> The apps are actually mostly identical from experience.
What's bizarre is that the YouTube app on a Google Android TV is markedly worse than YouTube on the Apple TV. For example, switching Google accounts doesn't work properly and takes more clicks even when it works!
Similarly, subtitles in several apps in Google Android TV have eye-searing maximum HDR white brightness, and this cannot be altered. The NetFlix app for example has this issue. On Apple TV the NetFlix app subtitles use a normal level of brightness.
The Google TV UI is 1080p upscaled to 4K so it is blurry. It's also so dark that it is difficult to see during the daytime. This cannot be adjusted. The Apple TV interface in comparison is gorgeous.
My impression is that Google doesn't have a single employee in their entire organisation that cares about product quality or consumer needs in any sense. They just want to control televisions to shove their ads down your throat. They have no business interest in anything else. The second they achieved control and could start selling ads, the mission was accomplished. The rest doesn't matter.
Expecting anything else at this point is a lot like a battered wife saying "deep down he loves me".
>What's bizarre is that the YouTube app on a Google Android TV is markedly worse than YouTube on the Apple TV.
It's a longstanding thing with Google that its iOS apps are better than its Android apps. Google Voice for iOS, for example, got certain functionality years before Android did.
I also just use the Apple TV remote for my tv and it works fine to turn the tv on and off and to adjust the volume, so I never have to touch the TV remote. However, even if I did want to do something like change inputs often I could exclusively use the TV remote and it also works just fine to control the Apple TV.
Mileage may vary. My tv is older but does seem to have good CEC support and the newest Apple TV supports CEC.
Some devices do not support CEC and it seems others only partially support CEC so when that happens one thing, like the power on and off command, doesn’t work and you end up having to use a second remote anyway, which defeats the whole point.
On top of that, people who used the old Apple TV remote with the touchpad might not even realize that there's a new one that fixes all the bad design issues of the old one.
I have an AppleTV connected to my Samsung TV, and almost never use the Samsung remote. The AppleTV remote's on/off button switches everything together (through CEC I believe) so in everyday usage I only ever need a single remote.
What's the second remote for? ATV remote drives everything.
Even if you have, say, an PS5 or Xbox Series X plugged to same TV, the ATV remote screen button causes TV to take over from console and turning on a console controller causes it to take over from ATV.
The apps are actually mostly identical from experience.
I actually use a PS4 at the moment, and it occasionally forces me to update before I can use the TV app, so even more hassle.