I used to think Apple TV was unimpressive. I had an Android TV which turned to shit after like 3 years. Apple TV though? Runs like a dream, still gets updates, has nice integrations with my iPhone. It's one of the best "plug and play" Apple devices there is. It "just works".
I went from finding it unimpressive to it being my first recommendation for anyone getting a TV. Screw regular smart TV software, just get the TV with the best panel and use Apple TV. So long as the TV doesn't break, you won't need to upgrade for a long long time.
Have you tried Chromecast 4k, though? I’ve bought one, as my LG TV’s webOS became so sluggish that it became pretty much unusable.
I have an Apple TV 4k in the living room and it’s great, but I find myself drawn to the Chromecast experience way more. Apple TV is more refined, but Chromecast’s remote is far better than ATV’s (1st gen, at least) and Google’s voice assistant is obviously far smarter (especially if you’re multilingual).
My family is all-Google so we have 5 Google TV devices. We're not dissatisfied enough to get rid of them, but it's pretty shocking to me how poorly it integrates with other Google services. I just keep finding ways in which it's clear that Google TV was developed in a silo relative to other Google services. Plus, Google's "Family Link" parental controls are so poorly designed it makes me wonder if anyone at Google actually has kids.
Granted, I am not an Apple user at all, so it's possible there would be similar frustrations on that side, but anecdotally I hear that Apple is way better about these sorts of things.
The original Apple TV remote was awful. It was the achilles heel of the product. The newer silver Apple TV remote with the round click/touch surface is what it should have been; it's worth trying if that's your primary pain point.
Are you talking about Google TV? I haven't used that one, but I've used Chromecast 4k and was not impressed. It doesn't have a remote - or really a TV UI at all - which was my biggest gripe.
We have a two month old high-end Sony TV with Google TV and a second gen 4k Apple TV. They are not really comparable. The Apple TV is super smooth and has great apps. The Google TV, in comparison, is clunky, the apps are meh, and you have to wait ages for major OS updates (while investing TVs, I looked at historical OS updates). Heck even a new TV is on a two year old OS with months old security updates.
But the Apple TV really shines with the integration in the Apple ecosystem. AirPlay, SharePlay, AirPods, HomePod, Apple Music, Apple Arcade, etc. the integration is fantastic.
That's still a bad comparison. You should be comparing a comparably priced stand alone device to the AppleTV. The built-in OS is never as good as decent stand alone devices even on $3000 TVs.
I have a 2019 Shield Pro (so 4 years old) and the 2023 AppleTV 4k. I've had issues with both. My AppleTV definitely does not just work. Apps crash all the time and occasionally requires a restart. I have different issues on the Shield which also occasionally requires restart
Apple TV is inexpensive and you hide it close to the TV. This one costs more than $3000 and you have to wear it on your face all the time. Masks work well only when we're alone or if everybody is wearing one. If not, they use to cancel the wearer from social interactions.
And most importantly, they're not selling you with tracking or ads. You bought a thing, you get a thing. No BS. besides that, the apps all work and have fewer bugs, unlike everything else I've used like it.
It's sort of evolved to the "What's that Chromecast thing again?" for me. (Which I thought was super-underrated.) And I guess I could maybe upgrade my big TV which would be an absolute hassle and is perfectly good for my purposes--and might not even be better at this point. Not a frequently in my hand thing but for ~$100 and really nice, perfectly good.
Apple TV is easily my favourite Apple product. Of all the Apple products it's the one that works flawlessly and gets out of my way. I could give up my Mac and switch to Windows before I would switch to an Apple TV competitor.
> Of all the Apple products it's the one that works flawlessly and gets out of my way.
You probably didn't experience the Atmos bug. For about a year, Atmos audio on the last Apple TV model would just drop out randomly every couple of minutes for like 10 seconds. In some cases it would make a big noise sound blasting through your speakers. They finally solved it in the last big TvOS version but it was painful to experience.
For streaming of Netflix, Disney, etc it's a great device but for Plex it sucks that it doesn't have HDMI audio passthrough.
There was an issue where you couldn't accept accept an updated iCloud TOS without an iPhone. You could dismiss the prompt but it would keep nagging you whenever you turned the device on. I think it's fixed now.
In general, using the Apple TV I get the impression that Apple PMs are probably deep in the Apple bubble and the idea that someone might not have an iPhone is inconceivable to them.
Can you use Netflix, Hulu, etc with it through Android? Or are you stuck with that wimpy remote that looks like a 1st gen ipod shuffle? If that's true, I'll admit you can use it, but that is a painful, dated experience. "click left, click up, click up, click left"
You should try the remote, it’s blazingly fast and makes any other TV feel like junk. You just swipe no clicking needed. If you need to type there’s voice to text built in to the remote to either say or spell what you want.
Yes you can use all of those with the included remote which is easy to use and quite responsive. And all of them (minus Netflix) surface the shows you're watching up to "watch now" so you don't have to dig into any of them to continue watch your shows. I'm not aware of any use of an iphone which makes using the Apple TV easier.
You are high as a kite. AppleTV is one of the greatest things in my househould. The UI is world's beyond whatever ad-filled garbage "smartOS" my TV uses.
I wouldn't really make a statement like the above, and I can't say I necessarily agree with it... that being said, other folks on this thread are kinda missing the point OP made: it's not that Apple TV isn't good. It's that it isn't, and never really was, revolutionary.
It's an arguably best-in-class app-based TV watching experience. But its market share is pretty small years after launch, it hasn't caused much change/adaptation in the market as a whole as a result of existing, and it's not really at the center of any kind of cultural conversation.
I am really curious to learn more details about Vision Pro (like... how much does it weigh?), and would be even more curious to learn about the market fit research Apple must have done to believe there's a place for this device, especially at this price point. The biggest omission for me was the placement of the headset as device on which to view movies, and see pictures of your kids, while at the same time completely sidestepping the question of how you'd do that together with your family, which is how these activities are typically performed in a household with children.
