I think the current title is mistaken, the twitter user isn't claiming he can't use the Apple TV, he's just saying the message appears.
I encountered the same message when iOS 16 had just released and wasn't available on my iPad yet. It wasn't a blocking message, pressing "OK" was enough to make it go away, and when iPadOS 16 finally came out I was able to clear it.
It's bad UX but the Apple TV can still be used as before.
[twitter OP] This is true. Appears once a day or so, you hit OK. Sometimes during a show you're watching, sometimes while it starts up. Don't know if it becomes blocking some day...
Had something similar while setting up apple TV on a non-apple device for my parents, also had no apple devices.
Turns out, in my case at least, the warning was a little misleading.
It required me to log into their apple / icloud account and accept some terms, I did this with a normal browser (again non-apple) and the warning went away.
May be different in your case as I was setting up a new account for them.
The title is about the prompt requesting another device, not about wether they can't use the Apple TV after dismissing the prompt. So factually the title is right.
I'm with you that it's hard to understood at a glance or without context...which is to me a perfect encapsulation of the whole situation, and what makes the discussion so interesting.
Yes, I'm flagging the submission because of this -- I'm sure tons of people are upvoting based on the totally inaccurate title.
Which I feel weird about because I don't want to flag the story or the tweet or the comments... it's just the title specifically. So I kind of wish there were a way to flag a title. Hopefully it gets dang's attention and he'll handle it.
That attention is easy to get with an email. As to the story, it just becomes a story about an irritating periodic modal which is not very interesting once the title misunderstanding is gone.
To me this feels like a shortcut taken by the tvOS team more than a push for the user to own more Apple devices.
What I'm guessing has happened is that that there's probably no standardized dialog in the tvOS SDK that is suited to a scrolling ToS/EULA screen and in the interest of pushing a release out the door faster an engineer was told to shove this message in an alert and call it a day.
This is almost certainly the correct answer. It might also be a generic dialog populated with a server-provided message.
Apple TV definitely is not intended to require that you own another Apple device. Even the Apple TV+ subscription service is supported on other platforms like Roku (https://www.roku.com/blog/apple-tv).
Apple has never required that you run the latest iOS to use iCloud (see minimum requirements on https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204230). Also, you can definitely accept the iCloud T&C with a Mac, which the error message omits.
It's clearly just a very dumb bug and an inaccurate message, one that will likely be fixed in a few days. Not really worth the #1 slot on HN with 190+ comments.
I have the Apple TV app on my Google TV, and certain actions require me to use my iPad, such as buying films. I guess they didn't want to give Google a cut of their revenue but also couldn't be bothered making a web interface.
Except what? Tried what? What are you responding to?
Edit: If you are responding to the part about accepting T&C on a Mac, I meant in the iCloud system settings panel, and not through the browser. (Though I would also expect that to work. The fact that it doesn't just underscores that this is a dumb bug.)
You may find other things Apple does user hostile, but they are genuinely pretty good about supporting old devices. I'm pretty sure you can even still sync original iPods on Macs released 20 years later.
The iCloud compatibility page linked above shows that it still supports devices released 13 years ago. The latest iOS is compatible with devices from 2017, and regular security updates are released for devices going back to 2015 -- that's about half the time iPhone has been on the market.
Especially if you believe that they exhibit "declining quality of software", this is a more rational explanation for the error message than a sudden, massive shift in update strategy to require everyone be running the latest software release.
There are certain things Apple does that are user hostile like pushing people to buy cloud storage by neglecting their local backup and local syncing user experiences, but planned obsolescence is definitely not one of them. If you are accusing that person of being biased for Apple then ai am here to tell you that you are definitely being biased again.
> There are certain things Apple does that are user hostile like pushing people to buy cloud storage by neglecting their local backup and local syncing user experiences, but planned obsolescence is definitely not one of them.
They've had their issues there too with irreplaceable batteries (remember this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idVmnvcQnLg), slowing people's older devices to encourage them to buy new ones (I'm aware that apple's got another more "helpful" sounding excuse for that, just as they're aware their actions would drive more upgrades regardless), and using pentalobe screws to make repairing older devices more difficult. They've earned their reputation.
> slowing people's older devices to encourage them to buy new ones (I'm aware that apple's got another more "helpful" sounding excuse for that, just as they're aware their actions would drive more upgrades regardless)
There’s definitely a basis in truth for that, though. It’s not just an excuse.
Years ago when I was dead broke and trying to get my foot in the door as a dev, I was using an iPhone 4 with a worn out battery running a version of iOS prior to the throttling being implemented, and it would frequently shut down entirely with even mild spikes in power requirements at 35% battery and under. It actually made cut me off in the middle of a couple of interview calls and nearly made me miss a couple of others. Had the phone throttled itself to prevent power spikes that wouldn’t have happened.
It's not a helpful sounding excuse. The media blew up that narrative because people felt their phone become slower over time for various reasons, but the reasons your phone would slow down would be a combination of several other factors:
1) Device might get slower due to having more stuff on it (larger indexes, less space, etc)
2) Battery degradation causing throttling of CPU
3) New OS requiring more computing power to run new features making your old phone feel slower.
Saying Apple intentionally slowed down older devices is disingenuous. Yes they did slow down old devices, but only because old devices were more likely to be devices with degraded batteries. What is a fair criticism is that Apple didn't communicate to customers that simply replacing the batteries could fix the issue, or maybe deleting some stuff from your phone.
> Saying Apple intentionally slowed down older devices is disingenuous.
They admitted to exactly that. They were fined millions in euros for it, and paid over half a billion dollars in fines and settlements in the US alone. Apple clearly wasn't confident their justifications would hold in courts, just as they didn't convince regulators overseas.
I'll agree that if they had been honest with users about what they were doing this wouldn't have been an issue at all, but they kept it a secret and even if it genuinely wasn't the original or entire purpose for slowing the devices the people working at apple were smart enough to have realized that slowing the devices would incentivize more users to upgrade and that not disclosing the truth would prevent users from solving the problem themselves by replacing the battery and removing that same incentive.
> Apple devices have the longest usable lifespans out there
Are you serious? This is Apple policy:
> Products are considered vintage when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 5 and less than 7 years ago.
> Products are considered obsolete when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 7 years ago. Monster-branded Beats products are considered obsolete regardless of when they were purchased.
> Apple discontinues all hardware service for obsolete products, with the sole exception of Mac laptops that are eligible for an additional battery-only repair period. Service providers cannot order parts for obsolete products.
If you suggested, that you cannot use 10 years old PC (and I actually have one Thinkpad that old here), you would be laughed out of the room.
> and best resell value to boot, which is also indicative of their lifespan
That's what some users think; up until they try to do that. Then the reality kicks in.
Even if the Apple TV can't handle the TOS for some reason there's no reason it shouldn't be possible on any device with a browser rather than something with iOS or iPadOS. That's the part that's really ridiculous.
Log in to your Apple account in a browser and accepts the terms. Log out of the tv and log back in. Same thing happened to me. The original poster is mistaken.
It's bigger than just this -- I have Apple devices, and I still can't get the message to go away. This is a bug. In general, upgrading to the latest TV OS has been a serious step backwards in terms of usability.
(I should note that clicking on the remote causes the annoying message to disappear, then repeat once, then goes away for...a day? Long enough to watch whatever I wanted to watch, anyway.)
Last time I checked a parent needed their own Apple device to set up app limits, downtime, accept/reject app installation requests on child's device. Thanks Apple. Now I have an option to give my kid unrestricted access to their device and to the whole Internet, or buy another IPhone just because my child uses Apple product.
Actually there are many ways to set parental controls on device and lock them with a passcode or you could use third party solution that use the Screen Time API but are compatible with Android.
It literally is though. The link "Learn more about Parental Controls" takes you here https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201304 which walks you through doing all the setup.
That walks me through doing things on an iPhone I don't own, what am I missing? The familylink.google.com page lets me manage my kids' devices directly on that webpage, which is the feature I would like Apple to have.
People have said you can manage it on the kids' device directly by logging in with your AppleId, but that doesn't help me if my kid is out and messages me asking me to allow an app or give her an extra half hour of screentime or something.
You do it on the iOS device you’re trying to set screen time limits on. If you don’t own an iOS device, you’re not going to be setting limitations on an iOS device.
The disconnect in your answers probably come from each other's expectations.
Parent mentions Google family link, whih can be setup and managed from litteraly everywhere. There's an iOS app and a fully functional website, so you can have no other android device than your kids, and still control everything.
Your kid can be visiting their grand parents and ask you to authorize some purchase or extra screen time, you'll be able to do it from your Windows computer.
That's the standard iOS' parental control is compared to.
Right, that was the point of the parent comment that started this, I wish there was a web app to do this like Google has. And someone replied saying there is, and linking to instructions on how to use an iOS device, which is exactly not what the original comment was about.
Well I have another iPhone and it's not much better, it's frequent that app install requests will get lost for hours. And there's no obvious way to go look for pending notifications, you need to wait for it to show up again.
Parenting controls still have a long way to go on Apple devices, but still it's miles ahead of other stuff (looking at you Netflix/Disney Plus).
IIRC you can sign in with an adult iCloud account then set all those same restrictions, protecting them behind an unlock code. The separate child iCloud accounts are handy if you do have multiple devices (remote management of those permissions is nice, and app store content sharing is nice) but if you just have a single one for your kid, that's an option. Adult iCloud account, enable restrictions with an unlock code. Unlock it when you need to manage the device or use it yourself.
But, IDK, maybe they got rid of that feature. Definitely used to be able to do that.
Bit hard when its the dad thats non-existant in the kids life buying them a iphone @ 12. Restrict the usage of that and see how well your relationship with your kid holds up.
Had this happen to us, my partners kids. Its a subtle attempt to destabilize and subvert her authority as parent figure even though old mate isn't even around, hasn't been for years and still is an abusive S*t. We got forced to buy a iphone in order to put parent restrictions on. Its shits as. I hate apple. Company does bulk crap that enables abusers and does piss all to prevent it or be like hey...maybe this is a ethically shit thing to implement. Maybe its gonna cause a whole host of people grief. Don't even get me started on apple air tags.
There are many reasons why it's not that simple. My kid may be old enough to make the decision on which phone to buy, but not old enough to have unrestricted access to it. I may be divorced, and the device might have been given to them buy another parent. The device might have necessary features that are missing from other non-Apple device.
Yep. I have a general 'no Apple' rule in my house, but my stepdaughter came home with an iPhone from her dad. It wasn't done with evil intent, but it got her stuck in the Apple ecosystem, and it's disjoint from the rest of us.
Why wouldn't I? While I'm not surprised by Apple's shennenigans, I haven't foreseen this. I can spin up servers, manage smart home, check my car's fuel through browser, surely I should be able to set daily time limit on my kid's phone through browser too.
Kids can be awful. Parents who don't have the income to buy even one of the newest iThing will stretch themselves to buy one for their kid if they think it'll help them fit in.
These phones are sometimes (always?) preloaded with ton of shady apps. I definitely don't trust my kid to read EULA's and understand dangers of agreeing to random permission pop-ups. Even if I pre-screen all apps before giving the device to my kid,
each system update may install new apps and children will definitely not wait for daddy to come from work to review them.
Price, probably. Children are often quick to break fragile things like modern phones. But honestly, in my experience every parent I know buys their kids the same phone they use in terms of the OS.
Who suggested buying your child an android when you don't have one? When somebody asks why you drink bleach, it doesn't imply that you should drink motor oil.
This kind of policy is why I refuse to buy apple. My 14yr old daughter has an iPhone and I cannot administer it as a parent without owning an iPhone or similar device myself. A basic Web UI is all that's needed to access the screen time settings, but nope. It's clearly by design, you're either all in with them, or they dont want you.
If you could administer it from the phone, it would be possible for an enterprising child to remove those same restrictions on that device (how many stories have we heard of kids removing the parental control software from a computer?)
If you could administer it from the phone, it could be used to partially lock you out of your own device if done by a 3rd party (loan to a friend, and you get it back and you can't use any of the other things on it).
If you could administer it from the web, someone else on the web could use it to lock your out of your own device.
---
Having one device owned by the parent managing another device owned by the child ensures that only the parent is managing the child's device and furthermore that only a set of devices that have been set up under the same Apple ID family can be administered.
If you can administer it from a webUI that doesn't have authentication back to another device you hold with the keys for managing that Apple account, then so can an attacker.
For another phone, yes - that would work... but it needs to be one that holds the private keys for the apple account.
Those keys are held by a part of the apple hardware that prevents them from accidentally leaking outside. Because of how "find my device" works, leaking those keys would allow a 3rd party to track you (or access your stored secrets associated with your account) - and so Apple has been very careful with the hardware and software securing those keys.
From Apple's perspective, the ability to administer the family plan from a web UI is inherently risky and possibly privacy violating - neither are things they want to let go of. Part of the brand value is that it isn't risky to use their devices and that they make the privacy of the people them something that those people trust.
And so, consider, that you're asking Apple to allow someone to log into a website and use a password (possibly compromised) to restrict the functionality that a given device has without being able to verify back (send apple verify codes to devices held by that same account) that the person making the changes is one who should be able to do it.
Apple allow me to buy stuff with my apple account on other devices, apple music, iTunes, etc. So clearly if I'm giving them money they are just fine with non apple devices. All I want to do here is change thr screen time allowance on my kids phone. Its totally possible, and security is clearly not the reason if they allow 3rd party devices for financial transactions.
How well do they work / support bluetooth standards compared to other brands bluetooth headphones? I'd like to get these for a family member who wants new wireless earbuds, but not if it's as sub-par experience vs buying another brand for Android users
They are sub-par if they aren't embracing the ecosystem. You can't use most of the features, and the lack of multipoint Bluetooth becomes painfully apparent. Also, you tend to get broader codec support with Android-targeted headphones/earbuds.
Consider Beats if you want better cross-platform support while maintaining the same audio characteristics.
That's just for the hyper-precise location that will lead you around your house to your couch cushions. A general map location doesn't require that chip (my phone has it but my AirPods are old and don't have the corresponding feature).
That's for the Secure Enclave to ensure that the private keys used to identify the device aren't leaked (which would allow a 3rd party to passively track someone).
I mean...AirPods don't have GPS or a way to upload their location, so yes. The location shown on the map is the last place one of your devices (or, in recent times, anyone's iOS device) last saw it. That's usually good enough to tell "I left them at home" vs "I left them in that café"
It is through the iPhone that the AirPods are bound to the Apple ID and thus able to properly encrypt the "here I am" packets.
From the Wired article:
> In a background phone call with WIRED following its keynote, Apple broke down that privacy element, explaining how its "encrypted and anonymous" system avoids leaking your location data willy nilly, even as your devices broadcast a Bluetooth signal explicitly designed to let you track your device. The solution to that paradox, it turns out, is a trick that requires you to own at least two Apple devices. Each one emits a constantly changing key that nearby Apple devices use to encrypt and upload your geolocation data, such that only the other Apple device you own possesses the key to decrypt those locations.
> ...
> When you first set up Find My on your Apple devices—and Apple confirmed you do need at least two devices for this feature to work—it generates an unguessable private key that's shared on all those devices via end-to-end encrypted communication, so that only those machines possess the key.
> The stronger privacy comes via end-to-end encryption, but rather than simply having a key that can be stolen, “Find My” requires a second Apple device to hold the decryption key. Owners who only have a single Apple device in their possession will have to settle for the older and less secure methods of verification.
It is possible that AirPods don't support the older encryption method.
It's unfortunate that Apple can't figure out how to enable the algorithm they designed themselves on Android devices so the second device doesn't need to be an iPhone. I'm sure those smart engineers will figure out their own protocol choices some day if we just give them enough time.
If you had a third party android device that made it, if those eyes were compromised you would have passive tracking of that individual. Consider that for a dissident in an authoritarian country.
It's not a "can Apple design a protocol that does that?" but rather "if the device was compromised what would be the implications?"
Apple is perfectly willing to forego privacy and security if an authoritarian country demands it, see China for the most well known example.
If a user trusts Google with their phone (and likely their location history and other such data) then I don't see why Apple's customers would care if Google would be able to track them. The American government already asks Google for all devices in the vicinity of a crime, it's not like someone's headphones won't be found another way.
Any hardware token storage can be compromised, pretending Apple's chips made in China are any different from Qualcom's chips made in China in that regard is useless.
I don't believe for a second that nation state spying is even remotely related to Apple deciding to cripple their products if you use them together with something they didn't make.
You need to have a Mac with the appropriate Secure Enclave hardware and running the latest OS.
> After you set up your AirPods with one Apple device (like your iPhone), your AirPods connect automatically to your other Apple devices where you’re signed in with the same Apple ID.
Note the use of "like" - not exclusively.
Pair AirPods with Mac
Before you begin, make sure your Mac has the latest version of macOS installed.
Open the case with your AirPods inside, then hold it next to your Mac.
Press and hold the setup button on the back of the AirPods case for about five seconds, or until the status light flashes white.
On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Bluetooth.
In the list of devices, select your AirPods, then click Connect
Note that the pairing of the AirPods to the Mac is done at the system level - not something that a user can run because it reaches into that Secure Enclave. Thus, to do this, you need a Mac that is running the latest OS. It also might be restricted to certain hardware ( different feature specs with https://support.apple.com/guide/security/secure-enclave-sec5... )
Related - is there a way I can download pictures from an Iphone to a Linux computer locally? Not interested in using any form of cloud intermediary. Evidently, if I plug a cable from an Iphone into a computer, enter my password, this still represents a threat if it is not overseen by iTunes. The device is in my hand, connected to the intended destination, and it is non-trivial to retrieve my data.
Just absurd behavior from Apple.
Edit: I should add -the IPhone does mount. For instance, it lets me view my Firefox Downloads folder or VLC folder to which you could move media in and out of the device. However, access to my personal photos is a step too far.
Strange - you can connect an iPhone directly to a windows computer with no iTunes around. I wonder why that doesn’t work on Linux.
In any case, I think there are apps around that make the iPhone serve a web interface to your files on your local network. Would that work? No cloud intermediary involved.
I did see posts that there were applications which might function as the local webserver route. Lacking any alternatives, that is the option I am likely to pursue, but I hate installing additional applications. Especially if the only purpose is to workaround a deliberate Apple-knows-best decision. Which ultimately leaves me less secure than if Apple provided a first-party solution for local file transfer.
For anyone following along, I am on PopOS. Installed the package (apt install ifuse), rebooted, and now it mounts like every other USB storage device on the planet.
Also Apple TV (the software/app) will not let you cast to a smart tv/ Google chrome/ Roku etc. you have to workaround it by casting it from the browser version and casting through chrome.
You do not have to look at any market data to conclude that is unacceptably user hostile - I don't mean "acceptable" as in financially, I mean that it's unconscionable.
I mean... I am. It's hostile to the user, period. It doesn't matter if 99% of AppleTv owners have another device, it's still user hostile.
I suppose it might not be "insane", just malicious, if the intent is to force some amount of the N% of people with just an AppleTv to buy another apple product. Then it wouldn't be insane or stupid, but it would be scummy as hell.
I had to move my old iPhone 7 to trash box and move to something else back in the days.
One day it started to ask to my iCloud password every time i wanted to download something. Not just the password, but the password multiple times and security questions, finishing that flow did not make the prompt go away, essentially trapping me inside some kind of never-ending auth loop which was not going away even with full factory reset. The support at the time was not answering any questions, leaving me with generic responses that i need to go thru that flow.
Apple is king of bad UX loops and frustrating experiences in software, don't know why they got hardware so right, but the software is magnitudes behind
I almost ignore any comments about Apple and prices or to do with spending money. They're a business of course they're going to do that... surprisingly it leaves very little opinion about Apple if you filter those out.
This is an interesting failure because AppleTVs are common in conference rooms (configured in conference room mode!). It wouldn't make sense for such a setup to even have an icloud account associated with it.
Well it makes it trivial to throw a display up on the big screen (either share screen or second display) if you have a mac or idevice. Of course if you can't operate it it's the opposite of trivial.
The worst case is someone from IT uses their own iphone to set it up, then leaves the company. I'm not sure you can even reset to factory settings without talking to the device.
This is not so hard to believe as the OG ipod was to help boost sales of Macbooks, which were plummeting in sales. A lot of "fashion" apple devices are generally limited to using iPhones like Apple Watch and Airpods. It doesn't really make sense to buy those unless you use an iPhone already. Ran into this problem with me wife who uses a Samsung. I wanted to use watch walkietalkie so i just had to let her use my old iPhone to get it working. Sadly the walkietalkie feature is just trash.
I recently ran into a similar thing with their streaming service, Apple TV Plus. Started a trial and wanted to add a profile for my wife. Browsed around the site for how to do that but couldn't find anything, so I googled and found apparently the only way to do it is to use the "family sharing" app on an Apple device. Apparently while you can subscribe and stream via the web, you can only add family profiles on an Apple device. For some reason.
In a similar vein, I can't use Siri on the EcoBee thermostat without also owning a HomePod. It's either not a technical limitation or a very poorly conceived one.
I just wanted to get Apple music going, and had to jump through hoops. In the end I added an iCloud account to the macmini, and now whenever I go to use Apple music/access my apple account on another device, I have some ridiculous process of having to authenticate via the Mac mini. I also have a phone number registered, but it appears to count for nowt.
Details: I own a Mac & no other Apple devices. My TV is an LG. I have the Apple streaming service on the TV, purely because they have some pretty good shows (Ted Lasso, Separation, Acapulco).
Is there something an Apple TV device would do for me? I'm not seeing it.
A lot of people prefer standalone streaming boxes over integrated "smarts" because they tend to run more smoothly due to having vastly more powerful hardware and tend to receive software updates for a much longer period (see Samsung smart TVs where features stop working in 1-2 years). A dedicated streaming box also sometimes makes it easier to cut out the egregious data harvesting that smart TV makers employ to subsidize their TVs (though Roku and Amazon Fire devices are still data vacuums).
My personal setup is a 2018 Sony TV with an Apple TV 4K. The smarts on the TV aren't the worst, but the Apple TV handily beats it in fluidity, so the TV has never been connected to the internet and never will be.
Apple TVs make convenient AirPlay streaming targets, not sure how AirPlay support is on smart TVs.
Seamless integration with Apple pay and your Apple account, if you have that.
You can use your iPhone (or iPad?) as an input device for the Apple TV. Very handy for typing in passwords or whatever. Would not apply to you obviously. Can also pair a BT keyboard with the AppleTV for the same purposes, FWIW.
IIRC Apple TVs don't collect the insane amounts of information that smart TVs collect.
Apple TVs might have better interfaces as well, though that's obviously subjective. All the smart TV interfaces I've used have been pretty trash. But maybe they're better now, I dunno.
A media player like nvidia shield or apple tv is just a lot more performant and gets updated for ages. TV firmware mostly gets abandoned when the next generation releases. The interface gets laggy and slow very quickly.
Also, some people have Plex/Kodi setups with a NAS. Not fun to try to play UHD Bluray remuxes on a TV directly.
The Apple TV has a nice interface, has up-to-date apps for all services, will continue to be updated for years, has various apps that might be useful to you, and can even do fairly impressive casual gaming.
If your LG interface is not irritating you and has all the software support you need, then no.
Is there an LLM trained on that Tech Emails twitter account? It'd be amusing to see A simulation of Steve Jobs writing an email with the subject line "Setting up new Apple TV, left phone at home"
They have a generous return policy. Buy an iPhone, sign in with it to accept the terms and get your AppleTV working, then erase the iPhone and return it for a full refund.
I have the same issue with any Apple services, Apple wants me to use iOS device (I faced this issue when tried to upgrade the Apple Music to bundle with other services).
Here's an article about Apple dropping support for youtube playback. Part of the reason I bought the AppleTV was because it had support for youtube playback. Then they announced it was going away, and then they yanked the support, and then they announced I could buy a new AppleTV to get back what I used to have.
Apple discontinued the Airport units, yes. but they still work. I have one here right now.
No, Apple did not drop support for YouTube playback. Google/YouTube stopped developing the app for the older versions. This was 100% on Google, not Apple. Not sure why you claimed that Apple did this when that is factually incorrect.
The thing is, I can rage against google for that but the net effect is the same: I can't trust that what I buy from Apple will stay. If Apple cared, they could have made the app themselves with their rife resources, but they are complacent with the bait and switch. I'm done with them and their other shady practices, from scanning photos for content, to logging peoples' locations, colluding to raise ebook prices, discriminating against android users in sms groups, software upgrades that slow down the device, pushing people to discard otherwise fine hardware, poor treatment of families with children, smoking voiding their warranties. I'm all done with them.
What model of airport do you have? I assume it's a newer one than mine. Here is evidence of their blase attitude toward obsoleting working equipment. They deliver a an implicit threat by saying:
"If your router is 6-7 years old or older, it is probably time to consider replacing the product, especially if you are interested in up to date security."
They are worth 2 trillion. Our only hope was Europe to regulate them but now the corrupt American empire has started a war there so they will no option but to be lenient to the US corporations.
Our best option now is to avoid funding the terrorist economy when possible.
It's interesting how the responses basically split into two camps:
- the "just buy an iPhone" and "you've brought it on you, what did you expect" camp
- the "Apple fix this" camp
At the point I'm reading this, the first camp represents the vast majority of the responses.
That's interesting regarding Apple's ongoing lawsuits and regulaory pressure. For most people Apple domination and dictating the rules is basically a fact of life I guess.
Will that change when Apple's forced to open its ecosystem and bring more complaints that were kept silent, or will they be booing as their champion is getting "bullied" into compliance ?
I have and iPhone, a Mac, and an Apple TV and I'm definitely in the "fix it" camp.
There are other annoyances too - Apple really pushes you to add a payment method when creating a new iCloud account for some reason and when using an iPhone without a sim you get a "notification" badge on Settings.app that won't go away. There's also now countless "Set Up Later" prods in the first time boot up flow of iOS. No, I don't want to enable Siri. Not now, not later, not ever.
I’m fully in the apple ecosystem but agree that a person shouldn’t be forced to buy another device to use the device at hand. The ecosystem should be a nice to have and not a necessity (although Apple Watch might be an exception, given how much it relies on the iPhone for its functionality).
The fact that they were able to use their Apple TV before this TOS prompt seems like this blocking TOS prompt was a miss on Apple’s part and they should fix it.
Until 2 months ago, they forced you to have an Apple Watch to be able to watch Fitness+ videos, even if you were already paying for the Apple One bundle that includes Fitness+.
There was no technical reason for this requirement, as Fitness+ is just videos, and even if you had an Apple Watch, you did not need to be wearing it to watch the videos.
While we're on the topic but silly Fitness+ restrictions: Each family member needs to have their OWN iPad to use it with Fitness+.
For example, I have an iPad + Apple Watch, I can use it with Fitness+. My wife however, with her own Apple Watch, cannot use MY iPad for Fitness+. Instead, she needs a whole other iPad set up as her, or it cannot "see" her Apple Watch/has no concept of her.
Family Sharing is under-baked. Fitness+ is also under-baked. The fact they have zero interactive fitness games on Fitness+ is frankly embarrassing, I had fitness equipment 20 years ago which had interactive games tied to your workouts, and Apple with the best programmers in the world, 100x more powerful hardware, and better development toolkits has developed nothing beyond video-recordings of studio workouts.
Actually the fitness-gaming ecosystem is frankly is a terrible state. Currently, Nintendo or Meta are the leaders in spite of them doing little to try.
Sure! It'll only help make app development more accessible. I also think I should be able to write code for my own iOS device, sign it myself and run it on my own device without paying them $99/year since I "purchased" the iOS device.
>but agree that a person shouldn’t be forced to buy another device to use the device at hand.
They shouldn't be, but that's the reality whether we like it or not. We all know by now, or should if we haven't been living under a rock, how Apple operates and how hostile it is to people who don't want to be fully in the Apple ecosystem. So it's the user's responsibility to make better choices and avoid Apple products altogether if they don't want to be fully in the Apple ecosystem.
It's just like many other bad things in life. We can wish all we want that things were different, talk about how it shouldn't be this way, how people shouldn't become serial murderers, etc., but bad things happen and some people (and companies) are just evil, so we have to deal with that instead of wishing it was different.
> At the point I'm reading this, the first camp represents the vast majority of the responses.
That's because despite it having gone from a niche company in the early 2000s to one of the biggest and most powerful in the entire world, it's still a cult in many aspects. Apple is blatantly anti-consumer on so many fronts but gets away with it all the time, and often times their own customers are the biggest bolsters to their behavior. People defend the 30% Apple tax, or the inability to install other OSes, or the screwing of Android users on SMS, etc...all the time. Things other companies simply don't get away with.
To be fair, owning an apple tv and only an apple tv is not a scenario that I would expect, so I’m not surprised apple’s engineers simply didn’t conceive of this situation occurring. Occam’s razor would lead me to assume this wasn’t malice on apple’s part.
It should be obvious to any product manager or engineer that a product is going to have buyers who don't have anything else from the product line. That's a thing that happens.
That's assuming Apple TV engineers are living in their bubble and no product/design people validate the screens showned to users (including wording and presentation). Then allowing a product to be updated and maintained in this conditions brings further questions on management and how they see their users.
You might as well be right, but I'm not sure it paints Apple in a better light.
I don't think it's this person's fault or that they should have seen it coming but I am curious why someone with no other apple devices would buy what I consider to be a secondary apple accessory. I just assumed (and I guess apple did too?) that no one who doesn't already have an apple device would buy an Apple TV. If I didn't have apple computers and an iPhone I don't think I would see the benefit over a google tv device.
Anyway, this is a QA fuckup I would guess. Someone should have asked the simple question, what if they don't have access to any such devices?
I wouldn't really call the Apple TV a secondary Apple accessory. The only thing another Apple device brings to the table is Airplay (and I guess slightly better keyboard input) hardly necessary when all the streaming services and games can be used with the remote or a controller. You can still buy iTunes videos on a Windows PC to watch on the Apple TV too. It's basically a fancy Roku or FireTV neither of which require another device.
As of a year ago or so, Roku now supports AirPlay, which allowed me to finally decommission my 3rd Gen Apple TV. I had no interest in the overpriced 4th Gen.
> I am curious why someone with no other apple devices would buy what I consider to be a secondary apple accessory.
I might be the weird one, but a device you stick to your TV to watch contents doesn't feel like an accessory to me.
The market competitors are roku, fire TV, Google TV(is it still called that ?), and plex boxes. Playstation and XBox would be a stretch, but there's overlap. None of them will force you to get ropped into an ecosystem outside of creating an account and paying for the content.
That's what I mean I guess: the only reason to get the apple one is as part of their ecosystem. It's surprising to me to see someone who seems to be choosing it for the UX.
Each of these devices have their own flaws, and I'm not sure how well they deal with Apple exclusives (Ted Lasso etc.).
I think Apple made an effort to have apps on other platforms, but there will also be content providers that are only in the TV AppStore. Also, Amazon will have its content everywhere, and I don't remember any Google exclusives.
All in all, I wouldn't be surprised if TV buffs chose the Apple TV as their gateway to exclusive content, even if they have no other devices in the ecosystem.
I can almost guarantee this won't happen. Apple will do everything possible to stick to the wording of any laws and regulations, while making the actual process as complex as possible. "I'm afraid to pair with an android phone, you need to take your Apple TV into an Apple Store, where they can generate a pairing code, which will then be valid until the next update before requiring re-pairing, which must again be done at an Apple Store"
Apple doesn't really affect me at all, except inasmuch as other companies who I actually do buy from copy their obnoxious ideas.
I don't really care what they do, and none of it surprises me it's just Apple doing what everyone already expects them to do, but they are influential enough that I want there to be some regulation, so their way of doing things doesn't take over.
How does this not violate the Sherman Antitrust act under illegal tying of services and goods?
> (From Wikipedia) Success on a tying claim typically requires proof of four elements:
(1) two separate products or services are involved; (AppleTV and other Apple phone/iPad, as demanded by the tied product in question)
(2) the purchase of the tying product is conditioned on the additional purchase of the tied product; (Yes, and forced only after using said hardware for its claimed fitness of playing shows)
(3) the seller has sufficient market power in the market for the tying product; (QED)
(4) a not insubstantial amount of interstate commerce in the tied product market is affected. (again, QED)
Not sure if "market power" is strictly synonymous with "market share" though. It is probably possible to argue they have much more power than the 3% would suggest.
You could even argue that "power" in this context is actually framed around an idea of latent market share - the amount of market share that can be achieved outside of normal competitive means.
But yes, in general this would underscore the criticism of US competition policy that it's designed to close the gate after the horse already bolted.
I could see that. However the only flaw with that graph is that the scope is world-wide. I believe the Sherman Antitrust Act cares primarily about US operations.
[OP here] I filed a thing for them and this person will get it in front of the right people. I have more faith in that more than generic Apple support anyway.
Having worked at Apple I feel like this is a mortal risk they are taking. The Apple Watch could be the next big thing that replaces the smartphone, except they require an iPhone to use it. So instead of taking a short term hit and moving with the times they greedily hold on to their money maker and risk a competitor bringing out a standalone version and tanking the entire thing. Likewise the Apple TV is a great product and could dominate its category if it didn't require an iPhone.
I gifted an Apple Watch this Christmas. I checked their site and saw that an iPhone was needed, but somehow thought any up-to-date iOS device would work. Since you can set up the watch for a family member (who doesn't have an iPhone) it has to work, right? Got the newest iPad? F*k you, buy and iPhone. That was a disappointing gift, I can tell you that.
There is absolutely no reason to impose such a limit. I don't understand it. However, I will never buy or recommend another Apple product ever again.
I don't like this mandatory tie between the two Apple product lines any more than you do, but as an FYI nit on terminology:
> somehow thought any up-to-date iOS device would work. [...] Got the newest iPad?
iOS 12 was the last version of iOS where that name applied to iPad as well as iPhone. Starting with version 13, the version of the operating system for iPhone had been the only one called iOS, with the iPad OS called iPadOS.
So, yes, I suspect that any up to date iOS device does work, through the magic of terminology peculiarities, unless currently supported Apple Watches don't support all currently supported iPhones (I haven't checked if that is the case).
As for the operating system for Apple Watch, that has always been called watchOS.
This feels like an Apple problem - their iOS variants being unified is a reasonable expectation from consumers and, additionally, the fact that they EoL devices so aggressively means that unless you're a cutting edge Apple follower a lot of their tech simply doesn't work together.
If Apple wants to sit there and say "Welp, buy the latest iPhone" they're free to do that - but the fact that there is user confusion is completely on them for making their products so inter-incompatible.
I do often edit my comments to improve wording, but I think in this case I had the disclaimer right in the first draft. I could be misremembering. I am certainly no fan of this product tie between Apple Watch and iPhone.
There's not much nuance to "iPad doesn't run on iOS, it runs on iPadOS". You need an iOS device to setup an iWatch. The nuance only applies to how that came to be, historically and strategically.
The above doesn't constitute support for Apple's policies.
I belive everyone entering an Apple store should complete a test on their insight into Apple nomenclature and product history. Those who fail should f*ck off!
Yea, that does suck. They are clear in their documentation when it says "Apple Watch Ultra, Apple Watch Series 8, and Apple Watch SE require an iPhone 8 or later with iOS 16 or later."
But it's buried in a giant page of fine print that you'd have to know to go looking for. Of course if you know to look for it, then you probably don't need the information.
Anyways, I agree that it sucks to have such a limit to JUST an iPhone. It would be nice if it worked with an iPad as well (which is really you're only other option). But the watch, watch app and others make implicit assumptions. For example your iPhone app, which is separate from the iPad app, also has the support for the watch built in (aka the watch specific apps). The iPad apps would currently not have this, because that isn't how it works. Could that change? Sure. But I would guess there are a lot of other implicit assumptions made that we're not aware of.
Lets be honest... Apple would be happy to sell you a watch AND an iPad. You'd be very likely to eventually get the Phone as well. But realistically that's not the direction most people go. They get a Phone first, then maybe they get the watch or iPad.
Hm, some context here is that Apple Watch apps were — until recently — actually iPhone apps. The iPhone app was treated kind of like if you wanted to make a widget for your app, except it appeared on your wrist rather than your springboard. The whole app architecture really tightly coupled the products.
This has started to change with “set up for family” watches (which is mostly so you can give a kid a watch and no phone) but there are still lots of weird edge cases there.
I do personally wish they were standalone. If they were I would have gifted one to my father in law this Christmas. Instead he got a Garmin.
Being an iPhone + Watch + AirPods user I can say the exact opposite. The Watch is the perfect iPhone companion but it can’t replace it. Its screen is so small it makes me want to complete interactions as quick as possible. I love leaving the iPhone at home when I go for a walk and still listening music and podcasts, but it’s something that requires minimal interactions. Receiving notifications is great, but replying? terrible.
Imho Apple should be a bit braver when designing the Watch UI. Put an always accessible now playing widget, let apps create more complex widget etc. (but still, I am thinking about glanceable informations or single tap actions).
And I didn’t mention the fact the iPhone has cameras and it’s not physically attached to you.
For people who want to use phone less (no social media etc, like what I'm doing now HNing at breakfast) Watch alone could replace the phone function (can call, take calls, message) and a couple other devices (map, audio player) completely.
This is funny. I am yet to meet a single person with a max-size iPhone, and I met plenty iphone users in the past 4 years. People with little money can't justify the upgrade, people with money don't need to play silly games or watch TV shows on the go when they have iPads, iMacs and comfort of their home/car/private office. So I don't think screen size matters.
But using watch for everything is not about screen size. It's about eliminating circumstances that perpetuate bad habits. Like yoga and meditation and other self-care this is only on an upwards trend, there is a huge unexplored market where people could literally do all things they used to have multiple devices for just with their watch without being tempted to get dopamine rush in toxic social media everywhere they go, and handling the productive stuff on their tablet or laptop. The only reason it's not explored is bc Apple wants to sell more devices with screens.
I am yet to meet a single person with a max-size iPhone
Well, I agree there. It seems like they are mostly owned by people who carry purses because they are too big for pockets. But it is also true that you almost never see people with smaller SE iPhones or mini Android phones.
The overwhelming preference is not "the biggest screen possible" but is clearly "the biggest screen you can reasonably fit into a pants pocket."
Like yoga and meditation and other self-care this is
only on an upwards trend
That's a funny observation. What it really highlights to me is how personal peoples' preferences are here.
To me a smartwatch is way more intrusive than a smartphone. It's something that's always on my wrist, always on my body. Versus a smartphone which I can mute and leave in my pocket where it doesn't really tempt me.
But, I must stress, I realize this is personal and others might find the opposite to be true. Above all else I am glad that folks are considering what's best for their mental health.
Watch can be intrusive, then you silence it. You can't do much with it except all that matters (emergency calls or messages, music, audiobooks, podcasts).
You can mute the phone but you still know you have a (toxic social media) dopamine dose and whole portable office in your pocket. I type this on a phone during breakfast again, if I didn't have a phone I wouldn't be doing it.
Good habits are as much about putting yourself into situations where you are not tempted as they are about willpower
Nothing's replacing the Smartphone unless it's got a camera in the same ballpark of quality and usability. Several use cases for a smartphone—including a couple major ones—don't really work with a watch, mostly for camera-related reasons. If it's not good as a camera, it's also not good as a scanner replacement, not good for remote check deposit, not good for things like the Measure app (or any other AR stuff), and so on.
For a while I thought I'd go all-watch if they ever released a standalone watch, but paying more attention to how I use my phone, there's just no way. I'd just have to buy a separate camera, then I'd have two things to carry, plus it'd be much worse (since it's not like standalone cameras tend to have e.g. built-in text recognition). I think that's likely true for most people.
Cameras are doubtlessly vital to some users, but almost entirely superfluous to others. I can count the number of times per year I use the camera on my phone with just my fingers.
I agree with you. I guess the question is the overlap / and or market.
I don’t know about anything at the scale of Apple.
But my simplified imagination of any product is: focus on core customer/demo, once you’ve captured a significant portion, expand.
But I also wonder if at apples level, if the customer is “everyone” which I always think of as folly for most business.
Example (which may partially disprove this): I know some people in developing countries, who consider an iPad an essential device. (They have a cheap android phone) and for them, it’s much more valuable than a computer.
(Though, the people I am thinking of are “high” earners in their country, making 20-40k a year. Even if an iPad is almost double the cost.)
I think for in the range of 98% of smartphone users the phone is the least useful feature. In truth they’re often really crap phones and my old flip phone had better all around phone quality and utility. But at this point I feel annoyed when I have to speak to a person. If I were meant to speak to people I wouldn’t have been born an engineer.
> I think for in the range of 98% of smartphone users the phone is the least useful feature.
Part of the reason this number's so high is that if a phone feature is really important to you, you're liable to get a standalone VoIP line and a headset to go with whatever handset you have rather than using a smartphone.
I don't think we're that small of a minority. Quite a few people don't actively use any social media, and taking memento photos is an unusual activity for many people, done mostly when going on rare vacations if at all. That leaves purely utilitarian photo taking, like uploading checks or taking a picture to help you remember where you parked your car.
Those people perhaps don't buy fancy smartphones though, but more like "purely utilitarian" ones? Whereas this subthread is about the possibility of the Apple Watch replacing the smartphone for iPhone users...
No, a lot of people like I describe buy iphones simply because they're fashionable. If fashions change, they could be well served by a smart watch instead.
You might not, but I have gone entire days with only my LTE Apple watch.
I can take calls, play music (wirelessly through my airpods), crudely reply to messages (it's only a little awkward, surprisingly usable) and pay for things without my phone.
For web-browsing, I don't need to do that all the time.
There are people who'd be able to get by with a watch, but as an alternate perspective:
- 99% of my messaging is through text, the other 1% is video calling
- Most of my causal web browsing is on my phone
- I've taken thousands of pictures on my phone in the last year.
most of the use of my phone is mobile web-browsing.
I can honestly live without that sometimes, especially as phones are getting large enough that you might as well have a tablet that you lug around sometimes.
Yeah, AR glasses are what will actually be the Next Smartphone, as far as rapidly attaining ubiquity. If they can fix the bulkiness and battery life issues, anyway. And sure, decent chance that'll involve tethering the glasses to some kind of watch where the actual brains and long-range radios live. Or to a smartphone or tablet that you can leave in a pocket or bag all the time (why wear a watch when the AR glasses could just paint a fake one on your wrist?)
But won't people feel uncomfortable being seen with AR glasses, at least for the next few years? They would have to be completely transparent, no impediment to eye contact, very small and fashionable, and so incredibly useful people would be willing to deal with any judgemental glares they got.
Depends what kind of form factor they can get them to. I've got a pair of these, and they look close enough to regular Ray-Bans that nobody realizes there's cameras on them: https://www.ray-ban.com/usa/ray-ban-stories
Smartphones drew the same judgmental glares for a few years. If you were holding them up to use them, people'd think you were recording and would be irritated or upset. If you were recording, they're really be unhappy with you. People talking on or looking at cell phones in public at all were usually coded as "asshole" in basically all media in the 90s and 00s, and that pretty much reflected popular opinion.
By the early 20-teens, though, all that was just normal and everyone was doing it.
What does any of that have to do with Apple requiring people to have an iPhone to use their watch? Maybe you don't want an iPhone and are satisfied with the functionality of the watch alone. Maybe you have one of the zillions of Android phones out there and don't want an iPhone for that reason. Literally no other smart watch that I know of requires that you have a phone of any kind, so I just don't see any reason for Apple to require it with their watch.
I would be more concerned about this if the competition in this space was not so disappointing this far. I think there are good smartwatches in the Android space, but none of them are great, and none of them have challenged the Apple Watch in terms of feature set and quality. And Apple hasn’t sat on its laurels here. They keep making the watch a more desirable device. To me, it seems like they know they can get people to consider switching if they want the watch. And the market keeps rewarding them. I had a Moto360 early on and loved it. It was a competitor to the Apple Watch only by virtue of being an electronic watch.
It would be nice if Apple would make the watch accessible to people without iPhones. I would certainly believe their rhetoric about the importance of health tech if they did that.
> I would be more concerned about this if the competition in this space was not so disappointing this far.
Why does less competition make you less concerned about anti-competitive behavior? Such behavior is never good, but it's self-correcting in a market with lots of choice, and not so in a market where there's only one great option (a judgment for which I have to take your word—a Casio F-91W is the right level of watch technology for me).
Anti-competitive behavior is absolutely bad, no question, but the problem doesn't come across to me as Apple pushing competitors out of the market. It feels like other Smartwatch makers don't care to match the feature set or don't care to do it as well as Apple. When viewing market from an ecosystem point-of-view, there aren't comparable pairings of Android-phone-with-wearOS-Watch to iPhone-with-Apple-Watch. There are similar pairings: Samsung's watch products with Samsung phones, and the Pixel Watch with a Pixel phone. But are either of those comprehensive in their respective ecosystems?
My point is, nobody seems to be fighting for this market except Apple. I could just be naive here, but it doesn't seem like anyone else cares enough for Apple to be anti-competitive.
> My point is, nobody seems to be fighting for this market except Apple. I could just be naive here, but it doesn't seem like anyone else cares enough for Apple to be anti-competitive.
You're right; I used the term "anti-competitive behavior", but that was the wrong word for what I was trying to say. I meant rather the lazy behavior of an established giant that doesn't have to compete, and so is content to let standards slip since they can be reasonably confident that it won't lose them any, or many, customers.
> think there are good smartwatches in the Android space, but none of them are great
How much of that is limited by the API that Google is surfacing? Watches simply cannot compete with an Apple Watch because Apple doesn't surface the same functionality for any other device.
It seems like Apple is an "all or nothing" kind of thing. Either you have everything by Apple and it is great, or you have none of it.
A very common reason Apple fans give for why they buy Apple is that all their devices work so well together. And I tend to agree with them. This is their market, they don't want to make efforts to accommodate others.
And why would they? They already have the best market, loyal customers with a lot of money to spend. They don't want to bring in cheap people, offer them a subpar experience because they won't enjoy the benefits of a tightly integrated ecosystem, just to have them complain and never buy again.
Competitors will arrive, and Apple will gladly let them feed on the bottom, but Apple is still safe in its market. And I can't really see the Apple TV serve as a "gateway drug" to the Apple ecosystem like the iPhone can. As for the Apple Watch, like any smartwatch, it is simply too small to stand alone. It is hard to find phones less than 6 inch now, because people want bigger phones for a variety of reasons: bigger screen, better camera, bigger battery, etc... You definitely won't replace it with a 2 inch watch.
I agree with your point, except that I think this is a poor example of your point. This is pretty clearly just a poor implementation of this particular user interaction. I have a feeling their legal department decided they needed to send out this terms of service requirement and they didn’t have any decent UI in the Apple TV to let you view and accept terms. This modal is probably the best thing they could throw together on their end. I’ve been an Apple TV user for many years and this is the first time I remember seeing a modal like this pop up out of nowhere.
I don’t think this has anything do with trying to force Apple TV users to have an iPhone. It’s a buggy and annoying user interaction even if you do have an iPhone. For one thing, it seems to require every user on your Apple Family Sharing plan to accept the terms, which means it will show me the modal for my wife’s account when she’s not around. She has an iPhone, but this is still an absurd experience. Also, it’s just clearly buggy and inconsistent. Sometimes I’ll be watching something for an hour and when I go to the home screen it will show three identical modals one after the other.
Apple isn’t interested in that. They want you to “buy in” into their ecosystem wholesale. Making Apple products easier to use independently would also make it easier to leave their ecosystem. They rely on the extra friction caused by combining Apple with non-Apple products.
> I seldom, if ever, carry my iPhone outside my house.
This is such an extreme outlier behavior, nobody is designing products around it. Pretty much everyone who owns a smartphone carries it around everywhere, because why not.
Not OP but I know quite a few people who really do not like to carry their phone around.
I couldn't understand this for the longest time until I asked my sister, who kept handing her phone to me to hold on to while on a family trip, about this one day. Apparently, a lot of women's clothing doesn't have "usable" pockets (they're tiny or fake...)! And with the size of modern phones, it's actually often quite a nuisance to carry around a phone.
While this may not be OP's situation, I would guess this might be one reason for the proliferation of cellular-enabled smart watches...
I think its less about money and more about network capacity and also ensuring your average mac user can leave it on without running up a surprise bill. Until users have good control with sane defaults it wont happen
You can buy a Dell with a cell modem. It’s more likely about the patent/royalty situation with Qualcomm. If Apple starts making their own cell modems, they will start putting them in laptops.
I remain unconvinced that it has anything to do with Apple thinking about the user’s mobile data bill. Watch what happens when Apple is no longer entangled with Qualcomm royalties.
Though I do like the idea that this is why tethering to my iPhone is so flaky. It isn’t due to bugs, it is because Apple cares about my mobile data bill!
I’ve built my product career working on projects that present risks to the status quo for companies.
This isn’t unique to Apple. Not to defend them specifically, but a company willing to focus on long term is the exception.
Most companies have leaders that are given goals that constrain them to short term gains. It drives truly suboptimal long-term decision making, but it also usually aligns with their incentives.
Changing that view takes (1) an existential threat, (2) a lot of data, and (3) a team that can execute quickly and reliably once a window opens.
The iphone started out as a dependent of a computer (mac only at first? I don't remember). There are a number of settings on the watch that can be modified on the watch, but originally could be modified only on the phone.
You can set up a watch for a family member who doesn't have a phone, but you do have to do that from your iphone.
Not that I have any thoughts on where Apple might go with this; this is just FYI.
Often the key to success is to not try to do too much. That was one of the big reasons the PDA market was dominated by Palm Pilot.
Earlier PDAs like the Sharp Wizard and the Casio BOSS tried to do too much. They wanted you to be able to fully maintain your calendar and contacts and todo lists and notes on them. But with their little keyboards, slow processors, and limited displays they weren't very good at doing a lot of data entry or editing related to those tasks.
Palm viewed the PDA not as the place all that stuff would live. In their view all that stuff lived on your computer. The PDA was for taking your data along when you were away from the computer. You might take notes on the PDA but then when back home you'd use the computer if you needed to do much editing of them. You might add or delete a todo item here or there, but if you were going to extensively reorganize your todo list, you'd do it on the computer.
I think Apple is, correctly, thinking that the Apple Watch will do best if it is like the Palm Pilot. It is a peripheral for your iPhone and doesn't try to shoehorn into the inherently limited interface support for doing things that can be easily done on the iPhone it is paired with.
If they tried to make it standalone without greatly reducing the functionality they would just end up with something very complicate to use.
What they could do, without making it too complicated, is make it so you can pair it with things other than iPhone. iPad and Mac at the least. Maybe Android phones/tablets and Windows PCs too. But it would still be primarily a peripheral for those devices, not a standalone device.
Except, the Apple Watch with its own cellular data plan is a standalone device, sending and receiving phone calls, emails, and texts. I like to leave my iPhone at home when I leave my house if I don’t need a camera.
You worked for Apple yet you don’t know how tightly the Apple Watch is tied to the iPhone for functionality to offload responsibilities to save battery life for instance
They're doing the same with Mac and iPad - by denying some software on each platform, they're forcing you to buy both if you want both classes of software.
You're missing the point though. The device should be usable on its own. This is extremely anti-consumer, it doesn't matter if there's a simple solution
You can also buy first-party stuff from iTunes on your AppleTV without any other device; maybe you need to have used a computer at some point in the past to make the Apple ID, but it certainly isn't an ongoing requirement to own anything except a TV (as AppleTV isn't actually a TV, despite the name ;P), and having an Apple ID is probably also required to download even free apps from the App Store.
Based on my last two experiences, you can't on Roku - you can't watch Netflix, Hulu, or Disney+.
Worse, you need a working payment method with Roku to use the device.
Personally, I find that a bit more egregious. EDIT Nevermind this last bit. I didn't see that the top level workaround... doesn't work around the issue.
I am Confused as what you're trying to say. I have Roku express and a TV with built in Roku. Neither requires me to own any weird additional devices to watch Netflix, Disney,prime etc?
It requires an active Roku account (including a valid credit card), which this thread was specifically about - requiring an Apple account to watch Netflix et. al.
It's mentioned in the replies that there was no prompt to accept the new terms and conditions when using a browser. Interestingly, the word messages also excludes macOS, mentioning only iOS or iPadOS.
Yup, you need either an Android or iOS device. If you just have a PC or a laptop you just can't use a Chromecast for some stupid reason.
At least it's better than Apple TV, which requires you to own a device from the exact same brand, but it's still a shitty requirement. They managed to implement setup from a PC before, what's stopping them from doing it again?
I suppose you could use any of the many Android emulators out there to get around this restriction but it shouldn't be necessary. This is just user hostile design.
You used to be able to set it up via any device though not just Android/iPhone which made sense as more than just phones can use it. At least it's not just Pixels or something.
I encountered the same message when iOS 16 had just released and wasn't available on my iPad yet. It wasn't a blocking message, pressing "OK" was enough to make it go away, and when iPadOS 16 finally came out I was able to clear it.
It's bad UX but the Apple TV can still be used as before.