New 4K Apple TV Could Feature Revamped Siri Remote With Haptic Feedback

[MaxGravy]

Finally a 4k Apple TV. Say no more. Credit card ready.

 

[gnipgnop]

Regardless, it would be immensely easier if the body weren't symmetrical. Also, by making it thicker you can also reduce the probability it will end up between a cushion.

I guess I'm not buying the idea that feeling the ATV remote for asymmetry is actually easier than locating the only non-circular button with your thumb. The asymmetry on larger remotes is typically just the battery area on the back anyway.

 

[jdillings]

I otherwise really like my current-gen Apple TV, but the remote is ATROCIOUS. I merely find it clunky and cumbersome, but when anyone who comes over tries to use it, they find it to be near-impossible.

Yep. One of the worst Apple creations ever. It manages to suck both as a TV remote and as a game controller.

 

[ryanwarsaw]

The reason there has been little to nothing about the remote is that the new AppleTV will not come with any remote bundled at all. It will rely solely on siri voice commands. The current remote will be available for $89 at Apple stores.

It will have a slight redesign and will have a white LED light that glows when your TV is turned off. Shipping times will be between 6-12weeks.

 

[macduke]

I hate it when the Apple TV remote starts lagging just a little bit randomly and makes it completely unusable. Hopefully they can fix that.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

...by making it thicker you can also reduce the probability it will end up between a cushion.

Com'on buddy. Apple's solution to this "problem" is simple: thinner cushions. In fact, if you would just mentally march through Apple's annual upgrades to (hypothetical) sofas, eventually it's so thin you are sitting on a bare floor (but paying full price for "our thinnest & lightest sofa ever" of course).

So, skip to Apple's ultimate solution and it's impossible to lose the remote on a bare floor. Just go toss your furniture in the trash now and this problem is completely solved... the Apple way... for FREE!!!

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Apple has been known to "leak" certain details but usually this is to dampen expectations (i.e, no iPhone at WWDC, back when that was the norm). And they don't go about it by releasing unfinished software--they tell the press, usually re/code.

This kind of leak is incredibly damaging. Literally the only things we don't know are the prices. If anything, my excitement for tomorrow is less than it would have been. There aren't going to be any significant surprises.

Anyway, Gruber's sources about this suggest that it definitely was not endorsed by Apple.

The iPhone was NEVER announced at WWDC. Not once. It has always been in September every year with the exception of the original announcement at MacWorld 2007 in January.

 

[richinaus]

I hate it when the Apple TV remote starts lagging just a little bit randomly and makes it completely unusable. Hopefully they can fix that.

Yes, the Apple TV remote for me is the worst product they have made in a long time. Its terrible and I really hope they have completely re-designed it this time, or at least made it much easier to hold and use.

 

[CarlJ]

As usual, I'm one of the three people here who like the Siri Remote (with minor modifications). I put Griffin's Survivor Play case on it, which makes it grippier, more ergonomic, easier to pick up, and slightly harder to misplace, and I put Apple's Remote Loop on it, not as a wrist strap, but simply as a tail, which makes the remote dead simple to tell end-from-end without looking, and also makes it slightly harder to misplace.

Now, I absolutely should not have to do this to the remote, they clearly went for elegance over ergonomics, but, so modded, it's my favorite remote: I use the Apple TV as my primary (nearly only) input, use a Logitech Harmony 650 to wake everything up and shut it down (my TV doesn'y have CEC), and use the Siri Remote for everything else. It is responsive and comfortable to use (I have none of the problems some mention with touchpad sensitivity - it is adjustable in the settings), and it has all the controls I need and nothing I don't, so I can control everything without looking, without mental games like "okay, the home button is 5 rows up and 2 columns over" that many larger remotes can necessitate.

I can't wait to see what they do with the new Apple TV, and hope they make the remote better out-of-the-box.

 

[Cougarcat]

The iPhone was NEVER announced at WWDC. Not once. It has always been in September every year with the exception of the original announcement at MacWorld 2007 in January.

iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 were both announced at WWDC. It wasn't until the 4S did they move to Fall announcements. In early 2011, Apple made it clear that the next iPhone would not be at WWDC.

 

[jonnysods]

Still rocking a gen 3 but have been waiting for this next beast. Buying tomorrow!

 

[KAZphoto]

Why all the remote hate? I mean I hear you guys just not really understanding it. I can find the correct orientation every time by feeling for the long volume button. As someone else mentioned the scrubbing is awesome. And I can recharge it with my lighting cable by the bed that's already there instead of finding the right "coin" battery. I also have a harmony remote in our other room so just buy one of those if you can't stand it.

 

[mabhatter]

Please oh please, let someone with some design sense come up with the new one. I don't want a metal stick that has no external markings at all, and you have to "use the force" to get anything to happen.

This. Apple's current gen TV remote is just awful. Had the thing two years and I hate every time I use the damn thing. There was no reason it needed to be "touch". It sucks for games and it sucks as a remote. But of course, it added two new buttons the old one didn't have, so you can't just use the old one without some frustration.

I fear they'll just make the next one worse. It's a $80 replacement... because it's ridiculously over complicated. I don't want to look at a remote.. they should orient themselves in my hand automatically and immediately put actual buttons under my fingers... that's what REMOTES do Mr Sir Jonny. Trying to make the darn thing with touch gestures and a game controller just made it suck more. What I REALLY want is the old one with two more buttons for controlling apps. That's all.
[doublepost=1505169805][/doublepost]

The complaints about the remote are amusing. Some people calling it too complex, some calling it too minimalist. lol

I have few complaints about the current remote, but I will say I'm going to laugh if Apple tries to charge more than $150 for this new Apple TV model because of "haptics".

They charge $80 for the glorious remote!
[doublepost=1505170242][/doublepost]

and yet it can't do a local search on your drive for non-itunes media.......

Why would Apple do that? If iTunes can't natively play the file, Apple TV isn't going to either. itunes I'd the media gateway.. you're beating a very dead horse getting upset about it.
[doublepost=1505171172][/doublepost]

You're talking about knowing what the correct orientation is, right? There are five buttons. Four are circles and the fifth is an oblong lozenge shape. The lozenge needs to be on the right for the correct orientation. You can either look at it or just feel the buttons when you pick it up. Pretty easy with so few buttons and such a small form factor.

And when you pick it up while watching TV with the Lights low you got a 50/50 shot at grabbing the wrong end. Then you click or swipe as you try to pick the flat, shapeless object off the coffee table, and the Apple TV does something you didn't want.

 

[V.K.]

Please oh please, let someone with some design sense come up with the new one. I don't want a metal stick that has no external markings at all, and you have to "use the force" to get anything to happen.

THIS. I absolutely loathe my ATV4 remote. Nothing says style over substance louder than this product. Haptic feedback is welcome. but even more than that I want a redesign of the remote to make it easier to operate by feel.

 

[Bozley0621]

I use my Apple TV and the DirecTV Now app and I hate the current remote. If I'm watching something and need to pick up the remote to move it (sometimes sitting on the couch next to me and making room for my wife) or to adjust the volume too many times my finger lightly brushes the touch area and the channel changes. Having a dedicated "previous" or "last channel" button to flip quickly between 2 channels is something that is missing too. Hopefully if they have a redesigned remote it addresses these two issues.

THIS (exact reasoning for me as well) and a way to mute the tv! Plus, a redesign of the symmetry, of course.

 

[Palmy_Jon]

I like my Apple TV but the remote is easily the worst thing about it and the ultimate example of something Steve would hate if he were still with us. It's such a poor design, incredibly unintuitive. Let's hope they got it right with the new one.

I have to agree, I hate the remote! It is too small, slippery and black. I'm always losing it in my home cinema. Also, why can't I easily search my movie library?

 

[SeattleMoose]

Haptic Feedback?
Every priesthood (religion, finance, law, tech, etc.) throughout history invents its own language to make itself sound more intelligent and essential than it really is. Today we have the tech industry routinely inventing new fancy sounding words for concepts that have been around for years under a different name.

Still have the ATV2 and love the simplicity of the remote. I bought an ATV4 for my aging mother and neither of us like it. Putting a "touch panel" on such a small device is NOT user-friendly (awkward at best), half the time the voice commands don't work, and the whole experience is a huge FAIL. The ATV4 remote is BY FAR the worst Apple product EVER. Sometimes I think Apple has been infiltrated by a group with nefarious intentions (removing click wheel on iPod, removing headphone jack on iPhone, the ATV4 remote, relying ever more on biometrics just to use your device, etc.).

When one becomes so clever that common sense eludes them (e.g. looks over functionality), it is time to reign them in. Steve was the litmus test for dumb decisions. Sadly, it would appear that today, nobody performs that role.

 

[Bozley0621]

The point is that, TRUE FACT, Apple does not make its products for you and no-one else! Hard, even impossible to believe, I know, but true!!

You're not in the market for a new aTV? Great. But turns out that there are plenty of people who own an aTV3 that is now pretty darn old. Or they recently bought a 4K TV. Or they don't yet even own an aTV.

And THOSE people appreciate having a better model on the market.

I understood this post to be commenting that the poster didn't have a need for this upgrade, not that the upgrade is unnecessary for everyone. From what I know of the ATV 5 thus far, this upgrade isn't for me either.

 

[lsutigerfan1976]

I don’t care about the haptic feedback. But if it has the same style as the current remote. I won’t buy the new device. The current remote is awful.

 

[riverfreak]

How much of the US will be eliminated by that bandwidth requirement?

 

[magicman32]

You are kidding right? I have an Nvidia Shield. Besides the fact that my Xfinity service doesn't work well with it. Almost no premium apps are supported. The apps that I can access are horrible. Most of them have interfaces that look like they were designed 5 or 10 years ago.

This is true. I have a Shield and very much like it. But the equivalent apps between the 2 are infinitely better on ATV. Especially the MLB At Bat. It isn’t even close.

It’s much better (performance-wise) since the 5.2 update. But that box freezes and crashes more times in a month than in the last year total I had the ATV. The thing just isn’t as refined as it should be relative to how smooth the ATV is.

It should be better than it actually is.

 

[PaulRustad007]

This. Apple's current gen TV remote is just awful. Had the thing two years and I hate every time I use the damn thing. There was no reason it needed to be "touch". It sucks for games and it sucks as a remote. But of course, it added two new buttons the old one didn't have, so you can't just use the old one without some frustration.

I fear they'll just make the next one worse. It's a $80 replacement... because it's ridiculously over complicated. I don't want to look at a remote.. they should orient themselves in my hand automatically and immediately put actual buttons under my fingers... that's what REMOTES do Mr Sir Jonny. Trying to make the darn thing with touch gestures and a game controller just made it suck more. What I REALLY want is the old one with two more buttons for controlling apps. That's all.
[doublepost=1505169805][/doublepost]
They charge $80 for the glorious remote!
[doublepost=1505170242][/doublepost]
Why would Apple do that? If iTunes can't natively play the file, Apple TV isn't going to either. itunes I'd the media gateway.. you're beating a very dead horse getting upset about it.

Itunes has no problem playing the media that I have on an external server. None what so ever. Apple TV just wont catalog it.....everything has to be done manually.


[doublepost=1505171172][/doublepost]
And when you pick it up while watching TV with the Lights low you got a 50/50 shot at grabbing the wrong end. Then you click or swipe as you try to pick the flat, shapeless object off the coffee table, and the Apple TV does something you didn't want.

 

[fpnc]

One can only hope that they WILL improve the Siri remote, but I kind of doubt it. I suspect that the management thinks the current remote is "insanely great" or perhaps at least good enough. I fear that Apple has no real clue at how poor its functionality is for many users.

The only excuse I can find for having released such a poorly designed product is that they thought that it was critically important to have a remote that offered some game-controller functionality, but what they ended up with is something that can not operate as a proper remote for a lean-back, TV experience.

 

[JeffyTheQuik]

Even without the wristband, I find the remote easy to use. Even my child (6yo) figured out how to use it by herself.

In my list, "hard to use" and "difficult to learn" was not in there. I guess I should have put that it falls into crevices if one doesn't have the tether. But if one does, it turns into some weird kind of bracelet.

I have yet to see a TV Remote that was actually intuitive or got me where I wanted to go quickly. I pretty much learn the channels I like, and just go to them. Having to channel surf through "S#x during menopause" and "Twilight" isn't my cup of tea, yet they must appeal to an audience, as they are forever on the guide.
[doublepost=1505180073][/doublepost]

Finally a 4k Apple TV. Say no more. Credit card ready.

Yep... I'm getting two for the two new 4K TV's I just bought and hung well on the wall.

(Yes, there's a joke in there somewhere...)

 

[aka777]

Good for you.

I use our Apple TV's everyday.


It has everything WE need- DIRECTV Now; HBO; PBS kids; plus all of our iTunes purchases.

As with technology-ymmv.

The Apple remote for DTVN is terrible. Its clearly designed for VOD and not any live streaming service. The smartest thing for them to do would be to release a remote that is conduce to live TV. This is apple, so there is little chance this will happen, unless one of their exec sees the need.
[doublepost=1505181434][/doublepost]

I remember when Steve introduced the first Apple Remote and marveled at how simple it was. The newer ones are feature creeping their way to overly complex.

Those remotes were designed for live TV. Try using an AppleTV remote for Direct TV Now, it's a joke. Assuming that nothing jams up of course, it takes a good minute just to scroll from A to Z, something that I can do in seconds on an actual remote.