself, I see it as potentially the kind of feature-bumped-to-next-sprint I had/have to deal with every single day for the last 25 years.

You are homering this one to a silly level.

Keyboard support is not some world shaking feature that requires this level of analysis (nor time to implement). Nearly everyone developing for tvOS already develops for iOS (which has had BT KB support forever). It's not this difficult.

This is more likely just the usual Apple pushing the arrogant button of: "Our new voice remote is so amaze-balls and keyboards are so old and gross so we are getting rid of them"

One of the most useful times for a keyboard?
Initial setup of your new ATV4 and passwords...Would have been nice!

 

[chiwaw]

You are homering this one to a silly level.

Keyboard support is not some world shaking feature that requires this level of analysis (nor time to implement). Nearly everyone developing for tvOS already develops for iOS (which has had BT KB support forever). It's not this difficult.

This is more likely just the usual Apple pushing the arrogant button of: "Our new voice remote is so amaze-balls and keyboards are so old and gross so we are getting rid of them"

One of the most useful times for a keyboard?
Initial setup of your new ATV4 and passwords...Would have been nice!

Call it homering if you want (nevermind that I have my own list of annoyances on the ATV4), but if you're not a professional software developer I can't really expect you to understand. I've seen lot simplier features getting cut because of time constraints, or were causing very strange instabilities and not being able to find the root cause or a solution before release date, having to be turned off (even tho the whole code was STILL in).

I guess there's no point arguing on this until Apple actually comes out and make an official comment about it. Whether the lack of BT Keyboard is deliberate or not.

 

[bluush]

As for YouTube, start the YouTube app on the Apple TV, swipe up on the touchpad of the Siri remote and slide along to the left of the menu, to the Search section.
Then swipe down to get to the keyboard and swipe left and right to highlight letters, when you highlight a letter you want to input, click on the touchpad.

This isn't working for me. When I start the youtube app (I already signed in when I installed the app), the first row is "Recent Subscription Activity". Next row is "Subscriptions". Trying to swipe up, right when the Youtube app loads, doesn't do anything, nor does swiping left, nor up/left, nor anything.

 

[TrueBlou]

This isn't working for me. When I start the youtube app (I already signed in when I installed the app), the first row is "Recent Subscription Activity". Next row is "Subscriptions". Trying to swipe up, right when the Youtube app loads, doesn't do anything, nor does swiping left, nor up/left, nor anything.

Really? There's no search option on the top bar? That's really weird.

Maybe try deleting the app and re-installing it to see if it makes a difference.

 

[watermelonbook]

Call it homering if you want (nevermind that I have my own list of annoyances on the ATV4), but if you're not a professional software developer I can't really expect you to understand. I've seen lot simplier features getting cut because of time constraints, or that were causing very strange instabilities and not being able to find the root cause or a solution before the release date, having to be turned off (even tho the whole code was STILL in).

I guess there's no point arguing on this until Apple actually comes out and make an official comment about it. Whether the lack of BT Keyboard is deliberate or not.

does Apple ever rush a product to the market? I don't recall any.

besides, it's not like the ATV4 has any competitors out there. I played with the Roku 4 just last week and it was horrible. (not to mention no foreign language support for YouTube)

 

[chiwaw]

This isn't working for me. When I start the youtube app (I already signed in when I installed the app), the first row is "Recent Subscription Activity". Next row is "Subscriptions". Trying to swipe up, right when the Youtube app loads, doesn't do anything, nor does swiping left, nor up/left, nor anything.

Sounds to me like you are IN the Subscription tab. Make sure to scroll UP so it shows the top tabs (sections). Here's a screenshot.

 

[chiwaw]

does Apple ever rush a product to the market? I don't recall any.

besides, it's not like the ATV4 has any competitors out there. I played with the Roku 4 just last week and it was horrible. (not to mention no foreign language support for YouTube)

I never said "rushed". I said you can't put 100% of everything you ever want to put in on the very first release. The first iPhone was incredibly limited and got better over time. The original iPad was pretty limited, but got better over time. The very first iWatch was very limited, but is getting better over time.

That doesn't mean they have been rushed. That mean there's no magic wand to instantaneously make all the wishes happen for free.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Call it homering if you want (nevermind that I have my own list of annoyances on the ATV4), but if you're not a professional software developer I can't really expect you to understand. I've seen lot simplier features getting cut because of time constraints, or were causing very strange instabilities and not being able to find the root cause or a solution before release date, having to be turned off (even tho the whole code was STILL in).

I guess there's no point arguing on this until Apple actually comes out and make an official comment about it. Whether the lack of BT Keyboard is deliberate or not.

Lmao. "Keyboard support" is nowhere near the complexity or integration issue you're trying to make it out to be.

Seriously. Stop.