Brendinooo

Yup, that's why I said "depending on when you bought it"

Having spent a lot of time in the open source world, I'm aware of the concept that I can never know for sure if I can't see the code. (And even if I could, that wouldn't tell us with certainly how that the data that code creates/captures is used by the people using it.)

But I do think that, in general, Apple tends to be the least-bad actor among its mainstream competitors: its primary business model does not depend on harvesting and selling data, and it has made this value proposition a part of its marketing, and people high up in the company have spoken about ways that they personally value it. And, for any story about ways in which Apple has failed here, there are certainly twice as many for any other company they compete with.

I mean, step back: Who cares more about my privacy - Apple or Google? Apple or Roku? Can anyone seriously argue the latter for either?

> I'm only asking if people put faith in Apples claims because they're, well, Apple, or do we _know_ their claims are valid.

If we _know_, then there would be no need for faith. Given the lack of options and the lack of certainty, people must place their faith somewhere (or take on a lot of technical burden to roll their own); given everything I've seen, it's more reasonable to place faith in Apple than basically anyone else in "Big Tech" in this regard.

(But again: if there's a product out there that is very similar to Apple TV in every way except that it is more private: please tell me what that product is. I'd be thrilled to consider it.)

I think you read a bunch into my stuff and then responded to the arguments you thought I was making, then accused me of craftily dodging things, then implied I was a bot.

> the OP carefully skimmed this part out

lol

>we're talking to a bunch of bots on here

Ah. Okay. In a different tenor of conversation I'd be happy to clarify but...not when I'm up against this.

Since you clearly know something the rest of the world's regulators do not, you should file a multi-billion lawsuit and get your money.

I want something that's capable, not fiddly, and reasonably respects my privacy. I haven't found a better product in this segment yet.

>Yes, they did

This has nothing to do with the specific question I asked, and I'm not sure why you'd think so unless Roku has some kind of Siri-like feature (which wasn't what I was intending when I asked regardless). (also, that's a dead link)

What is a better solution here? What is something that lets me stream from the major services, has a good-enough remote, and doesn't require any fiddling on my part?

I've always seen Apple TV as the least-bad option compared to Roku/Fire/whatever Google is doing these days/literally any built-in solution.

A quick search suggests that Roku does ~380 network requests per hour. LG smart TVs running webOS typically generate regular hourly background checks, plus periodic or continuous telemetry and Automatic Content Recognition requests.

Does Apple TV even do ACR in any form? Is it scanning my network and phoning home about it?

For what it's worth, depending on when you bought it, if $130 was an impulse buy in the year you bought it (and your financial situation is similar), a sizable chunk of that price difference is just inflation.

For example, a $130 impulse buy in 2015 is a ~$184 impulse buy in 2026.

What's the claim here, that they are doing nefarious things that are undetectable? Because we know that this is probably the most scrutinized tech company on the planet, and we know that they've been caught and penalized for errors in the past.

Do you have any evidence to present, or is this pure FUD?

This is the kind of analysis I was hoping to get when I posted my original comment, thanks so much for this info.

>It's mind-blowing how one of the most advanced technology forums on the internet can take privacy for granted

that's not what I did

> just because the marketing

not just because of the marketing

> of a for-profit corporation with previous histories of privacy violations (there's even lawsuits) claims their closed source device connected 24/7 to the internet, is private.

in other words, they are being watched and held accountable when they do screw up, which obviates a lot of the "well maybe they're stealing your data and we don't know about it" nonsense elsewhere in the replies.

I'll ask something specific: We know that Rokus and built-in smart TVs are actively tracking and monetizing everything you do on your television. People can prove this by looking at what calls are made on your network.

Does Apple do the same thing?

On the specs page it says:

Apps Available from iPhone:

- Audiobooks

- Classical Music

- News

- TV

Underneath that it says "Supported third-party audio and video apps". I'm not sure what that means.

But yeah! Plexamp works fine with Siri on my phone.

Apple has a better track record in this regard, do you have any recent evidence that this trust is unfounded?

iPads cost more, and it really doesn't get much use in our house otherwise.

Huh, interesting! I opened up my Home app and didn't see anything obvious. I'll have to look into what I need to use it...

Good to know, thank you.

How is life in the Sonos ecosystem? I vaguely recall there being some controversy around them a few years back, and I'm generally distrustful of third party hardware companies attempting to write software.

I don't know if that's obviously true. I'm sure Plexamp is small potatoes compared to how many are on Apple Music, and there's a solid chance that anyone running a Plex server is doing it on a Mac.

"Turn on/off subtitles" is the primary use case for me. "Rewind a minute" is a good one as well. If it got more seamless at something like "watch Community on Peacock" that'd be on the list as well.

Pretty sure it was up to $199, presumably because of rising hardware costs.

I'm a little surprised at the price (especially when their newly-announced HomeView is the same price, and it has a screen!).

I love this product: it's the one box I can (reasonably) trust to not be mining my viewing habits for data. I have two older ones and was looking to get something that supported 4K but waited for this to come out.

$300 might be a decent price if you use it for all of the things that it can do, but if all you're doing is launching streaming apps, $200 was already on the high end for that. $300 seems...a bit much.

Anything I'm missing here? The silver lining is that this product is almost certainly still in the "pay money then forget about it for a decade" tier, which is nice.

I'm also wondering if/how the "add up to four homepods" feature compares to "getting a soundbar". In the other thread for this someone noted that the HomePods only work with this box; so if you're running a game console that's no bueno. But apart from that, if $600 on an Apple TV + two HomePods mini delivers something comparable to a ~$500 soundbar, that's a decent value proposition.

Yeah, this is interesting to think about.

Maybe it's a bet on LLMs/Siri AI as well: all of the not-iPhone devices become more useful if you can control them well with your voice.

I think people do feel some tension about staring at their phones all day and like the idea that the phone can stay in the pocket or on a desk while stuff like the Watch and maybe a HomeView or a HomePod could cover a lot of the little usages along the way. (I'm not sure people would ACTUALLY use them that way, but I could see it driving some sales.)

Ahhh, that reminded me to look: looks like the rumored passthrough didn't happen. Oh well.

This is a good point. Maybe not good to do HomePods in the living room where we have the Switch, but fine to use them in the bedroom where we don't.

Maybe the right way to think about this is more "Alexa + a screen" than "iPad that doesn't move or have a bunch of apps".

Pricing is kind of in between those right?

Props to Apple for making this. Always cool to see them try stuff. That said:

I watched their video demo with the family getting ready in the morning: there are some interesting ideas here but imo if this doesn't get reasonably full access to the App Store then it's a no-go for me. Like: FaceTime while cooking, sure, but those calls tend to happen on Messenger and Snapchat for us. Music in the kitchen, sure, but I run Plexamp. My kids are always stealing my iPad to run the Toybox 3D printer; this would be a great thing for them to use.

And so on.

My house has a bunch of spots on the wall where an old intercom system used to live: it'd obviously be a budget buster to buy a bunch of these to fit in those slots but even if you did, you'd need Apple to provide an intercom solution (a la the Watch's Walkie-Talkie?) or you're...out of luck.

I'm a little surprised at the price (especially when their newly-announced HomeView is the same price, and it has a screen!).

I love this product: it's the one box I can (reasonably) trust to not be mining my viewing habits for data. I have two older ones and was looking to get something that supported 4K but waited for this to come out.

$300 might be a decent price if you use it for all of the things that it can do, but if all you're doing is launching streaming apps, $200 was already on the high end for that. $300 seems...a bit much.

Anything I'm missing here? The silver lining is that this product is almost certainly still in the "pay money then forget about it for a decade" tier, which is nice.

I'm also wondering if/how the "add up to four homepods" feature compares to "getting a soundbar".

Are we in some sort of historical outlier in this regard? What do you know about this? Like were people in medieval times way more motivated than we were today or something?

It's interesting; when I clicked I thought the angle would be "it's dangerous that we let chatbots influence people" but the article seemed to care more about the sycophancy angle: some form of "maybe it doesn't influence them enough"

What's the purpose of doing performative disinterest here?