[jlgaddis]

I bought the iPad for her this last Christmas. She has yet to "install iTunes and iCloud on everything [she] owns" and is getting along just fine.

(Side note: I'm an open source zealot, my e-mail address ends in @gnu.org, and my primary laptop runs Debian GNU/Linux. I also own a MacBook Pro and an iPhone. I like having options too.)

[josteink]

But to use an Apple TV to play or display anything from your network, you will need to publish it via a "iTunes library".

This will require you to install iTunes. If on Windows, iTunes will completely hijack your machine, steal all file-associations and if you're lucky (like I was) completely molest all ID3-tags when attempting to clean up music-metadata, meaning the only "good" copy left of my music's meta-data was the iTunes library. How convenient is that for Apple, eh?

I had to manually go and tag 10000+ MP3s to make them usuable again outside iTunes. But I did that, because to me, choice matters.

If I need to go through that shit again to get an Apple TV to work.... Yeah. Not happening. Ever.

Fuck that shit. I don't say that often on hacker news, but seriously: Fuck that shit.

[sjwright]

You clearly haven't used an Apple TV for many years.