apple tv isn't private, apple does mine your viewing habits, read their eula.
You should also know that all non-apple apps like netflix have unrestricted network access and can/will do the same.
It is too bad that people accept apple's marketing about privacy, because they have dark patterns, they collect telemetry, they don't let you block it, and they help apps do the same things.
A privacy policy is not the same as being able to firewall your device, but apple doesn't allow firewalls.
1) By default, every word (each character, actually) you input into Spotlight/Siri gets time-stamped and sent to `smoot.apple.com`
2) Even with a Pi-Hole blocking *.apple.com (i.e. using MacOS >> Networking >> DNS Server), on boot all modern Apple Silicon reaches out to security.apple.com (i.e. bypassing the user's manual-input DNS setting), using the DHCP-issued DNS IP [0]
pro-tip: use your router's DHCP to auto-issue your local Pi-Hole's IP address [as DNS] with your IP-leases; then you'll actually be able to block all *.apple.com traffic (using the PiHole which your DHCP issues to, by default)
[0] this is for security chip "lockout" detection (e.g.) and it is pervasive across NICs (i.e. it REALLY seeks any attempt for DNS resolution to security.apple.com)
Huh? How do you expect Apple to show live search results if they don't send what you're typing to their servers?
> 2) Even with a Pi-Hole blocking *.apple.com (i.e. using MacOS >> Networking >> DNS Server), on boot all modern Apple Silicon reaches out to security.apple.com (i.e. bypassing the user's manual-input DNS setting), using the DHCP-issued DNS IP [0]
From a quick google search, it seems to be if you enable "Find my" or pass word recovery with an Apple account. I think that's reasonable to expect if you enable these features.
This is the default behavior, without enabling anything (you cannot disable the T2 chip reaching out to security.apple.com), whether or not you have Find My™ enabled. You cannot disable this "feature."
If you take a brand new Apple computer and turn it on, literally the first DNS query it makes (before MacOS even begins to load) is to `security.apple.com` – with zero configuration – and you can never disable this behavior (it is embedded into Apple's T2 SoC).
Every boot thereafter, the Apple product attempts to re-query this host; if connected (and black-listed) the computer is immediately disabled.
----
Similarly, Microsoft has OS-level phone-homing which contacts host `spynet2.microsoft.com`, which is certainly an interesting naming scheme (at least they're open about it). This also ignores the user-supplied DNS (in Settings >> Networking >> NIC >> DNS ).
I don't want spotlight to show any online results in the first place, is there anyone here who does?
Admittedly I haven't confirmed that this results in no API calls in the latest few macOS releases but it definitely used to stop them, at least a few years ago.
Again, though, I haven’t set up a Mac fresh in a while.
also, search for "improve" in settings. I'll bet you didn't find "Help Apple Improve Search" in the results. Ironic on many levels.
In my opinion (to answer your question): "yes."
And of course, I'll bet all your data was mined before you turned things off.
does this seem user-friendly? seems deliberately hostile to me (though par for the course nowadays)
I recently set up my old 2009 iMac [0], and it tickled-me-pink that even the Microsoft Office installer was opt-in by default (i.e. the telemetry option was OFF by default, with the installer asking if you wanted to opt-in).
[0] this was about a month ago, right before the ArtCraft's reverse-engineering of Adobe's products; I restored this iMac simply to run my legally-purchased copy of Photoshop CS4 (a non-subscription edition circa 2006)
But macOS makes it extremely difficult to search your local files (without using Spotlight) so you effectively cannot search your offline APFS without revealing your local queries (to Apple, at a minimum).
This seems wrong.
----
I've met several $100k+ tech geniuses who absolutely refuse to believe this behavior is normal/default – but a local PiHole (or simple internet searches) reveal this Truth (capital t, with respects to DFW).
While providing over-the-shoulder IT support, I saw a hardware designer for a tech company enter proprietary company information into his "local" Spotlight search (to find a CAD file he had recently designed, demonstrating that the computer was "working"); when I told him about smoot.apple.com (e.g: Spotlight local queries offloading) his face turned white – fortunately that company only has a few thousand customers (very niche hardware designs for BMS/power delivery management), and no "real" competition... but he still refuses to fully believe the levels of telemetry in 2026.
(I think the LG TV story last month "woke him up"; the Bitcoin Ledger embedded SoC SIM key-thefts via man in the middle attacks should bring out the last remaining tinfoil hats). Stay frosty.
Thank you for the detailed suggestion. I use LittleSnitch. pi-hole previously, I must take another look. Did you catch LG spying posts?
LittleSnitch resolves DNS queries (i.e. it determines the IP address) before you have clicked ALLOW/DENY; so even if you DENY the host['s IP] connection, your DNS resolver has already seen the query.
Also, LittleSnitch does not block `security.apple.com` queries, which occur before this software has even loaded.
----
>Did you catch LG spying posts?
After last month's GamersNexus exposé, I went back and watched Citizen Four [0]: Ed says it plain and simply in this 2014 documentary, "you don't even need to be a high value target, anything that can listen WILL."
>>"Saying [if you have nothing to hide, then...] is like saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say!" –Edward Snowden
[0] documentary about Snowden revelations; also see his book Permanent Record [1]
[1] <https://www.amazon.com/Permanent-Record-Edward-Snowden/dp/12...>
side note: I worked in data centers during the Snowden leaks, and the cover stories were always incredible ("the tech just doesn't exist to do that yet" is agency legalese, folks)...
I'm not comfortable with my TV or streaming stick manufacturer collecting and mining data about everything that appears on the screen.
I think other streaming apps definitely do.
Apple does too. I don't know about the TV, but a vanilla safari has a bunch of default favorites, and when you open a browser window it contacts each one of them and sets cookies. It also contacts google by default for searching, character by character quick search completion and on and on.
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to buy products without all this nonsense?
Similarly to the parent comment, I am quite comfortable with Safari sending my search query to Google when I perform a Google search.
I’m not sure how that’s nonsense.
also you cannot enable private browsing by default. You have to turn it on manually, and updating safari will reset all that.
If you use the Apple TV app and if you give permission to the app in the modal to link your HBO Max/Paramount+/etc. app, then that app can call a special API to donate your viewing history to the Apple TV app. You can just decline the prompt, or you can just not use the Apple TV app, and then the other streaming services have no recipient to give this data to.
Conversely, your TV runs something called ACR or Automatic Content Recognition where a screenshot of your TV input/app is taken every ~x seconds. At best, it distills it into a local signature and ships that off to some amount of servers. At worst (e.g.: laptop HDMI) it can send it for processing. Some TVs take screenshots much more often if you use a device connected by HDMI.[1]
The former is generally used for content recommendation, but we can also assume that it could potentially get pooled into stuff like App Store ads. The latter is also used to discern your political affiliation and target you for political campaign ads, among every other type of ad.
1: https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/research/smart-tv-data-priva...
> Breaking down why Apple TVs are privacy advocates’ go-to streaming device
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/06/all-the-ways-apple-t...
It infuriates me that Apple Podcast slips in ads for podcasts I have no interest in as suggestions. As far as I can tell, there’s no way to disable that “feature”.
Seems like their advertising might not be a focus...
Services growth is only tracking slightly ahead of installed base growth. One theory of Services was that it would grow high-margin business organically alongside the growth of the installed base. More iPhone users => more iCloud subscriptions. Notably, this growth rate is roughly predictable even without ads being a factor.
Do you not use the same Apple App Store, Apple Maps, and Apple Podcast apps I use? The ads are becoming a real problem.
I think ads are projected to be $9b this year
There absolutely are much more private options (I run one) but it’s more effort.
It's mind-blowing how one of the most advanced technology forums on the internet can take privacy for granted just because the marketing of a for-profit corporation with previous histories of privacy violations (there's even lawsuits) claims their closed source device connected 24/7 to the internet, is private.
that's not what I did
> just because the marketing
not just because of the marketing
> of a for-profit corporation with previous histories of privacy violations (there's even lawsuits) claims their closed source device connected 24/7 to the internet, is private.
in other words, they are being watched and held accountable when they do screw up, which obviates a lot of the "well maybe they're stealing your data and we don't know about it" nonsense elsewhere in the replies.
I'll ask something specific: We know that Rokus and built-in smart TVs are actively tracking and monetizing everything you do on your television. People can prove this by looking at what calls are made on your network.
Does Apple do the same thing?
Does Apple TV even do ACR in any form? Is it scanning my network and phoning home about it?
I'm sorry, you're stating this like some obvious fact. Apple has previously said this is not the case and they do not do ACR. The Apple TV is the only Apple device I have, so you can set aside any reflexive critiques of my brand loyalty. What is your precise claim? Why am I a dullard for reading that Apple TV does not use ACR and believing it?
The entire reason I bought an Apple TV was to reduce the amount of data skimming happening in the background and ads being shoved in front of my face in the foreground, it's not like I'm lousy with options.
The problem is that you need to trust Apple, and verifying what is going on is difficult. Apple controls the device entirely, and the user is captive because the hardware cannot be repurposed. The "hacker community" should simply reject these user-hostile devices that feel like jails.
You're just making stuff up. Apple TV does not do ACR.
Apple does provide a TV App API that allows select app developers to get a special entitlement allowing them to contribute viewing data. Read this carefully: https://developer.apple.com/support/terms/apple-developer-pr...
"Apple will obtain user consent based on the user’s Apple Account before including Your Licensed Application in the TV App Features displayed under that Apple Account. Apple will also provide users with the ability to withdraw such consent at any time thereafter and to delete their TV App Data from Apple’s systems."
For profit org that has its personalized ad part of business growing massively, is scanning all your photos, gives all data to NSA like there is no tomorrow is somehow better, becase carefully crafted PR said so.
Especially if one is not US citizen, or multinational, or US citizen not on US soil, and so on.
They make great, hard vendor-locked hardware and mediocre software. Lets keep them at that and not some magical privacy champions when they are not, not where it actually matters.
Your post doesn't sound any different, what with the tarring a group of people with the same brush.
You've decided that your feelings about a type of company trump anybody else's opinions about a particular company. With a fairly derisive tone, at that.
Isn't that what they are actually complaining against? This is just circular reasoning.
I even had a mod here tell me that's not the case..lol
Do you consider Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro as mediocre?
Apple Intelligence takes a single screenshot of your screen when you explicitly direct it to. It does not take routine or scheduled screenshots and it does not exfiltrate or otherwise use the information other than to answer your query.
Private Cloud Compute goes to great lengths to prove it can't violate your privacy. In general, Apple likes to back itself up like this, which is one of the reasons I have such high confidence in them.
Funny how the OP carefully skimmed this part out in their reply, but BINGO, I think this is the attitude we should have towards privacy. Sometimes I just feel like we're talking to a bunch of bots on here when it comes to privacy with their blind support towards for-profit corporations that doesn't give a shit about them.
lol
>we're talking to a bunch of bots on here
Ah. Okay. In a different tenor of conversation I'd be happy to clarify but...not when I'm up against this.
Keep the firewall of skepticism high.
I've always seen Apple TV as the least-bad option compared to Roku/Fire/whatever Google is doing these days/literally any built-in solution.
If this was your original statement, I think we all would be on your side - I even use an Apple TV 4k personally and love it. It definitely is the best in the market for what it does.
> it's the one box I can (reasonably) trust to not be mining my viewing habits for data.
Instead, you framed it as the only privacy-friendly option and that is logically and factually incorrect.
They come with different tradeoffs wrt price, A/V quality, user interface, privacy, etc.
For me, the #1 thing is A/V quality. I don’t care about price, but most people do.
(There are also some boxes made specifically for this, usually sold as development platforms for STB products, marketed based on what SoC they contain. Though they’ll tend to be $200, while the random “finished product” streaming box will be more like $30. Both come with decent remotes.)
Is there any examples of this that isn't an obscure model last sold in 2015? This would be quite compelling as an alternative to a Linux box, especially now that hardware is expensive again. You don't really need Netflix et al if you can open a Web browser and head for the sea.
I'm also interested in alternatives, but LineageOS on a cheap box isn't really one.
You don't need Netflix, Prime, or Disney+. Don't be a sheep, build a collection of Linux ISOs and/or use your Web browser. There is plenty of content out there.
“Content”. Yuck. I’m a discerning series and film watcher.
That's precisely what you did.
Yes, they did:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/apple-pay-95-million-settle-si...
Apple routinely recorded their private conversations after they activated Siri unintentionally, and disclosed these conversations to third parties such as advertisers.
edit: link
"Apple has never used Siri data to build marketing profiles, never made it available for advertising, and never sold it to anyone for any purpose," Apple said on Wednesday.
Unintentionally activating Siri and then recording is very different from the active listening things going on. Shared with advertisers was speculation.
Again, you don't know they aren't doing any of these privacy violations again right now. You are just vomiting their marketing BS again and again "Apple means privacy". Historically their shady acts weren't discovered until much later - battery gate, siri lawsuit, etc. You're starting on personal attacks and sounding more like a bot, so I'm going to stop here.
and then
> and sounding more like a bot
Pot, kettle, etc.
Per HN guidelines: "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes."
This has nothing to do with the specific question I asked, and I'm not sure why you'd think so unless Roku has some kind of Siri-like feature (which wasn't what I was intending when I asked regardless). (also, that's a dead link)
My point is, it's a for-profit corporation. And a really efficient one. They don't care about anyone's privacy or anything else. Only profits. History has proof - battery gate, siri lawsuit, etc.
Is there some actual evidence of collusion with the big tech companies? Because I haven’t seen it. (Telecoms I’ve heard were and are much more integrated.)
The next Snowden disclosure (MUSCULAR) was significantly more concerning though. It was that the NSA was tapping the internal fiber of Big Tech companies. I was at Google when the Snowden disclosures broke, and read the SRE postmortem. They found 2 fiber cuts underneath the English Channel, an hour apart, lining up with the start of the program as disclosed by Snowden. My inference is that the NSA paid off MI6 to send a submarine commando team to cut and tap the fiber of an American company, without consent, and then all the data was shared through Five-Eyes reciprocal data sharing agreements. Google leadership was hopping mad after this, but it would've been impolitic to bring it to the public. They started encrypting all internal traffic soon after, assuming that their internal network was compromised by various nation-state actors, which had some unfortunate effects on their internal culture of openness.
The head security guy where I worked 20 years ago was already saying this.
Anywhere I’ve worked it was firewall everything and use VPNs, and most places still do this. SFTP was in the too hard basket. And of course that led to people emailing files around as standard practice (and the only option) and inevitably some got emailed to the wrong recipients.
Honestly, based on what? That they haven't been caught?
That said they are not perfect - e.g their wording in their own tracking consent prompts vs the ones they force on others.
That's marketing. Do you always trust everything in marketing material?
Always missing from the paranoid lunatic side of this discussion: what devices do you use? I presume you do all your computing on an abacus?
Quite a bold statement. How do they compare with technology companies such as proton, signal... ?
With Apple, you are the customer. With others, you’re the product. It’s an easy differentiator for them, plain and simple.
Phone theft is a growing problem again, but it’s still less common than it was because they need to get an unlocked device, and I don’t hear them targeting Apple in particular.
> They sell their own products to you and that’s all they care about.
You can also extend this to say that they want you to only buy their devices/services. If you have an iPhone then non-Apple smart watches are missing basic functionality such as replying to text messages. Force everyone to use Safari and limit it's functionality to force apps onto the App Store (30% cut!).
I mean, it's what they _say_ they do. Do we know?
Do you have any evidence to present, or is this pure FUD?
But I do think that, in general, Apple tends to be the least-bad actor among its mainstream competitors: its primary business model does not depend on harvesting and selling data, and it has made this value proposition a part of its marketing, and people high up in the company have spoken about ways that they personally value it. And, for any story about ways in which Apple has failed here, there are certainly twice as many for any other company they compete with.
I mean, step back: Who cares more about my privacy - Apple or Google? Apple or Roku? Can anyone seriously argue the latter for either?
> I'm only asking if people put faith in Apples claims because they're, well, Apple, or do we _know_ their claims are valid.
If we _know_, then there would be no need for faith. Given the lack of options and the lack of certainty, people must place their faith somewhere (or take on a lot of technical burden to roll their own); given everything I've seen, it's more reasonable to place faith in Apple than basically anyone else in "Big Tech" in this regard.
(But again: if there's a product out there that is very similar to Apple TV in every way except that it is more private: please tell me what that product is. I'd be thrilled to consider it.)
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
HN is countless different people with the full range of views on most topics. “It” doesn't hate (or love) any one thing, and these kinds of comments insinuating that it is one entity with one view are so lame. Please observe the guidelines if you want to participate here.
Yes, Apple has actually put work into designing, building, and shipping secure enclaves. Yes, they have put a gargantuan amount of work into PCC to uphold the claims they make about its privacy. Yes, they employ differential privacy. Yes, they have shipped a feature that enables privacy-conscious users to be the only ones to hold the keys to their iCloud account. And on and on and on. Nothing will ever be enough for you.
You aren’t asking these questions in good faith. If you were, you’d have your answers already.
I have and don't see much evidence at all except a bunch of influencers saying Apple is tops in privacy.
Apple has plenty of default settings gaps that allow THEM to collect your data. They capitulate in certain markets. And who knows what Trump made them do?
I presume truth and facts are important, no?
This is a funny one because users need to opt-in to sharing app install analytics with app developers. You don't get to opt-out of sharing it with Apple, even if you're installing apps from a third-party app store!
…while running far worse stuff themselves, the whole time.
This is all only mentioned in the footnote of an iCloud security document [1].
Apple cares about your privacy, so much that they made a backdoor through bad defaults, well in reach of the CLOUD Act.
[1] Footnote 9 in https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651
Most people don't even understand that when their favorite app that says E2E that that app still has access to the clear text before it's encrypted...
They want the device to be a mechanism for you to purchase things. Hence the “Apple card” and all the hullabaloo around that. You’ll only use your phone if you perceive it to be secure. Apple’s investments in Secure Enclave’s, sandboxing are all directly linked to their belief that this will help the consumer perceive the safety of the product- and again, it goes back to the perception of the brand.
Quality craftsmanship has properties that outsiders can perceive- even if they don’t understand it. Apple makes those investments.
Google- well, they just make things and then abandon them. Android’s bizzaro world open source is a chaotic mess that reflects the lack of discipline in Google’s leadership.
And I don't know what Google has to do with this.
I trust Apple for a number of reasons, but I really had to be really aggressive about the TV it’s connected to.
But also, a smaller footprint is a smaller footprint. I’ll take “better” where I can get it.
If/when devices start shipping with cellular modems and eSIMs... honestly not sure. Faraday cage? Physically remove the modem? (If that doesn't prevent the device from booting.)
If it does then don’t buy it?
For privacy, I'd recommend hardware with as few blobs as possible and of course an unlocked bootloader.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/apple-pay-95-million-settle-si...
Apple routinely recorded their private conversations after they activated Siri unintentionally, and disclosed these conversations to third parties such as advertisers.
The only standard they will accept is absolute perfection. It doesn’t matter all of the drastic steps they’ve taken to ensure that past mistakes are never made again or that their hands are tied when governments make demands of them in the future. It doesn’t matter that they’re demonstrably orders of magnitude better than everyone else.
Only for internet comment purposes. I’ve found that these same jabronis actually tend to run crappy and wildly unsafe home rolled kludges, for themselves.
Or maybe they are just not caught yet. They are now running ads, where is the data coming for that. They stop others from using the APIs but nothing stop their first party apps to snoop and use the data.
Apple AirTag is the biggest privacy nightmare out there and I am not sure why people keep Apple separate from other data hungry companies
This is a common judgement among the technically literate.
> Breaking down why Apple TVs are privacy advocates’ go-to streaming device
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/06/all-the-ways-apple-t...
To me, it doesn’t make sense to rate all levels of imperfection the same. Of course Apple isn’t perfect. But that’s not am important question.
Apple’s the only major purveyor of these kinds of devices whose existential business model is not predicated on privacy violations. Hardly a guarantee of good behavior (and we’ll see what happens in the future). But a lot better than the alternatives.
I purchased the 2021 ATV just before the 2022 was released. It struggles with AV1 and VP9 (Infuse really struggles, VLC is better but still a problem). I just wanted the faster CPU (for software decoding AV1 and VP9). Almost bought the 2022 version in 2024 for that but didn't want to buy a 2 year old product.
Didn't expect to have to wait 4 years, and now the price is more than doubled. I can afford it but refuse to do so, especially since I don't use any of the onboard storage for anything.
VP9 support is just as promiment as AV1 support in the specs. https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-4k/specs/
I do this too with a mac mini app that does it on schedules across all the channels I like, dumps them in JellyFin with channel art, culls old videos, and uses the Jellyfin api to reindex that category when done.
I just like the lack of ads and no separate YouTube interface… YouTube is just a category in JellyFin.
yt-dlp has gotten spotty about YouTube blocking it, from time to time, though.
I sometimes see the homepage, or see thumbnails when I click to download individual videos. I've previously found interesting channels that way, or recommended by creators in videos I watch, or even on HN.
(I've found their algorithm has gotten worse over time, and nosedived recently with AI slop propagating like crazy in 2026. Even for niche topics it'll recommend channels that are a month old, already have 60 videos (mostly with low views but one video with 100K+ views), and obviously AI generated when closely inspected. It's worse now because half the channels use AI thumbnails for non-AI content.)
So after that long answer, I don't have a great recommendation for discovery if you don't already have an existing list of channels you like and trust.
I have been using a laptop for 2 decades (albeit with a beamer, not a TV), using display scaling to 150% for the desktop and a wireless keyboard+trackpad combo.
Whenever I am in a place where I want to temporarily put, say, music using youtube app on an hotel TV, I cringe at the terrible UX to search for content with a tv remote versus using a regular keyboard+trackpad. Especially entering text in a search field.
For example, a $130 impulse buy in 2015 is a ~$184 impulse buy in 2026.
The move to the A19 also meant that they couldn't go with LPDDR4X RAM and instead had to use more expensive LPDDR5X (IIRC).
It is crazy. I expect the new Apple TV to be a flop because $300 is just a lot. The problem is that Apple is a little boxed in on this device. Apple wants to re-use the A19, but that locks them into expensive DDR5 RAM. They want to push Siri AI, but that locks them into 8GB RAM. Unlike the iPhone, there aren't as many other opportunities with the App Store, Apple Pay, search engine placement revenue, etc.
Storage has also gone up a lot and Apple is no longer selling a 64GB model. Most streaming sticks have 4-16GB of storage and it's usually really slow/cheap storage. The new Apple TV has 128GB of storage and the price for that has probably gone from around $25 to $50.
You say that it's fine from "$200 to $300", but that's not really true. It's gone from $250 to $300 when you look at the 128GB model. I still think it's crazy that it went from $150 to $300 in the same year, but the outgoing 128GB model was already $250 after the price hikes earlier this year.
The problem is that Apple didn't want to reign in their product for the current market and I somewhat get that. What's the point of a new Apple TV if it's just "we updated the processor." For me, the point would be AV1 and VP9 decoding, but Apple wanted to push Siri AI.
Other high-end TV devices have also seen big increases in price. The Fire TV Cube went from being $110-140 to now $200 - and with the Fire TV Cube you're getting Cortex-A73 processor cores from 2016, 2GB LPDDR4X, and 16GB storage. At least Apple is giving you 8GB LPDDR5X and 128GB of storage and a processor that is way better.
The Google TV Streamer is $150 now with 4GB RAM and 16GB storage, but with LPDDR4 RAM and Cortex-A55 cores - and it's still $150.
A Roku Ultra is 2GB RAM and 4GB storage with Cortex-A55 cores and costs $150.
I think we're seeing that there's still some really old stock out there that's cheap, but we're seeing the prices climb on competitors too. Google raised its price 50%. Amazon has raised its price 40-80%. Apple raised its price 54-67% on the same-model and launched the newer model with double the RAM, more expensive RAM, a processor that's 4 years newer, etc.
I think it's likely that Google, Roku, and Amazon simply don't upgrade their streaming devices during this parts shortage. I think a lot of people will be fine with a 12nm Cortex-A55 based TV streamer with limited RAM and storage (and slow RAM and storage). I love how fast my Apple TV is. It's amazing the difference in UI lag. But I think most companies aren't going to prioritize that premium experience, especially during a parts shortage.
This is a great point, a lot of the press coverage missed this.
Not having a cheaper alternative (eg a stick) was curious though. The baseline price of $300 might cause sticker shock.
I still don’t quite know why i actually got a 64GB 4K first gen ATV when, in practice, a 32GB would’ve sufficed?
Do people really play games on these? Install that many apps on them?
If anything apple is probably bring value to new buyers of Apple TV in this market. At 299$ you are getting hardware that will last quite some time as opposed to a 200$ device that might cost maybe 250$ in six months and give you lot less hardware capabilities.
But everything is way more expensive than it was a year ago. Nothing escapes this inflation we are going through
If they're selling AppleTV at a loss to stimulate AppleTV+ subscriptions, then they're hemorrhaging money on two fronts. Without their App Store monopoly, Apple's annual service revenue would undoubtedly be a crater.
The strategy Netflix and Prime applied was that they just loaded it with average-costing in-house content and then a few were hits. With Apple they seem to be spending a lot on individual shows and their library is still small compared to others. I guess they can't really do anything average according to their philosophy. This is unfortunately not working in their favor with TV+.
Having said that I eventually replaced my pair of HomePod Minis with a Sonos soundbar because I wanted something with a bit more oomph to it, although I'd maybe have considered getting a pair of the big HomePods and using the Minis as rear speakers had this been available at the time.
I had to buy a special HDMI switch because my projector is eARC-naive, but my understanding is that a lot of modern TVs are eARC-aware and a special switch is not required. The one downside to my setup is that I have to press a button on the HDMI switch to toggle between the PC and the AppleTV, no remote control, but hey it's good to stretch your legs now and then right?
Re audio quality, I really like my big HomePods and find they fill the room quite well and have a solid low range to them. I'd also agree that the HomePod Minis are not suitable for a living room entertainment experience.
No issue whatsoever, latency is fine, but a little too high for shooters and the like—but I use headphones then anyway.
How is life in the Sonos ecosystem? I vaguely recall there being some controversy around them a few years back, and I'm generally distrustful of third party hardware companies attempting to write software.
I really wanted to make it work, but it ended up being an annoying hassle. I got a Shield TV and it has been a much better solution.
Not sure if things have changed since then (~5 years ago).
It's definitely not the most troublesome player I've dealt with, but rebooting and logging back into apps randomly can be frustrating.
If you want a privacy focused solution it's probably the most private. Yeah, admittedly harder to use but I'm not recommending it to my parents.
And I definitely don't want to pay for something like Plex.
I don't plan on upgrading it to this new version yet so I'll probably get 10+ years of use out of it, great value overall.
Siri AI is increasingly looking like a product that's exclusively for Americans. An unfortunate side effect of the EU attempting to become a regulatory superpower but failing to export its rules to the rest of the world.
- They don’t have to support European languages. Historically, they were horrible in this area, supporting only major languages and ignoring others for years. It’s almost impossible to ask Siri to play a song whose title is in one of these languages. Contact names are pronounced badly, and it’s sometimes tricky to ask Siri to call a person with a non-English name. This way, even though LLMs support these languages quite well, Apple doesn’t have to invest in development and testing.
- They announce the product with US features and keep the EU price the same, but disable features that cost them money, such as those requiring server-side compute.
- Satellite features only work in some EU countries, and there seems to be absolutely no progress in many markets. These markets are simply too small for Apple to care about. Yet the price is the same.
- They blame the EU for this.
Eg ask it to skip an ad in YT and it might actually skip to entire video.
The PS5 pro has plenty of horsepower. Fewer problems, but I see it occasionally skip or freeze slightly when playing back from some providers.
I've read Apple TV somehow has this figured out, and since I expected a new model I've been waiting for this one. It's not cheap but I want to be able to stream TV/film without any of those issues. I'm not quite ready to go the super premium route by getting a kaleidescape. I also want to use the bluetooth functionality from time to time.
It’s not a home theater by any stretch, but perfectly adequate for every day viewing.
My family actually prefers to use the apps on our LG TV than Apple TV. Even after explaining all of the privacy issues, their reaction was basically "meh, who cares, it's more convenient this way".
I'd upgrade my Shield Pro to something else but there's nothing to upgrade to that doesn't have some compromise on formats or capabilities.
Unless you prefer an Android TV device, I don't get the appeal of the Shield Pro. I bought one years ago and resold it a few months later. For me the only things it did better than an Apple TV (playing certain ripped blu-rays) are better done by the Ugoos AM6B+. So those are the two devices I use nowadays.
It's frustrating that nobody else seems to care about attempting to be the all-in-one box given how much Shield is showing its age now. It's really sluggish
I don't get why Apple just refuses to allow audio pass through or DV Profile 7. They're clearly on board with DV in general and don't hesitate to play Dolby's branding games, so why not profile 7 support???
Fair, but I just wasn't willing to put up with Android TV. And the Shield doesn't handle FEL so there's still some ripped content it won't play.
For me it's easy enough to use my Apple TV for streaming and even most ripped blu-rays, and the Ugoos for the blu-ray rips that benefit from it. Flashing the AMB6+ was a one-time thing. After that, updating the OS is just dropping a tar file into a folder and rebooting it.
> It's frustrating that nobody else seems to care about attempting to be the all-in-one box given how much Shield is showing its age now.
It's a niche market and any all-in-one box is likely to run afoul of Dolby Labs licensing restrictions.
> I don't get why Apple just refuses to allow audio pass through or DV Profile 7.
I don't even care about pass through audio if it could just use Dolby MAT to playback decoded DTS:X / Dolby TrueHD Atmos w/o losing the spatial channels.
DV Profile 7 is very likely Dolby licensing issues.
When I bought my Shield TV's I actually liked Android TV. Very nearly every update since then has just slowly made it worse and worse.
Now it's absolutely disgusting as it shows straight up advertisements (not "recommended shows", like literally ads for car insurance or whatever).
So I guess there's really just not much to choose between regardless. It's spyware + adware regardless of price vs. Apple's lack of local backup support :/
Oh I learned it the hard way when my device failed and I I had to replace it and log in and configure each and every app from the start. Half a day gone.
Lack of pass-through could probably be argued the same way, although it is a bit more surprising.
Whether or not this matters or you notice will depend on the specific Blu-ray and whether you have a Dolby Atmos capable sound system.
https://community.firecore.com/t/dolby-vision-profile-7-8-su...
https://community.firecore.com/t/help-get-more-dolby-atmos-o...
https://old.reddit.com/r/appletv/comments/1789et4/does_infus...
Honestly I don't think I've ever been as happy/satisfied with a consumer electronics device as I am with the Shield. It does everything I wanted it to do and more. It's a shame there will probably never be another model.
Yes, really - switching cables instantly got rid of any stuttering in the UI no reboot or setting could fix for me - if I wouldn’t have experienced it myself I probably wouldn’t have believed it..
Apple regards privacy as a feature, and I mean that precisely: some places they implement it, other places they decide it’s not worth it, and they only ever tell you about the former. A good example is iMessage: everybody in tech knows it’s E2EE, many fewer realize that the other three copies of your iMessage data on Apple’s servers are just, uh, not encrypted.
You can’t have the same intuition for Apple and privacy that you would for a group like Signal. You need to instead ask yourself whether you fully understand what you need, then whether Apple has guaranteed precisely and fully that, without weasel words.
With Advanced Data Security enabled?
Of course, then there's the persons you're talking to. I figure they are one of your "other three", another is the iCloud copy (deduped from backups) ostensibly resolved by advanced data security, what's the third?
iMessage leaks I know about:
- iCloud backups. While I appreciate Advanced Data Protection, I still count this because it’s not available everywhere, most people have it off, and most people with it off are unaware of it backdooring the E2EE marketing they still saw.
- Recipients’ copies, and all the ways their copies get copied. Yes, tricky to address, that’s the comment. While no app can guarantee no unencrypted recipient copies, privacy focused apps do make it not happen unintentionally and by default.
- APN leaks the timestamp, sender, and recipient of every message. Especially powerful in combination with recipient copies.
- Apple controls the key directory and can MITM at will. As usual, see Signal for a high profile attempt at a centralized key directory that’s resistant to controller abuse.
- Contacts, Siri, and Apple Intelligence all ingest then upload iMessage data.
- No source code or reproducible builds. Obvious reasons, still a real hole.
Avanced Data Security keeps your copy in iCloud safe, but doesn't help with the people you are messaging's copy.
Because they want to allow people to recover them.
My home theatre set up is through a Denon receiver. I love my gen1 HomePods for listening to music, but I can’t understand why anyone would buy four HomePods rather than a proper surround setup.
What exactly can it do besides launching streaming apps?
Thread border router is nice I guess.
Integration with HomePods is ... well, if you have HomePods.
So... No real functionality to justify the price.
I guess if you're not really quite deep in the Apple ecosystem, there's probably better options.
That doesn't stop me from being realistic about AppleTV: it's a waste of a product. It's a veritable supercomputer in your living room whose only purpose is streaming. Literally everything else is a crippled afterthought.
That's why I was baffled by the original comment: "$300 might be a decent price if you use it for all of the things that it can do". It doesn't do a lot, does it?