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Nintendo did quite well before opening up the platform to third party developers.

but then they went into the game console business, and did even better
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I finally bought the new Apple TV last week and I have been very disappointed with the lack of apps and games. I think it has great potential as a platform. The graphics aren't console quality, but it looks great compared to a Wii, which I think is a more realistic comparison. Maybe Apple should bundle a controller? I don't really know what the answer is, I am just surprised so few developers have adapted their games.

i'd guess, you're right on it. it's probably mostly the lack of a dedicated & good 1st party controller.
 
Apple is not going to change their prices for you, and you are not adding anything to the discussion by complaining about this.

I am not complaining; I am explaining why the Apple Watch is not selling much. The product is not a problem, but the price is.
 
Handbrake to the rescue!

Why would you go through the hassle of transcoding videos if you don't have to?
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The biggest problem with the Apple Watch is the high price. Apple needs to address that. Because the watch is not that useful, there is a limit to how much people are prepared to pay for it.

Why? Rolex, Breitling and other are far more expensive and only tell time. Point is that if you want appear exclusive you need a high price, otherwise people will not buy it. Would you buy a brand new Rolex if it cost 100 bugs? Probably not because you would wonder what the hell is wrong with for selling at this price.
 
Apple Watch apps can't exist without the iPhone counterpart app. Even if they could no one is going to pay money for the limited functionality they offer. There may be a few people that would but the vast majority will not.

My point was that as a developer you're going to invest your time and energy in tvOS rather than watchOS because there is FAR FAR more potential to make a product people want and to make money.

Developers invest their time where they can make the most money which is why we see the largest investment in iPhone development, followed by iPad, then Apple TV, and lastly Apple Watch.

None of these change the fact that you made an incorrect statement --- for all practical purposes you CAN charge for an Apple Watch app. It is irrelevant that the app has to be bundled inside an iPhone app. It's no secret that an Apple Watch requires a companion iPhone, so this bundling is unimportant.

What IS true is that Apple does a lousy job of creating a somewhat separate "Apps for Apple Watch" store. There is a (messy and disorganized) list of such apps available if you look hard enough, but basically it's a godawful mess. On the other hand, THE ENTIRE FREAKING APPLE STORE is pretty a godawful mess, so it's not like Apple is treating the watch any differently...

The issue when investing as a developer is not "where do people spend the most time" or even "where are there the most customers"; it is "where do I have a comparative advantage". Selling one of a thousand similar apps on tvOS is a less interesting (and less lucrative) place to be than selling the one high quality login app, or sleep tracking app, on the Apple Watch. If I were still in the commercial software business, I'd be working on Apple Watch apps rather than TV apps simply because it's virgin territory rather than the very crowded space of tvOS. But doing that requires a certain confidence in being able to deal with a new development environment and a new set of problems, from bugs in the API to new ways of debugging, and that sort of thing is not for everyone.
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I am not complaining; I am explaining why the Apple Watch is not selling much. The product is not a problem, but the price is.

How do you know Apple Watch is "not selling much"? And what counts as "much"?
Apple sells more than a million a month (12 million in 2015). That's more than they sold of iPhone 1. It compares pretty well to 3 million Amazon Echo units sold. It's a hell of a lot more than have sold of either Pebbles or any Android Wear model (and probable, though I am not sure, of all Android Wear combined).
 
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If Apple TV had 4k60 support and support for passthrough Audio including HD audio I would be interested. As far as I'm concerned, it was obsolete before it even hit the market. I don't care for android and would much prefer iOS but for now I'll stick with my nvidia shield which does what I want.
 
Continues to surge? Where's Amazon Prime? Where's Flixster or Vudu? Where's Twitch? Where's Spotify? Yes, interest continues to surge for developers building fireplace apps, but without the big hitters it doesn't matter. There's a limited amount of quality apps being made now for ATV; most are just garbage. Apple doesn't care though, they just report the gross numbers.

When Apple opens up the watch a bit more and adds some new features developers will jump on board surely.
Agree. Great that Netflix, Plex and BBC iPlayer made it early. But we desperately need Spotify and Amazon Prime. And yes, I know Airplay works, but Native is best.

I also would love confirmation as to whether the hardware is 1080p compatible. I fear not. Games such as Asphalt 3 tend to lag badly in comparison to the 6S. Or is this just me?
 
Give it time dude. It's been only 6 months. At this point, 6 months after opening, the iPhone and Android app stores were little more than calculator, flashlight, and fart apps. For an app store that is only 6 months old, I would consider it's cache of apps at the moment pretty dam good.

Amazon has a grudge against Apple and is not willing to agree to Apple's store terms. That is their right and their business, complain to them. Spotify released it's first a tv app of any kind (for AndroidTV) just a few weeks ago - I am sure it will be ported to all the other tv platforms in due time.

I'm just bitter because I went with ATV over Roku to stay within the Apple ecosystem. If I went Roku I'd have Amazon, Twitch, Flixster, Vudu and Spotify already. The downside is the Roku UI isn't as pretty and I'd have had to import it from the US.

Being able to mix apps from international stores and have them on the one screen has been fantastic. Siri has been fantastic. Being able to side load apps was great until Apple practically killed it (I was using it to side load live streaming free-to-air television in Australia). It's not all bad, but it's not where I thought we'd be at this point in time.

Still holding out for the next generation Apple Watch. I want one so bad, but with it having to be tethered to the phone it's not much use to me. I want it for use with Strava while mountain biking.
 
I'm just bitter because I went with ATV over Roku to stay within the Apple ecosystem. If I went Roku I'd have Amazon, Twitch, Flixster, Vudu and Spotify already. The downside is the Roku UI isn't as pretty and I'd have had to import it from the US.

Being able to mix apps from international stores and have them on the one screen has been fantastic. Siri has been fantastic. Being able to side load apps was great until Apple practically killed it (I was using it to side load live streaming free-to-air television in Australia). It's not all bad, but it's not where I thought we'd be at this point in time.

Still holding out for the next generation Apple Watch. I want one so bad, but with it having to be tethered to the phone it's not much use to me. I want it for use with Strava while mountain biking.

Roku is not expensive, and you can get it from a place with a generous return policy, like Costco. Give it a shot. Thats what I did. However, the UI is awful and very laggy, even on the supposedly high-power devices. The remote buttons are spongey and don't register the button presses nearly 1/4 of the time. It gets the job done, but it was not user friendly or a pleasure to use at all. Maybe you will have a different experience.

I will gladly take a good responsive and consistent UI, and wait a bit longer for Amazon and the others.
 
Why would you go through the hassle of transcoding videos if you don't have to?
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Because with handbrake I can add other languages and add subtitles which may not necessarily be in an mkv file.

For example: My girlfriend is a Latina and I speak English and German.
So, I convert an mkv file add Spanish subtitles or Spanish audio.

She then watches the Spanish mp4 version via the Apple TV and I run the mkv version on my MBP with VLC and head phones plugged in at the same time. I get the big TV picture with German audio, she watches the Spanish version. I do the same with German movies.

Also, I send mp4 converted files to my kids, who have AppleTVs. Just easier for them to load them into iTunes and watch.

Plenty of reasons for ME to use Handbrake. Your, mileage may vary:)
 

So wrong, with Beamer app you simply drop the SRT file in the window and here you go. With VLC you can load any SRT or audio file you want.
 
So wrong, with Beamer app you simply drop the SRT file in the window and here you go. With VLC you can load any SRT or audio file you want.

Yes, so wrong, you didn't understand why I use handbrake.

I stream one converted file to AppleTV via home sharing in iTunes and listen to the other in another language on my MBP running it with VLC.

That requires 2 times the same movie running and 2 applications to run independently. Which one I would stream and which one i'd listen to wouldn't matter. Plus I don't only get mkv files. I get avi, wmv etc.

If there was a way to stream the same video with two different languages at the same time with each person watching getting audio in THEIR language you would have a point.

But that does not exist.
 
I bought the new Apple TV and actually really like it. Replaced Amazon Fire TV with it. I have to agree, there are not enough apps though. What I really need is PS Vue... the sooner the better...
 
I bought the new Apple TV and actually really like it. Replaced Amazon Fire TV with it. I have to agree, there are not enough apps though. What I really need is PS Vue... the sooner the better...

I was thinking of trying something other than the ATV4. I replaced my ATV4 with my older ATV3 because almost all the apps my family uses on the ATV4 were available on the ATV3. Plus, the UI on most of the apps that they both have, the ATV3 versions were so much better.

I was really disappointed in the Netflix app and the YouTube app on the ATV4.

I was thinking of trying Amazon Fire TV or Roku. I have a Chromecast, but I hate it.

But, if the ATV4 got the Amazon app, then I will switch back to the ATV4.
 
I was thinking of trying something other than the ATV4. I replaced my ATV4 with my older ATV3 because almost all the apps my family uses on the ATV4 were available on the ATV3. Plus, the UI on most of the apps that they both have, the ATV3 versions were so much better.

I was really disappointed in the Netflix app and the YouTube app on the ATV4.

I was thinking of trying Amazon Fire TV or Roku. I have a Chromecast, but I hate it.

But, if the ATV4 got the Amazon app, then I will switch back to the ATV4.

I can give you a little bit of feedback on the Amazon TV. There are two issues I've had with Amazon. One, the Prime content manipulation. Christmas movies that are Prime all year become paid options around Christmas. Romantic comedies that are Prime all year become paid options mid-February. Groundhog Day? Same thing... This isn't to say that there isn't enough content to justify the membership. There absolutely is enough for you to enjoy and the value is certainly there.

About the hardware. We've had one Fire Stick and two Fire TV devices. All three experienced technical problems. The Stick simply stopped working all together and would remain on the screen with just the logo - indefinitely. The first Fire TV would drop connection to the remote constantly. We troubleshooted but the issue persisted. Tried new batteries. Tried a new remote. It just didn't work. The second Fire TV upstairs would freeze mid-scene or in the middle of the menu. The only way to get it unstuck was to hard reset. This would happen every few hours from day one. The first replacement Amazon sent wouldn't boot up at all. It showed an error "unknown boot" on the screen. The second replacement now works fine.

So, the quality of Amazon hardware is awful. The quality of the remote (in my opinion) is awful. Apple TV on the other hand is smooth and works very well. That's my assessment. Others may have different experiences, but I am sticking with Hulu, Netflix and Vue for a complete package, plus an iTunes movie collection of all the favorites. Now I'm just missing the Vue app on the Apple TV.
 
I would assume that overtime Apple would follow the footsteps of MS and introduce OS native ads. I'm sure they are trying to figure out how to spin it so it sounds like a useful feature saving peoples lives.

I don't think that at all. Apple has never done this, and it's not their company philosophy to do so.

MacBooks, iPhones, iPads have never had pre-installed trial software from 3rd parties. Windows, Androids constantly have this.

This is one of many reasons for switching to Macs. Apple won't do this in the future. It's not them. To suggest they would do a 180 from what they've always done is strange. It's much the same as worrying that Android will become closed source in the next version, because 'Google will make it sound like a useful feature'.
 
I don't think that at all. Apple has never done this, and it's not their company philosophy to do so.

MacBooks, iPhones, iPads have never had pre-installed trial software from 3rd parties. Windows, Androids constantly have this.

This is one of many reasons for switching to Macs. Apple won't do this in the future. It's not them. To suggest they would do a 180 from what they've always done is strange. It's much the same as worrying that Android will become closed source in the next version, because 'Google will make it sound like a useful feature'.

I agree mostly, but I think Apple Music would be considered trial, even though it isn't third party.

As for saying Apple has never done this, I could be a wrong, but Macs in the early 90s had third party trial, or light versions on software.

I think I remember a few. Hello Kitty, spin doctors, and lemming.

But, I guess you could say that this was a different company back then. Oh yeah, more recently in the early 2000s, I used the trial EarthLink. I think that was the ISP name.

So, it isn't unheard of by Apple.
 
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