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.
- 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 ?