Turns out, Roku is way better. With respect to "terrible built-in apps", Apple TV has plenty of those. Netflix, Twitch, sports apps, streaming apps, all way better and more usable on the Roku than the Apple TV. Even after all this time with Apple TV remote, the UX is terrible even if the remote is decent
Can you tell me this, no snark: how the hell do you fast forward or rewind on Apple TV?
In any case, here's an article on how to do it:
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-fast-forward-on-apple...
(as a side note: isn't it sad that you had to ask this question? why isn't the button on the remote? or at least discoverable? or at the bare minimum part of an on-screen tutorial when you turn on Apple TV for the first time?)
Also, fwiw, UX isn't the only reason I prefer the ATV. E.g.:
- Doesn't Roku track usage for ads and whatnot, or is that just a rumor?
- There's also how well it integrates with everything else. When I go to a search screen, I can use my phone's keyboard to type. AppleMusic is right there, plus I can easily stream from my in-house library (which, admittedly, I almost never bother doing since signing up for Apple Music). I can throw my laptop screen on the TV if I want. Of course, all of this requires being in the Apple ecosystem, but I happen to be in that ecosystem.
Yeah, I get that, but like... What swipe gesture do I use? Maybe the apps I've used that on somehow implemented it badly but I completely fail to scrub thru
> Roku track usage for ads
Probably true, I'm a bit defeated in this domain
> Apple integrations
Yeah, I do like to stream my laptop to my TV sometimes, but once I realized that Roku natively could handle Twitch, sports apps, and streaming apps I have almost never had a use case for doing that
> https://support.apple.com/guide/tv/use-other-remotes-atvb041...
You can also click while your finger is on one side or the other to skip a few seconds forward or back (this gesture is a little finicky)
The current Apple TV remote definitely has some downsides - I'm not a huge fan of it - but I still love my Apple TV overall compared to all other options
You can also click in the middle and then swipe left or right to move the slider.
What really sucks on Apple TV is the YouTube app. It may be Google's single least competent publicly available software engineering.
edited to clarify question
I can use it with the same remote as I turn my TV on with.
In all honesty, these things all are just feature parity, they perform the exact same between the two devices, but I really feel like the UX of fast-forwarding, rewinding etc is completely MIA on Apple TV and therefore it isn't really superior to the native applications, despite the $200 price point
Any modern TV will let the connected turn it on and off with HDMI-CEC. For Apple TV, you just use the volume or whatever button to turn it on, then hold the home button and tap sleep to turn it off. Roku supports this, too.
The PBS Kids app is super buggy. It randomly decides to start playing the audio from its home screen over whatever show my kid is trying to watch.
And Emby, which works great on Roku and on iOS, looks great on Apple TV but fails at actually playing videos.