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Comment by pkamb | Hacker News Reader

I for one quite like the Apple TV 4 remote.

It has one major issue in that it's symmetrical and you sometimes pick it up the wrong way.

But other than that I love it. The touchpad is great with the Apple TV, especially once you figure out that you can single-tap the edges like a D-Pad for precision.

It lays flat, so you can tap the play/pause button on your coffee table rather than picking up the remote.

There are just enough buttons for the Apple TV functions, all of which are big and easy to press and work with a satisfying click. No mushy rubber.

I wouldn't want a game controller designed with the same sensibilities. That's something you're holding for hours at a time and needs to be designed for your hand.

But I don't need a "comfortable" cable remote. I'll take the nice objet d'art.

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It drives me crazy that you can’t hold the Apple TV remote while watching tv for fear of accidental input. As soon as I turn something on, I set it down. Then, when I need it, I slowly reach for it, being careful not to inadvertently hit any buttons or swipe the touch pad.

When you’re using it, it’s fine. No complaints. But any time you’re not using it, it feels like a ticking time bomb waiting to mess up your show.

This is true with all remote controls to some degree.

I love how these different usage patterns can make the same thing great for some and terrible for others. It reminds me of my experience on quite a few websites:

I'm one of those people who likes to select the text they're reading - or at least the first line or so of the paragraph I'm in. It helps me not lose track of where I am.

However, that means I'm often continuously selecting/double-clicking lines of text in an article. Unfortunately, some websites now show a popover menu next to text you select, e.g. to tweet that line of text. That popover menu often obscures the text I'm reading.

That's something that would go completely unnoticed when the design is tested on people that simply scroll down while they're reading.

Similarly but yet completely different I always positon the mouse cursor away from the text I'm reading, since I find the cursor distracting. Nowadays that sometimes has an annoying side effect: some news sites have video thumbnails in side columns. If the mouse cursors hovers over one of them for a few seconds, the browser opens the page with the full video. Gone is the article I was reading.

I don't understand what problem the developers were trying to solve with that feature/bug.

Same reason I won’t ever touch a Touchbar if you’ll pardon the pun. For some reason I trained my left hand ring finger to rest on Esc key.

Completely agree. With HDMI-CEC and moving off of old Campos it is the only remote used in our house and nobody ever asks me how to do X. They click it, everything turns on and the navigate to the thing they want.

A bit of rubber on the lower half so could feel up from down would be my only change.

Yeah I use HDMI-CEC to turn on and off my TV from the Apple remote.

I use an HD HomeRun and the app Channels to watch local antenna TV via the Apple TV, so no need for channel buttons.

I do wish that the Apple TV volume buttons worked without HDMI-CEC so I could use those to control the volume when playing games. That and the occasional need for the Input button are the only reasons I keep the TV remote handy.

The fatal flaw of CEC, at least with my particular setup, is that there is no way to play music on my receiver via the Apple TV while having the TV off. When CEC is enabled, turning on the receiver turns on the TV, and turning off the TV turns off the receiver. It’s insanely frustrating, but hey, how could it know when I really don’t want to turn off the receiver?

my receiver (denon x1400) doesn't turn on the tv when it turns itself on, but the tv turns on the receiver and turns it off. i've set it up a long time ago but IIRC it was configurable.

I think that's approximately the issue with my setup as well (I also have a Denon receiver). I believe I settled on only disabling CEC on the TV. Thus waking up the Apple TV does turn on the receiver, and putting it to sleep turns off the receiver. I only have to manually turn the TV on and off, which isn't so bad. Ideally I would be able to configure it so that all CEC controls were active except that manually turning off the TV did not turn off any other device.

The AppleTV 4 remote has the best scrubbing interface of any remote I’ve used. Having the conventional forward back buttons just makes it slower.

I have 2 Apple TV at home, and the symmetrical design drives me crazy.

The way I did fix it is that I put some ugly tape on the bottom of the remote.

Pretty sure Steve or Jony would hate to see what I ave did to their beautiful remote :-), But at least now I know how I am holding it with looking at it.

15 second skip forward and back are completely undiscoverable.

But once you do discover them, they're so much better than equivalent functionality on other media devices. Same asking Siri "What did they say?" to trigger brief subtitles.

And I disagree that they're "completely" undiscoverable... if you rest your thumb on the remote, skip forward/back glyphs appear on-screen and indicate the functionality if you were to click.

Don't you just click either side of the remote? A hint shows up on the screen if you hold your finger there.

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