Apple TV
I hate being this cynical. I have nothing against Apple. Truly. I know my recent posts and this one as well won't make that point. But I really don't. I just don't get what is wrong with them lately.
The latest Apple TV... is just as pointless as the prior iteration. It does more. I'm not denying that. But lets break it down into the big features:
- Adds apps
- New controller
- Can play games
- Can use Siri
- New UI
- Otherwise the same
Pretty decent list right? Well, most of that is just playing catch-up with their competitors. None of this is new to this segment, just new to Apple TV. And none of the existing solutions have enjoyed any measure of success.
Adding an App Store and Apps to a TV is something that Android based set top box users have been doing for years. Even Amazon had a device that did this. People don't play games or use apps on their TVs. As a general rule at least. Maybe I would want a weather app, or news. But you can probably count the widespread cases on 2 hands and they could all easily be delivered as first party apps. People aren't connecting to social networks on their TVs where their parents or brothers or children or random visitors might accidentally see their personal info or working with complex productivity suites or apps. They likely aren't regularly using their TV to take notes or use as a stop watch either. And it isn't a lack of an app store driving that. It is a lack of demand or desire for such features.
New controller. Well, it is actually nice looking. But, the design is predicated around a usage model that isn't necessary. This piece is better than anything I've seen from the competition nonetheless. But I'm certainly not buying an Apple TV unit based on the remote.
One of the uses of such a remote... gaming. But, touch first games on a disconnected controller? Not going to get broad adoption, and likely won't work in most scenarios anyway. This means games will need to be rewritten to run on Apple TV which means gimmicky Wii and Kinect like games. Guess which console and technologies are losing traction in the gaming world? Both of those! That remote is not a gaming controller, and this is not a gaming console. Phone and tablet gaming is popular because it is personal and can be brought anywhere. Apple TV cannot.
Moving onto Siri. One of the most highly criticized features of the Xbox One? Voice control! I love Kinect voice control by the way. So does my wife. But, it fails to work an astounding percentage of the time. Want to turn up the volume because the kids are being noisy? Well, it doesn't hear the command... because the kids are noisy. Just one example. No voice recognition service is flawless either. It will make mistakes. No modern voice recognition system can improve without sending data to be processed, so privacy nuts will come out of the wood work. If voice commands fail, that controller looks to be abysmal for text based searches. So just hope you have good acoustics and no auditory distractions in your house and you should be fine :P
The new UI does some nice things like unifying search results across apps and services. And that is a value add when and where it works. But, at the end of the day, it is just a fresh layer of paint on a device category that seems to love failing over and over again, and all of the UI in the world isn't going to change that.
Like the iPad Pro vs other iPad models, it really does nothing to convince me that there is any more of a market for this device than for the cheaper prior gen one. This is still much more affordable than the iPad Pro is however and there are some nice changes. Also, I imagine that they will discontinue the prior iteration of Apple TV once this hits shelves, removing one venue for this to lose sales too. So, it probably won't do markedly worse than the prior iterations. I just also don't see it boosting the device category in any meaningful way. I don't think it will end up justifying the R&D costs and increase in sticker price.
So, the plus side in the end is that while this feels completely non-hype worthy, it does in some ways feel like a legitimate new version of a product in most ways. And that puts it on a much higher pedestal than the iPad Pro. But it still leaves me feeling like Apple is pissing money away on rather random design decisions in the hopes that something will stick.
The latest Apple TV... is just as pointless as the prior iteration. It does more. I'm not denying that. But lets break it down into the big features:
- Adds apps
- New controller
- Can play games
- Can use Siri
- New UI
- Otherwise the same
Pretty decent list right? Well, most of that is just playing catch-up with their competitors. None of this is new to this segment, just new to Apple TV. And none of the existing solutions have enjoyed any measure of success.
Adding an App Store and Apps to a TV is something that Android based set top box users have been doing for years. Even Amazon had a device that did this. People don't play games or use apps on their TVs. As a general rule at least. Maybe I would want a weather app, or news. But you can probably count the widespread cases on 2 hands and they could all easily be delivered as first party apps. People aren't connecting to social networks on their TVs where their parents or brothers or children or random visitors might accidentally see their personal info or working with complex productivity suites or apps. They likely aren't regularly using their TV to take notes or use as a stop watch either. And it isn't a lack of an app store driving that. It is a lack of demand or desire for such features.
New controller. Well, it is actually nice looking. But, the design is predicated around a usage model that isn't necessary. This piece is better than anything I've seen from the competition nonetheless. But I'm certainly not buying an Apple TV unit based on the remote.
One of the uses of such a remote... gaming. But, touch first games on a disconnected controller? Not going to get broad adoption, and likely won't work in most scenarios anyway. This means games will need to be rewritten to run on Apple TV which means gimmicky Wii and Kinect like games. Guess which console and technologies are losing traction in the gaming world? Both of those! That remote is not a gaming controller, and this is not a gaming console. Phone and tablet gaming is popular because it is personal and can be brought anywhere. Apple TV cannot.
Moving onto Siri. One of the most highly criticized features of the Xbox One? Voice control! I love Kinect voice control by the way. So does my wife. But, it fails to work an astounding percentage of the time. Want to turn up the volume because the kids are being noisy? Well, it doesn't hear the command... because the kids are noisy. Just one example. No voice recognition service is flawless either. It will make mistakes. No modern voice recognition system can improve without sending data to be processed, so privacy nuts will come out of the wood work. If voice commands fail, that controller looks to be abysmal for text based searches. So just hope you have good acoustics and no auditory distractions in your house and you should be fine :P
The new UI does some nice things like unifying search results across apps and services. And that is a value add when and where it works. But, at the end of the day, it is just a fresh layer of paint on a device category that seems to love failing over and over again, and all of the UI in the world isn't going to change that.
Like the iPad Pro vs other iPad models, it really does nothing to convince me that there is any more of a market for this device than for the cheaper prior gen one. This is still much more affordable than the iPad Pro is however and there are some nice changes. Also, I imagine that they will discontinue the prior iteration of Apple TV once this hits shelves, removing one venue for this to lose sales too. So, it probably won't do markedly worse than the prior iterations. I just also don't see it boosting the device category in any meaningful way. I don't think it will end up justifying the R&D costs and increase in sticker price.
So, the plus side in the end is that while this feels completely non-hype worthy, it does in some ways feel like a legitimate new version of a product in most ways. And that puts it on a much higher pedestal than the iPad Pro. But it still leaves me feeling like Apple is pissing money away on rather random design decisions in the hopes that something will stick.
Comments
Post a Comment