Why do some/many PC users hate the appleTV?

[Juicy Box]

It seems in my experience that some/many PC users hate appleTV.

It seems in my experience that some/many PC users hate Apple.

I don't think the TV part even really matters.

Not really confusing. There's a TV, an APP, and a Channel. Pretty simple if you ask me.

Maybe simple to you, simple to me, and simple for many Apple enthusiasts and techies, but Apple TV, Apple TV+, and the Apple TV app, get confused all the time on the forum and elsewhere by normies.

I have seen more than a few threads of people with their new smart tv asking how to access the built-in Apple TV that is advertised on their smart tv.

Apple created a lot of confusion with the naming of the three.

 

[portland-dude]

What about displaying your photos and videos from your iPhone on a tv without a HDMI cable? That’s a great benefit. Can Roku and fire do that?

TV wifi performance is...lacking. If you display any sort of HD video over airplay long enough it'll start to stutter, jump, and disconnect. And no, my Ubiquiti AP's are not the problem....

 

[bluespark]

This, this and THIS! Ugh. I can not believe someone actually approved this naming convention. Apple TV. Apple TV app. Apple TV+ Channel. Not confusing at all!

The confusing naming is a big part of it, and it works against Apple in multiple ways. I know people whose TV's support Apple TV+, they want to watch shows on Apple TV+, but they won't subscribe because they don't own Apple TV's. I can correct their misunderstanding, but there is no good reason Apple should have put people in the position of having to finely parse out the differences between products that, based on name and logo, appear virtually identical.

Incidentally, this is about the same mistake that killed Sony's Playstation Vue, which was a streaming service superior in many ways to Hulu, etc. But because of the name, large numbers of non-Playstation owners didn't realize it was a device-independent streaming service.

 

[vault]

The unit requires people buy content in the iTunes Store and then it’s theirs forever.

You mean until Apple pulls it from their store for any reason and refuse to offer a refund.

 

[SkiHound2]

The Unique Selling Point for the Apple TV is the seamless integration with Mac/iPad/iPhone/Airplay/iTunes/Apple Music/AppleTV+ ecosystem. That may make it worth the higher price to a Mac/iPhone/iPad user - but if you are a PC/Android user then an AppleTV is about as much use as an inflatable dartboard.

There are far cheaper devices like the Chromecast, FireTV stick, Roku and cheap generic boxes to run Kodi/Plex that let you watch Netflix/Amazon etc. and play back video files and which work perfectly well.

I've got an old (version 3) AppleTV and it works perfectly with iTunes, screen sharing from an iPad etc. but I use a Fire TV box for everything else. I considered upgrading a newer AppleTV, but at the time Amazon Prime wasn't supported on it, and installing Kodi required faffing about, so I got the Fire TV. Might re-consider ATV now that it's got Amazon Prime and MrMC (App Store-friendly Kodi port) if it still comes with a year of ATV+ when Foundation comes out...


Yes, well apparently it never occurred to anybody in the Apple management echo-chamber that maybe, just maybe, calling the streaming service "AppleTV+" when they already had a product called "AppleTV" might be confusing. D'oh.

This. I can't really speak to whether or not PC users hate the Apple TV. But the value of the Apple TV for persons not invested in the Apple ecosystem is greatly reduced.

 

[HDFan]

You mean until Apple pulls it from their store for any reason and refuse to offer a refund.

The only cases I have seen are when a studio pulls an item from the store and the studio refuses to refund the customers' money. Not Apples' fault. Blame the studios.

 

[Phuz01]

Don't hate on all the PC users; not all of us have a choice. I've owned a PC for years because some of the proprietary software I need to use for work isn't available for Macs (and is too resource intensive for emulators), and until recent versions of TVOS, integration of a Windows-based iTunes library with AppleTV required all sorts of troubleshooting. Half the time, the connection would just drop mid-song, and getting the Windows computer to communicate with Apple TV would require rebooting both devices and the router (even with wired connections).

Thankfully, this pain point has been resolved, and given that Microsoft store movie purchases are available on Apple TV through Movies Anywhere, the only reason I can think that PC users would hate Apple TV now is if they purchased a bunch of TV shows through Microsoft and couldn't figure out a way stream those.