The trick is to never give your TV access to the internet and to pair it with an Apple TV. If you buy a TV and it won't even boot or work without an internet connection - return it and get a different one.
But the Fire TV TFA talks about... well, the whole point of the thing is to stream internet content. So not connecting it to the internet kinda defeats 90% of the thing's purpose.
Unless it won't work if not connected to the internet (wouldn't put it past them).
I bought my Xbox mainly because it was the best/cheapest option for a 4K bluray player. I think I've loaded a game on it a handful of times at best, but watched lots of movies and other content with it. Thanks gamers for subsidizing a great BR player!
Because the smart TVs have a history of returning to whatever ads they want to show after power on.
Telemetry takes packets out of your bandwidth.
These boxes have constant calls so… yeah free that space up
So, buying a cheap Amazon fire TV and not connecting it to the internet is a reasonable choice for a cheap ‘dumb’ TV.
I hate that I’ve turned into something of an fanboy but Apple TV follows the same old story from Apple: expensive but it consistently just works.
Can't say that about macOS, though - it's consistently below expectations for me.
Not to mention at least you know where they're hitting you - up front, on the hardware. It's like the people that complain about a Macbook being 20% more (or whatever), buying a PC-something, and then coming back complaining that Windows is loaded with ads or Linux has all kinds of issues on it.
I'm with you - I went from being a die-hard Linux desktop, Kodi, Android, etc, etc user to just saying "the hell with it" and plunking down for Apple products.
They're expensive and they're not perfect either but my life is much less stressing and annoying as a result.
The only good thing in Macbook is display, which covers more than 100% of sRGB color space and has giantic resolution. I wish it could be bought separately and installed into a normal laptop.
I don't really like Apple as a company but I just hand them money and they give me a laptop that works without any nonsense. Maybe I'm just too old and overpaid nowadays but I legitimately feel like laptop manufacturers other than Apple are in a self-destructive race-to-the-bottom with each other.
And their battery lasts almost two hours.
I am envious of gp though, I kind of miss being younger and thinking the only thing that mattered in a laptop was raw CPU/GPU performance.
It was the worst machine I've ever had. One day after doing yet another plug-unplug-reboot-wtf dance to get a display to work (that just worked the day before) I threw my hands up, went to Best Buy and bought some random basic Macbook Pro for $1200 (lower specs, of course). I don't know what the specs or benchmarks look like, I don't care. I just need a tool to do my work.
What I do know is that it runs for at least weeks at a time, does absolutely everything I need it to do, and I never feel like I'm waiting for it. Plug/unplug displays, thunderbolt docks, open/close the lid, don't charge it for days at time. Just runs along - cool and silent. I open it, get my work done, close it. Day after day.
I absolutely guarantee that even if this Macbook was $6000 I'm way ahead in terms of productivity not to mention stress and frustration - which I value very, very highly.
It's been "Ohhh, this is NICE" experiences like this that have chipped away at my previous thinking and pulled me further and further towards Apple. Still not perfect (of course) but the time I spend fixing my tools vs being productive isn't even close.
I'm probably just getting old and cranky but I have very little patience for BS at this point in my life. When I was 13 figuring out why RedHat 5.2 didn't boot on my AMD K6 was fun. It's not fun anymore.
Screen, keyboard, build quality, and a whole host of other factors contribute to it.
I've never had a great experience with any laptop but at least I can't say I didn't get screwed on the price most of the time (non apple times). Who remembers how apple didn't admit or fix the Nvidia GPU on their laptop for years but it was easy to just get a new ipod?
The problem is that normal use and wear and tear over time would lead to the GPU physically failing, leading to a non-bootable system and necessitating a whole new logic board.
Apple had a long standing special service program of covering (very expensive) logic board replacements for all of those MacBook Pros that were usually well out of of warranty¹ because Apple gave a damn about making it right whereas nVidia refused to even acknowledge the issue.
Source: I was a Mac Genius at an Apple Store from 2008 to 2013.
1) https://www.macrumors.com/2017/05/20/apple-ends-2011-macbook...
Only took a few years for them to admit it failed under normal use, by that time it was long outdated. I don't pretend waiting at the apple store is a luxury anymore. The brand is tainted to me.
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2010/10/nvidia-settle...
That said, as other commenters have noted it wasn't an Apple issue. Nvidia shirked responsibility and Apple stepped up. This is one of the examples where Apple has earned their reputation for user experience and overall "premium" brand halo. They took the loss and replaced any failures related to this fiasco for six years - well beyond the standard warranty period.
In another comment I noted my very poor experience with Framework. It was so bad I basically do what you do and trash them at every opportunity - to me they deserve it. You obviously feel the same way from your Apple experience. The difference is in my case they took no responsibility whatsoever and I'm left with a nearly-useless $3k machine. That's buying first gen hardware from a startup for you, and I should have known better. You bought hardware from a leading and well established brand where this never should have happened. That's far worse.
I mentioned the ten years because a decade in the life of a tech company that has sold billions of devices across multiple product lines and generations in the meantime is (in my mind) a pretty weak argument and borderline irrational stance. You're holding on to a decade old grudge against a brand that has famously happy, dedicated, and loyal users. Apple isn't the most valuable company in the world because your experience is anywhere near typical.
I would hope that in ten years time (or sooner) I will have gotten over my issues with Framework (if they're still around) and would be willing to try them again. I guess we'll see if I'm able to let it go by then.
Framework is probably not going to be around in less than 10 years. I'm happy some products but not the Apple company. Waiting for hours to be sent away at the apple store is never a luxury and a dreadful experience.
If this was as obvious and well-known as you make it seem it boggles the mind how a primarily hardware company like Apple missed this. I suspect hindsight is 20/20 here. I also have two Nvidia Apple Intel Macbooks (one of which lives in my trunk) that weren't bit by this. Anecdotes, you know.
> My friends Intel MacBook was good at first and it got worst and worst
I'm sitting next to my 2013 Mac Book that I still use daily for occasional testing. The thing just won't die or give me any issues. Anecdotes.
> Waiting for hours to be sent away at the apple store is never a luxury and a dreadful experience.
They at least have the Apple Store available (show me another consumer hardware manufacturer that has anything similar), and needless to say your experiences (again) don't match mine. I've been to multiple Apple Stores in multiple states time and time again and never experienced this. The last time I was at their EXTREMELY busy store on Michigan Ave in Chicago I was in and out inside of 15 minutes. They just handed me a brand new Apple Watch (no AppleCare even) and offered to set it up for me (declined).
I'm not sure what's going on in your world but my social circle is almost exclusively iMessage-blue and I've never heard anything like this. Quite the contrary, actually, and reflective of their overall great reputation for customer service and support.
Now that you mention it, I had a bad experience with their batteries dying in the cold for a while, and luckily I had applecare and it took mutiple geniuses to decide it was a problem even though the problem was known.
It's funny, when I was in Chicago the Michigan one was always AWFUL for me (never helped, swamped with people, appointments were hard to come by) and the one by the Northside was awesome and much better with CS. Maybe management changed, but it's at best inconsistent with our experiences. The times I went in, I heard tons of other people with the same failures I had, some were sent away and some were helped.
How many times did you go to get problems fixed?
So yes, it cost me more than a competing box would’ve in 2017, but it’s given me smooth problem free operation the entire time and there’s no sign of that changing any time soon.
To answer your question: 1st generation: January 9, 2007; 16 years ago
Advertising wasn't the same in 2007, compared to 2023, so counting all of those years is disingenuous.
This is also a company that vigorously lobbies for anti-right-to-repair.
Lastly, youre defending a company that sells things like a $1k monitor stand, with a straight face. There is no justifiable reason for a basic monitor stand to be $1k. None. Zero. No, not even then.
GL with trusting Apple to not shaft its customers. There are many, many, examples to the contrary.
How much time should we give it?
You may feel differently about that, since you're defending a company you apparently have loyalty to.
GL with that.
Nevertheless, ignoring the first ten years--which is your high estimate--how long should we wait past that?
Or, they could just include a little cellphone radio. Probably only need to phone home once every couple months to get the new ads.
And remember: hard drive space is cheap nowadays. You might not ever connect your TV to the internet, but it can at least record fingerprints for everything you watch. Maybe your kids will connect it to the internet some day, or you’ll hand it down to somebody else, and then that poor trapped taste-profile information can finally make the trip back to Amazon’s servers.
- I just opened the App Store and the whole of the screen is taken up by two adverts.
- in settings, the 1st option is an add for Apple Care.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Sidewalk
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?node=21328123011
Devices can also ship eSIM too. But at least that comes with bigger cost than just the radio chipset.
I believe 5g can all support meshing. But I don’t know a whole lot about that.
Suffice to say, what little control we have now is going to disappear completely over the next decade.
The lower the cost, the more likely this crud is. If you buy a $250 55” TV you’re (unknowingly) signing up for ads.
Sadly, there isn’t much middle ground anymore. Ads and spying, or a ton of money (and spying).
Sadly Google seems to insist on showing YT recommendations to matter what on Google tvs, but you can just opt into "app only mode" and then you get none of that.
The fact they use Google gives me pause. My last TV was a Sony with Google and it was slow as dirt (Sony’s fault, since fixed on newer models). And it was a great TV otherwise. But I don’t trust Google not to find a way to shove ads in later.
Sadly neither Sony tv I have had (including one I just bought) are able to stay connected to my wifi for more than an hour or so before losing connection....
Sony is not known for the quality of their software...
PlayStation has the religion, but the rest of their consumer stuff doesn’t.
https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/320778-how-to-stop-l...
Been a user for the last 7-8 years and I love the UX.
There are no app suggestions or notifications on Apple TV (or at least I turned them off about 8 years ago).
I have been happily streaming media off my computer with Apple TV and have never had a single issue with it.
Even then though, I'm an on-again/off-again Plus subscriber so I don't even mind it because it often times suggests shows that I might want to subscribe for.
I'm not sure how many Apple TV devices they sell, but I've always viewed it as super underrated, just a clean piece of hardware with great "It Always Works" functionality.
Even then I don't quite consider it quite ad-free. Content I've purchased in iTunes Movies or iTunes TV Shows will always show the store on launch or will switch to the store if you pause content for some amount of time.
Otherwise, there aren’t really any ads except that if you linger over their app icon, it has a kind of “now showing” effect (no sound though). Seems a little more privileged compared to other apps in how much of the Home Screen it can use, but it’s really not obtrusive.
I really like my Apple TV.
Plus I can use it to play Steam games, so gaming console and media device all in one.
It's pretty infuriating and definitely an intentional dark pattern.
But, what you are doing, is selling your viewing history to marketers, albeit indirectly. For that $20 box, you are giving away everything you watch, when you watch, and very likely anything that goes through that box.
That said, you might be 100% ok w/that for the price and that's ok. But, you should go in eyes open about what these lower-cost pieces of hardware are doing to 'permit' you to pay less than they cost from competitors who may or may not be doing the same thing.
Even if I had a dumb TV, and a secure trustworthy streaming box, the services themselves(Netflix et al) are collecting the same data, no?
Collecting, yes, but not selling. ONN explicitly says they do so in their privacy policy.
https://onntvsupport.com/privacy-policy
>We may disclose “blinded” aggregated data and user statistics to prospective partners and other third parties. Blinded data is data that does not identify an individual person.
Netflix says - https://help.netflix.com/legal/privacy
We may share information collected from or about you with Advertisers and/or Ad Measurement Companies to select advertisements, and measure and improve advertising effectiveness. As a reminder, please see the Information from Other Sources section above if you have questions regarding the role of Advertisers or Ad Measurement Companies.
Hulu says - https://press.hulu.com/privacy-policy
We may share information collected from or about you with third parties as explained further below, including business partners, social networking services, service providers, advertisers, and other companies that are not affiliated with Hulu.
The fact that they got to do this (and show it off via screensaver) is one of my favorite “we have unlimited money and power” Apple flexes.
The amount of time, money, and planning to produce these is staggering. They’re slow motion, probably shot in 8K, and are drone shots with expensive cinema lenses. There is probably a team of 1-3 people dedicated simply to the paperwork and approvals and flight planning, not counting cinematography/DP and postproduction.
I would love a reddit-style Q&A with Apple’s internal filmmaking team.
They’re not aerial, but they’re beautiful paid apps: search “magic window” on the ATV app store. They have a few timelapse video apps that I love to leave playing on my ATVs.
For whatever reason, they dropped that in the 4. All of the screensavers (as far as I can tell) are static now, which is kind of a shame.
Aerial Views https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B4PPSNT6
I’m not getting ads from the lowest rung trash TV someone is pushing, random consumer electronics, things I’ve googled, etc.
As far as I can tell it’s basically the best experience on a modern smart TV without going full HTPC custom.
(LG was pretty good they’re getting worse with promoting things to you, it seems)
You can change the apps in the first row to prevent this, but by default the behavior is the same: home screen ads.
Calling this ‘ads’ is disingenuous.
I think there may be an option to turn that off too, I don’t remember.
Honestly I’m never on that screen for more than a few seconds. I don’t find that problematic at all.