“I am no fan of Apple TV, at least not anymore. I did find my third-generation model indispensable, but basically for one reason, and that was Netflix,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “I did not acquire the fourth-generation version because it not only lacked 4K, but I wasn’t overwhelmed by the new features. Having Siri help me find the programming I already knew about wasn’t important. The available games and other apps weren’t impressive either.”
“I haven’t used my Apple TV in more than three months. The reason is explained by the growing number of sets with increasingly usable smart features, in which you can access some streaming apps via the sets themselves. On 4K sets, at least some offer HDR on subset of apps, so there’s no fighting the HDR wars. You have no need of an accessory set-top box,” Steinberg writes. “It didn’t take long to notice that my Apple TV sat unused. I briefly wondered about the 4K version, but why? The services I used, such as they were, came with the set. Although Apple’s user interfaces for TV apps were supposed to be a big deal, the ones provided with SmartCast were just fine.”
“Does Apple have an end game? What about original TV content? But it doesn’t seem likely it’ll be restricted to Apple TV, considering the rest of the ecosystem reaches hundreds of millions of users,” Steinberg writes. “So what’s the end game for Apple TV? If iOS is matching or exceeding the power of a dedicated gaming console, how long will it take for similar processing power to appear on an Apple TV? With the proper gaming controllers, would Apple TV thus reach a point where it is fully competitive with those consoles? Is that part of Apple’s goal of boosting its importance and sales?”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We use Apple TV because we’re all-in on the Apple ecosystem. We could easily use other boxes, dongles, and/or apps on our TVs. If Apple is concerned with moving Apple TV hardware (we’re not convinced they are; they may be more interested in subscriptions to video content), then they’ll tie some or all of their forthcoming high-end TV series to Apple TV. If not, they’ll simply offer their productions more widely and look to sign up subscribers for their new original TV series content. We should know soon enough, by September/October of this year at the latest.
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