It almost seems that time has passed Apple by. Back in 2012, the 3rd gen Apple TV with 1080p support was a decent little set-top box. Since then, the TV industry has raced forward. Content providers have developed new delivery modes and strategies, and the broadcast and display technologies have advanced as well. Apple, however, seems to have frittered its time away and failed to advance its vision and its hardware. In fact, Yoni Heisler at BGR makes the case that Apple has no idea what it’s doing. The discussion is on Apple’s Hit and Miss Affair with TV.
Check It Out: Apple’s Hit and Miss Affair with TV
“Compounding the problem is that its backwards industrial design all but makes it impossible, upon picking it up, to immediately discern which part of the remote is the top and which is the bottom simply by picking it up.” (from the BGR article) — I cannot count how many times I have picked up the Apple TV remote to move it and accidentally clicked the touch area and turned on the Apple TV. Even to pick the remote up I have to slide it over to a table’s edge because it is so thin and flat.
Also, I am still surprised that Apple hasn’t changed that awful A through Z straight line keyboard. I have a 65″ TV, with all this screen real-estate, and the keyboard is this thin line near the top of the screen.
I thought Apple made all of its employees go through that class where they show that old Google TV remote as a lesson in bad design. I think the Apple TV people called in sick that day.
While I am on the subject of the Apple TV on-screen keyboard, it drives me nuts that there are two buttons below the A to Z line of characters, one for uppercase and another button for lowercase. If I can only display either uppercase or lowercase sets one-at-a-time, why are there two buttons? It should be one button that changes to whatever the opposite of the case currently on the screen is. Actually, there is more then enough room to display both upper and lowercase characters at the same time.
I would love to watch someone on the Apple TV team try to enter in a strong password like }’rbSq}Fx]ZHOfG)Nxnh/cS* with the on-screen keyboard. Yes, I have tried using Siri, and it is completely useless for understanding random generated passwords.