Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

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This article and the earlier Samsung "smart" TV article [1] confirm my own observation that 99% of software running on consumer electronics devices (particularly set top media players and wireless routers) is utter crap, thrown together carelessly, probably at the last minute, by hardware people who have no clue about software. Again and again, you can see the same low/broken functionality and lack of polish (watch any media player as it changes video modes, for example. flash flash flash jump flash). The only redeeming quality of these software distributions is that their appalling security make them easy to root, at least allowing those who know better to go in and either fix things or install third party software written by people who give a damn.

It's like these companies spend a year getting the hardware ready, then at the last minute realize it needs software. So they find some monkey to barely manage to get ARM Linux slapped on to it so they can ship something.

It's gotten to the point where I really appreciate the attitude from some of the new up-and-coming set-top box manufacturers who basically say on their web site, "Screw it, we're a hardware company, here's how to get root and do it properly.", e.g. [2]

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616420 2: http://www.pivosgroup.com/

Until hardware manufacturers find financial incentive to change, this will continue. As it stands today, hw vendors do not derive any (significant) revenue from updating software and so it's small wonder that these devices are not updated.

Personally, I'm perfectly happy with a "dumb" TV with lots of HDMI inputs and a Raspberry Pi with XMBC installed.

I expected Apple TV to come in and crush it, rather like they did to the smartphone industry. It wasn't so long ago that I had a motorola flip phone that could play MP3s. One. At. A. Time.

Apple TV is one of the better set-tops, but still far short of its potential. I attribute this to a "first we build the locks, then if there's anything left, we'll build the house" mentality forced on them by media companies. I wouldn't be surprised if every manufacturer more or less suffered from this and leaving in easy rootability is a form of subtle rebellion.

Pretty much the same reasoning, I was genuinely expecting Google to come up with something manufacturers would adopt, and other than an eventual high end actual Apple TV for it to be pretty much everywhere. Especially because there's a big crossover (Samsung, Sony, LG) between mobile and TV manufacturers. I really don't see myself buying a smart TV in the current market, seems like such a missed opportunity.

Many are still waiting for that "solution" that Steve Jobs had before his death to come about. The disappointment I have with Apple TV is that it wasn't a revolutionary as the iPod or iPhone were. It was apparently only created to be minimally sufficient to support delivering the limited iTunes content that was available.

> The disappointment I have with Apple TV is that it wasn't a revolutionary as the iPod or iPhone were.

This is because there are already many TIVO/DVR/HTPC/Console Media software applications that do a pretty good job at this. Apple is having a hard time breaking into an existing market with something that is already fairly polished by the community.

> I expected Apple TV to come in and crush it, rather like they did to the smartphone industry.

Good luck unlocking/hacking an Apple device.

I found a group of lucky people, I guess:

http://firecore.com/atvflash-black

The jailbreaking scene seems to do a pretty good job of it.

There isn't a working jailbreak for AppleTV3. People have injected themselves into the existing apps changing where they look for video, but that's different to having local root.

Ok, but the GP said "Good luck unlocking/hacking an Apple device" not "... an Apple TV 3", implying that Apple devices are impenetrable fortresses of doom or something.

Full-blown iOS devices get jailbroken pretty quickly. I assume the difference here is that no one cares about the Apple TV, so there's little incentive to hack it (exaggeration, but the difference in Apple TV owners vs. iPhone owners is probably several orders of magnitude). Even if you did hack it, what's the point? There's no hard drive to store your pirated videos, and IIRC these things can stream videos from your PC out of the box anyway. If you're gonna install XBMC and bypass the Apple TV interface completely, why get an Apple TV in the first place?

Good points. I should've been clearer. I meant the scene is not such that there is enough work done that a relatively non-techie person can sift through the jailbreaking community work and apply it him/herself.

Many "hackers" seem to magically stop caring about hacking devices if they're made by Apple. Clearly they must have been perfected prior to release, so there's no need.

Some of us just don't buy Apple devices at all.

John Siracusa had a rant on this very topic: http://hypercritical.co/2013/01/07/ces-worse-products-throug...

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EDIT: Whoa, took a while to post this and then parent was gone. I should've quoted them, ah well. Their comment was along the lines of, "Why are companies hiring people for $40k to write this stuff (and getting bad products as a result) instead of hiring someone for $140k that'll turn out better products."

Management doesn't look at it that way at these companies. The problem is hardware companies don't grok software (not just companies, US DoD has such a heavy background in hardware they often don't have a clue how to handle software, see the F-35 and attempts to "modernize" old systems, wonder why budgets on new systems get out of control? It's probably the software.). An anecdote, but one that I'm told by others was representative of their experience with hardware companies.

The company began by making sensors. It got into software because they wanted a way to sell the complete package to their customers (buy our sensors and this control panel, your building/bus/train/plane will be safer and you don't have to write the control software yourself!). Before my time there they had 4 or 5 people in software. 1 coder. 1-2 testers. 1-2 QA. Their test suites were ludicrously incomplete. No one thought that this was odd, except for those of us in software who came to the show later. The higher ups considered software to just be a necessary inconvenience, it wasn't until our shop started delaying deliveries (because it was understaffed, underpaid, and inexperienced) that they started hiring more people (all underpaid and inexperienced as well) in an effort to throw more bodies at the problem (seriously, see the F-35 for a repeat of this exact behavior).

Short version: Hardware organizations don't get software. It's an inconvenience to them, and they'll screw over the poor sap that gets stuck managing the project with a pitiful budget, and absurd deadlines and requirements.

> by hardware people who have no clue about software.

and

> Short version: Hardware organizations don't get software.

I concur with these two commenters.

Going back to the 1970s, starting with DEC, it's been my observation that hardware companies don't get software. (I worked at two separate companies that OEMed PDP-11s and developed operating systems instead of using DEC's.)

Rather than being viewed as critical to a product's success, in far too many cases it seems like the software is merely a component on the bill of materials for a device without which the unit can't be shipped.

Companies that achieve excellence in both both hardware and the accompanying software are so rare that they might as well be thought of as unicorns.

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