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Hands-On With the New Apple TV: An Overview of Siri and Search

I'm glad Apple decided to price it at $269 in Australia otherwise I might have bought it, sounds like a bit of a dud by all the complaints. I'll stick with the ATV 3 and the Mac Mini till they sort this thing out in another couple of years.
 
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iChrist said:
Meh. Look, most people know what show they want to watch and jump to HBO Go or whatever and find it fast.

When Apple gets their **** together and can integrate with all services and can eliminate the cable box, I'll be impressed.

Even if the future is no cable and all streaming, Apple doesn't even allow all services such as Amazon. So, it's always gonna be half baked.
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Amazon isn't on the new ATV because Amazon don't want to write an app for it. The App Store is open to all, but Amazon would rather sell Fire TVs.
 
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lk400 said:
When Siri works, it's great.

But it really needs work. Siri remains a bit daft. Search for "28 days later" and it tells me it can't play movies in the future. Search for a movie with an "&" in the title and it can't find it. Search by actor, and it shows up.

Loving the new Apple TV, but I'm disappointed with Siri.
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I thought Siri's processing was all done server side. If so, why can't she do the same things she does on the phone?
 
Whitelobster said:
So I can't control the new Apple TV with my Apple Watch??? As someone who spins while watching tv,that's been a HUGE part of why I love my watch. Guess ill be returning my Apple TV
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You wouldn't just wait for the remote app update? Wow. And it's because you need to spin while using an Apple TV? Are you that lady in that one video who threw a fit because you needed an appointment at the Genius Bar?
 
iChrist said:
Meh. Look, most people know what show they want to watch and jump to HBO Go or whatever and find it fast.

When Apple gets their **** together and can integrate with all services and can eliminate the cable box, I'll be impressed.

Even if the future is no cable and all streaming, Apple doesn't even allow all services such as Amazon. So, it's always gonna be half baked.
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It has nothing to do with Apple Amazon refuses to allow its services on any box other then the ones the produce. It is greedy places like Amazon or the tv companies that prevent fully cutting the box. There are ways around it but they are not discussed on here. I think charging for tv with commercials should be a crime if u want to charge for tv cut out the commercials 100%. Till then I refuse to pay for tv. I cut the cable satellite 4 years ago and have not looked back. Apple wants Amazon or would allow it but it is amazons issue not apples. I would boycott Amazon till they give in.
 
ATV4 is not worth the money in Europe... Siri doesn't work, Bluetooth doesn't work with Apple remote or an Apple wireless keyboard which is a HUGE disappointment considering the increasing length of passwords these days... Had I known what I know now, I would have waited!
 
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Anyone done a definitive test of a 24fps video to see if the flexibility Apple added to also play 60fps 1080p (instead of only 30fps) might have been extended the other way too (to the native frame rate of just about every film ever made)? I'm guessing it probably won't play native 24fps (instead dynamically converting to 30fps via 3:2 Pulldown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-two_pull_down as it's always done) but could someone with knowledge of this topic do a definitive test to confirm this question one way or the other?
 
Sakurambo-kun said:
Amazon isn't on the new ATV because Amazon don't want to write an app for it. The App Store is open to all, but Amazon would rather sell Fire TVs.
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Yes, because Amazon doesn't want our money. :rolleyes:

And no Apple-managed app store on iOS or OS X is "open for all". If that was true, there would be no relentless efforts to jailbreak Apple devices (which is pretty much about getting to put apps on them that Apple won't allow).

Apple picks & chooses what gets in and what doesn't... and/or makes the requirements overly onerous so that some apps just can't work well within Apple's guidelines... and/or makes the revenue sharing so onerous that the math can't work for some businesses that would otherwise love to be in there.

Yes, Amazon would rather sell Fire TVs so they can maximize their profits on the products they make and sell... just like Apple.
 
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I love the idea of the new Apple TV but just like my 3rd gen ATV I think the content is too expensive. It is tough to justify the idea of paying $20 to buy a digital copy of a movie or $6 for a rental when you can buy a physical copy for much less than from Amazon or rent a movie from RedBox for <$2.
 
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Amazon's service is also available on Nintendo Wii U. So it's not limited to their own products. Yea, I know Nintendo is not a steaming competitor.
 
The only thing I am perplexed about is: HBO and Showtime had advanced development time with this ATV and they decide to only include Siri search for their subscription versions?!?? (although I must say HBO's UI is nice!)

The Apple remote app is strange but I really never used it with my ATV3 so that doesn't bother me.

Apple just needs to hurry up and release that Siri API so developers can take this little box to the next level!
 
RockSpider said:
I'm glad Apple decided to price it at $269 in Australia otherwise I might have bought it, sounds like a bit of a dud by all the complaints.
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These forums are fascinating. In general they attract many people who love to be negative a find reasons to bash products and companies. They don't attract many users who are happy with their products and would rather spend time enjoying them than reading forums.

You made a decision that the atv 4 is a dud based upon posts made here. Yet you have no idea of how many are enjoying the atv 4, as I am, and who think it's a great product, albeit not perfect, as I do.
 
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rturner2 said:
New Apple TV doesn't work with Remote iOS app - WTF!! Now I have to use stupid onscreen keyboard to enter App Store password etc

Why didn't Apple include Touch ID on the remote and also a dedicated gaming bundle with game controller?!
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Bought one last night and was shocked to see this too. All sorts of usability issues without access to the iPhone keyboard. Really shocked on this omission.
 
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bshackcreative said:
Bought one last night and was shocked to see this too. All sorts of usability issues without access to the iPhone keyboard. Really shocked on this omission.
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Yes. No bluetooth keyboard support and siri only available when you have an US appstore account (!!). Not happy with that thing yet. Still needs a lot of work.
 
dpace32 said:
I love the idea of the new Apple TV but just like my 3rd gen ATV I think the content is too expensive. It is tough to justify the idea of paying $20 to buy a digital copy of a movie or $6 for a rental when you can buy a physical copy for much less than from Amazon or rent a movie from RedBox for <$2.
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You should check out this forum link https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/itunes-movie-codes.1931946/

This has made getting iTunes movies super easy for a great price.
 
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I like the new ATV, screen savers are awesome and i like the interface and finally having an app store is brilliant. I have always felt voice searches are the way of the future so integrating Siri was the real clincher for me.

However....

[ Please stop reading now if you don't want to hear wingeing... ;) ]

No Trailers app was just a dumb move, but i'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that an App will be forthcoming soon (along with an update to the Remote app on iPhone hopefully as that's not ATV4 ready either).

Biggest issue however is Siri; it can't search the app store and it won't dictate my manual search.
Since the app store has no categories or any way of casually browsing (other than manual search) it was clearly designed to be searched from Siri but for some reason it's not working yet. All the power of Siri and i'm still stuck manually typing in each letter of a search.... I really wasn't expecting to have to do that with this box.
I think Siri is massively underused at the moment; clearly the intention is that it will be used more, but i just wish they had shown it's potential more in this v1 release. Fingers crossed for the new Siri API they promised as it's desperately needed already IMHO.
 
Benjamin Frost said:
I think it was a mistake to put so much importance on Siri.

I'm confident that almost everyone will not use Siri for interacting with the Apple TV, because it's innately unnatural to speak to a box. You would have thought that Apple would have built an app for the Apple Watch that allows you to flick through TV stations. That's another big flaw with Cook's thinking about TV: apps are not the right medium for TV; channels are. It's much quicker pressing a button once to get to another station than it is to close an app, open another app and navigate to the station you want.

I don't think this is the future of TV that Steve Jobs worked out; it seems too slow and clunky. Surely, the ideal TV interface would be customised to show all your favourite content accessible with one tap, and that content would include all non-iTunes content, live TV and cable together with iTunes. There would be no logging in whatsoever, as the TV would sync log-in details via iCloud from your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch or Mac.
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I suspect the future of cable will be app driven via the box (Apple, Chromecast, Roku, etc...) of your choice.
 
Sounds largely like it's not done yet. I'll be checking back in in 6 months, hopefully these issues will be resolved.

There's no way I'm paying $150 and going backwards in functionality from ATV3.
 
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