Where is the remote?
There it is. One of the minor announcements at Apple Spring Loaded Event
was the update to the Apple TV. Now that's not as exciting as what comes with the Apple TV,
which is a brand new updated Siri remote. We don't have to use this anymore.
Now where'd I put that one?
Ah, there it is.
The new Siri remote does come with all the available Apple TVs
like this new 4K model and the remarkably still available HD model.
But if you're already the proud owner of an Apple TV,
you can get the Siri remote on its own for $60.
That seems a little bit steep. So to find out if it's worth the money,
I'm gonna compare it to the old one and see just how it stacks up.
But to do that, let's figure out what made the old one so bad in the first place.
The old Siri remote was one of Apple's design failures
of the last decade, like the butterfly keyboard. The design is a case of form compromising function.
With early versions of the remote, people were having troubles telling which way was up
in dark living rooms, cause it's black and all the buttons look the same
with nothing really to orient it. They did add a white circle to the menu button to help,
but that didn't solve the many other problems.
The touchpad is just bad. You have to move your fingers so much
just to navigate around the interface. And it goes from edge to edge while being clickable.
So if you do find the remote in the couch cushions
while something is playing and you don't grab it correctly, you'll pause your video.
And if you grab it correctly from the bottom, you're grabbing the glossy part,
which is so prone to smears and hand goop. It never looks good.
You can clean it, but it's futile because you're going to need to wear white gloves
if you don't want to make it dirty again. There's other stuff too.
These volume buttons are convenient, but there's no mute button.
And I can't get it to work with that old receiver there. It charges through lightning
and the horizontal keyboard on TVOS is really cumbersome.
This design is much, much better.
Firstly, it's no longer black, so you can see it on a black sofa.
It's much thicker and has a curved bottom.
So it's less likely to slip between the cushions and feels much nicer in the hand.
Still looks good too. I'd say these design improvements are worth about $15.
Next is the D-pad. This has many benefits.
Firstly, it's no longer too easy to press the select button
when grabbing the remote because the button doesn't go to the edge and is clearly defined.
It works like any other D-pad, but Apple has also kept it touch sensitive,
like the old remote. You can turn that off if you want though.
More interestingly is a circular jog control
like you got on an old click wheel iPod, though it's not quite obvious how that works.
To use it, you have to pause the video, then rest your finger on the edge of the click wheel
until a little circular dial shows up on the progress bar
and then you can swirl away. It's nice, but I think what I want
is to be able to turn off the swiping gestures while keeping the spinny jog dial available
with regular D-pad presses, but that'll be just yet another setting too many.
Still, a little disappointing. I'd say that these improvements are worth another $15.
Some other changes of value is the addition of a mute button,
which I would say is worth about $4. There's a power button to turn your TV on and off, $2.
What was once mislabeled as a menu button is now properly labeled as a back button, $2,
and the Siri button has now been moved to the side,
another $2. What won't add any value is the fact
that the keyboard remains one-dimensional and lightning charging persists.
So doing the calculations here,
that comes out to about $40, which is $20 less than the $60
that Apple asks for the remote. If you already got in Apple TV
and are suffering with the old remote, that's a lot to swallow, but I guess it's better that you can buy it
as a standalone option as opposed to having to upgrade to a completely new Apple TV for $180.
And as for that Apple TV, well, the processor's been updated to the A12 chip,
so that should mean it should run a little bit faster for a little bit longer through more OS updates.
Functionality-wise though, all you really get is the addition of HDR
at 4K 60 frames per second. That's great if your TV supports it
and the content you watch supports it. And if you're among the few who own a HomePod
or even two, this new box supports EARC,
meaning you can send audio from your TV through the Apple TV to your HomePods.
Minis will be supported in the fall. At $180 for 32 gigabytes of storage
and $199 for 64 gigabytes of storage,
it really is quite expensive in the world of set-top boxes.
In the past, it was a bad option, quite simply because of that remote,
but now it's a little bit easier to justify and less annoying.
So that means that the final design failure
that Apple needs to fix is the charging of the Magic Mouse.
Thank you for tuning in to this Mac Address.
Be sure to like and subscribe. One interesting thing I discovered
is I have this original Apple remote
and it still works with a current Apple TV.
How cool is that?