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by reuben364 1296 days ago
I wonder if AppleTV's atrocious single-line onscreen keyboard fits into this picture of making things less discoverable, or if it's just an extreme of form over function.
2 comments

Definitely not, because Apple gives users the ability to type search in on an iPhone or iPad instead of using the apple TV remote. They also let you do voice-to-text, which is nice.
It is entirely possible to both provide a useable onscreen interface and the iPhone connection option.
Whatever the reason (and I can think of many) it just shows how Apple is past the point of caring for their users.
I’m about to enable the new Facetime Live Transcription feature in iOS 16 so my wife can have conversations with her father, who is rapidly losing his hearing. For this reason (and I can think of many) I strongly disagree.
Fair enough, but that’s also a cool new feature that drives sales.

I meant it more like, why wouldn’t they fix this objectively bad input mechanism? It would take tiny effort but it wouldn’t improve their sales or they might even calculate that it drives usage of iPhones and therefore good for them even though it’s bad for the users.

For the record I own both an Apple TV and an iPhone, inasmuch one can pretend to own these devices.

I had to look up this linear keyboard they created, pretty unique.

Seems like it can be changed.

Settings > General > Keyboard, then switch from “Automatic” to “Grid”.

Wow! Thanks!

For some reason I wasn’t getting automatic updates but after a manual update I can now see and set this option.

I retract my earlier statements, thank you Apple devs!