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Comment by CostcoFanboy | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised there are more Apple TV users than Apple watch users. It always felt like a fairly niched device.

On a somewhat unrelated side-note, as a hardcore Plex user for the last 5-6 years, Apple TV has been an amazing Plex client. Second only to a Nvidia Shield Pro downgraded to 8.2.3 firmware.

Honestly with the quality of their TV boxes, screens and the "ecosystem", I'm kind of surprised they didn't dive into the TV business.

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>I'm surprised there are more Apple TV users than Apple watch users.

I don't think these stats suggest that there are more Apple TV users than Apple watch users.

They say more people use the App Store on tvOS than use the App Store on Apple Watch.

As an Apple Watch user, I'm not surprised by that all. Why would I want to browse the app store directly on my watch? That's annoying and cumbersome. I do it on my phone, it's quicker and easier and therefore I assume that'd be counted as iOS app store usage.

And I also reckon most Apple Watch apps people use are companions to apps they installed on their iPhone anyway, rather than Apple Watch only apps.

Spot on, nobody uses the App Store on the Apple Watch, most people either never use third-party apps on the watch or only use companion apps which are installed alongside iOS apps

Family setup Apple watches are the most likely situation where people are browsing the app store from their watch. No companion iPhone.

I had zero idea there was an App Store on the Apple Watch until this thread. There's some neat apps listed on there - glad everyone in this thread talked about this!

Let me guess, you're using the grid view? :)

Wow, TIL there's an app store on the watch...

There’s a browser too…

I don't find this surprising. Apple TV probably has nearly 100% penetration of app store usage, you download your streaming apps as a necessity (Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Disney+ are all apps).

Meanwhile there's almost zero useful watchOS apps. The device is great out of the box and doesn't need much else.

Apple TV (the hardware, not the streaming service) is so underappreciated. The smooth task switching alone makes it worth a buy. I think it's severely undermarketed.

And the old touch remote that so many people hated.. I like it so much.

(Haven't tried the newest remote that has a combined d-pad/touch area because of troglodyte customer feedback ( ;) ) but I suspect I will hate it since the touchpad area is so much smaller.)

Apple TV+ the streaming service too is under-appreciated, Severance is one of the absolute best tv work out there yet nobody’s talking about it.

The Apple Watch will automatically install the watchOS app for each iOS app you install on your phone by default, if a watchOS app exists for the iOS app. I don't know if the auto installs count towards user visits to the watchOS App Store. I don't think I've ever used the watchOS store, and my watch is full of apps.

https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/get-more-apps-apd99e3c....

> I'm surprised there are more Apple TV users than Apple watch users

Anecdotal but everyone in my proximity that uses apple products have an apple tv. My mother, my father, etc. Very few have an apple watch. That’s like me and my developer friends or friends who are more nerdy about workout.

I'm actually NOT surprised by this stat - keep in mind these numbers are the number of active users of the stores, not of the devices themselves. I've had an Apple Watch since day 1 but I can't remember the last time I went to the App Store on my watch itself. On the other hand, I have to use the AppleTV App Store once every couple months to download whatever app is required by the newest streaming platform the family want to use. I suspect most people are like me as well in that they use their iPhone to manage the "apps" on their watch (or, don't manage them at all), but are forced to download apps on the AppleTV periodically, which causes it to have higher usage stats.

Purely anecdotal but I know way more TVs with an Apple TV device than I know humans with an Apple watch. In most cases they are households with many TV-Apple TV pairings, and maybe one or two people in the household have an Apple watch.

Apple sells far more watches than AppleTVs by every estimate that you can find.

I would say it's more about accessibility of the store and what you can do with the device. There's not many games you can play on the Apple Watch, not many TV channel apps to download, I expect it's more to do with that than users of the device. They may well have sold more Apple Watches, but the Apple TV has sold less and there's more TV App Store users. This is totally over the top, but just as an example, what if 1% of Apple Watch users use the Watch App Store and 75% of Apple TV users use the Apple TV App Store.

You can thank me. I've been shilling the ATV to any friends or family I hear complain about their Roku/Fire Stick/smart TV.

I went through literally all of them before getting an ATV, even the Shield, because for a long time I refused to believe Apple could make a good TV experience.

And one with zero ads on the home screen. Something the shield now does by default :(

It's much cheaper. Especially the non-4K models were dirt cheap for Apple products.

> Second only to a Nvidia Shield Pro downgraded to 8.2.3 firmware.

What's special about 8.2.3 vs the latest firmware? I've only owned my Shield for a few months so I'm curious what I may be missing.

I think its about external storage: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShieldAndroidTV/comments/yjt6aq/wha...

Not really relevant if you're mostly streaming on the box or streaming locally from a file/plex server

I'm not sure either, are they referring to the shitty new home screen courtesy of Google? That comes in separate of the firmware.

Class action suit against Nvidia for effectively removing local Gamestream from the Shield. Mine's a $200 brick now.

[0]: https://www.classaction.org/news/nvidia-hit-with-class-actio...

I'm sad about this, because I use Moonlight for the same purpose, and there doesn't seem to be any good reason for this? It's just removing a feature.

They're moving to streaming your "Connected Apps" (Steam, EA, etc) through their cloud stream service now.

I'm mad since I only bought the Shield in September for the sole purpose of local desktop streaming.

I played around with Moonlight for about 15 minutes but have yet to get it work the same. I do love there's an open source solution but I'll probably be going with an AMD build for the first time in my life instead of Intel/NVidia because of this.

Apps aside, my house has two adults with Apple Watches and four TVs with AppleTVs. I don't think it's surprising that the aTV outnumbers the Watch.

Note these counts are for *European* users. The Apple watch seems really successful in my American suburb but that may not be true in the EU.

Wow, they may 'sell' millions in the market, but many end up in a drawer, or rarely seen as anything other than a wrist worn notification device. This information is beautiful! Reaffirms the true value of these things.

(Well that, or the metric is truly skewed not including companion apps - though that would feel disingenuous)

I don't have Apple Watch, but have Garmin. I used the store once during the initial setup and I don't see why it should be different for AW users.

A lot of Watch apps also get installed through the attached iPhone when you install the associated iPhone app. I think it was the default, I turned it off, to have "Automatic Downloads" on for apps. So if that's still the default (or the present setting for the watch) then if you download Strava for iPhone you'll get Strava on your Apple Watch without ever touching the Watch App Store.

But it's still Watch App Store which installed and delivered the app right? And the developers must use it to give you the application?

Just because you didn't open the UI it doesn't mean the developers weren't forced to go through that app store to reach you.

This is the disingenuous piece if so - as in if the target is non companion iOS, then it’s watchOS App Store? That breaks the logic of the rest of the data disclosure

Most apple watch apps are installed and managed through the watch app on your iPhone not from the app store on the apple watch itself. I just checked and I've never even opened the app store app on my watch but I have configured dozens of 3rd party apps using the Watch app on my iPhone.

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