[twiceaday]

If you are in the Apple ecosystem you really can't beat Apple TV. Bring up the content on your phone then Airplay to the TV and use the phone as an awesome media remote. Random internet videos? Bring up on the phone = on the TV. Netflix, YouTube, Twitch? Awesome phone apps = on the TV. Your own video files? I use Air Video Server HD on PC with companion iPhone app; every video file I own = on the TV. Its just perfect.

[WorldWideWayne]

Sure, it's perfect if you're content to live in the confines of Apple's prison yard. I just can't stand Apple the company or their dumbed-down products though. They are the the king of "streamlined but extremely limited", so there's no way that a person like me who values ultimate flexibility is going to belong to the Apple ecosystem.

Can you look at funny memepics on the web while Pandora is playing in the background on Apple TV? Shop for a new game on Steam while playing a YouTube video? Connect an Xbox 360 controller to play games? We do all of these things. I haven't used an Apple TV, but somehow I doubt that it excels at multi-tasking or interoperating with the non-Apple universe.

[twiceaday]

You are comparing a $69 Apple TV to a desktop that will cost at least 4x that. And the usage models you are describing do not correspond to how most people watch TV. People sit on the couch with the TV on, potentially fiddling with their phone. This works with Apple TV perfectly. If you want flexibility then what you want is a much more expensive computer, and then you've got ten-foot-ui problems even in the most basic usage scenarios. I too have my (gaming) pc hooked up to my TV (via a long HDMI cable) but I only use it to play games because the user experience is horrendous when doing anything else.

> dumbed-down products

> streamlined but extremely limited

What the hell are you even talking about here? It's certainly not TV sticks because all of them offer similar functionality. It's certainly not Apple laptops or desktops and their unix backed OSX. What then? Phones? What activities do you do on your phone that cannot be done on an iPhone? In what tangible way is an iPhone dumbed-down and extremely limited compared to, what, Android? And most importantly, in what way does using an iPhone irreversibly force you into the Apple ecosystem?

[redblacktree]

The product in the OP is $130, which isn't too far off of that $69. You can also get 7" Windows tablets for about $80, so I think it's a fair comparison.

[WorldWideWayne]

Someone (it was you) told me that Apple TV is "perfect" and I disagreed and I said all of the reasons why. You did continue the comparison though by talking about how bad you think the UX is, but it would be nice to have some actual examples instead of empty claims.

All of Apple's products are dumbed down compared to competing products. Windows has soooo much more flexibility than OS X and I'll be glad to give you a couple of good examples to shore up my argument.

For starters - the really big obvious one is that OS X only runs on a very small sub-set of the hardware that Windows runs on. I don't care if their business plan dictates it, it's dumb and I won't use OS X because of it. Windows runs faster on the same hardware anyway.

Here's a big one for which there are lots of examples - Apple simply does not let you customize OS X nearly as much as you can customize Windows. Apple's dumb-it-down attitude reaches all the way to the smallest of features - for instance, go try and change the color of your mouse cursor in OS X. One day I tried to change it to white because I like that better and I found out that OS X has the cursor bitmap burned into a fucking ROM or something... that's just a tad ridiculous, don't you think?

I think it's hilarious that some people are so in love with Apple that they don't even see the most basic examples. If the mouse cursor example hasn't convinced you please let me know and I'll come back with a larger list of just how many ways OS X is limited (and therefore dumbed-down) compared to Windows and Linux desktops.

(EDIT: And the same arguments go for the iPhone versus others. Apple doesn't let you customize it nearly as much as Android and of course they don't let you run it on the hardware you want, so yeah the iPhone is dumbed-down. Enjoy your prison yard!)

[twiceaday]

You claim Apples products are dumbed down but the first example you give is that OSX only runs on certain hardware. That's not what "dumbed down" means. This goes more towards your point of their products being limited (extremely-limited is still a stretch). But if you think about it their product is Macbook + OSX. This pair is not limited, its as feature rich as any Windows laptop (even more so I'd argue because of the unix backed OS). The Windows ecosystem indeed has a larger selection of products but your claims were significantly more far reaching than this simple fact.

> Here's a big one for which there are lots of examples - Apple simply does not let you customize OS X nearly as much as you can customize Windows. Apple's dumb-it-down attitude reaches all the way to the smallest of features - for instance, go try and change the color of your mouse cursor in OS X.

You escalate the notion of a mouse cursor theme being difficult to change into the entire operating system being difficult to customize. An operating system does a lot of stuff, I don't see how any of this follows.

> I think it's hilarious that some people are so in love with Apple that they don't even see the most basic examples.

I'm not sure what you think this tiny thing is indicative of, but I guarantee to you that most people have never even thought about this because it is irrelevant to their lives.

> And the same arguments go for the iPhone versus others. Apple doesn't let you customize it nearly as much as Android and of course they don't let you run it on the hardware you want, so yeah the iPhone is dumbed-down. Enjoy your prison yard!

To summarize your arguments: Apple provides fewer hardware options and a lot less theming options. Seems to me like your words are a bit too harsh considering you are describing a full desktop operating system and a full mobile operating system, both of which have significantly more knobs to tweak than just themes. They also run software you know. Limiting access to fiddle with themes is hardly a prison yard. Also, not everybody has the time to fiddle with themes. Also, just because something is customizable doesn't mean you can make it look good (customizability comes at a cost to coherency). Also, plenty of people use Apple strictly because of how their products look and feel. I think your theming metric is quite weak in general, but especially when used to back up the claims that every single thing Apple makes is "dumbed down" and "extremely limited."

[WorldWideWayne]

Limited options is exactly what "dumbed down" means and Apple is known for offering dumbed down limited devices and computers. The examples I gave are just that - examples. I can give you a whole laundry list of ways that OS X is limited compared to Windows and yes, the fact that you can only run OS X on one single brand of hardware is a major limitation.

Being able to change the color of the cursor is not a "theming" option, it's a usability option because I can see the white cursor and find it on the screen much better than the black one. It's just one example though.

I'll go through every piece of software that comes with OS X and show you a better default application that comes with Windows if you want. Let's start with the basics - Finder - which is super limited compared to other file browsers.

- Just added the ability to cut and paste in Lion/2011!

- No hooks to extend it the way you can Windows Explorer. (So, you simply cannot have a whole class of software, like TortoiseGit.)

- No address bar to quickly see and/or enter a path. You can get close with the status bar thingy, but it's still limited in ways that matter - namely, having an obvious place to enter a path...

- Cannot remove it from the Dock because reasons. (I don't care about the reasons, you simply cannot do it.)

[twiceaday]

Yep, lets ignore the fact that the OSX and Windows are highly similar in functionality, over-leverage some small differences all in favor of Windows as if OSX is an exact subset, and continue to drill that all Apple products are "extremely limited" and "dumbed down." Come on, man.

> Limited options is exactly what "dumbed down" means and Apple is known for offering dumbed down limited devices and computers.

> .. the fact that you can only run OS X on one single brand of hardware is a major limitation.

What are you trying to pull here? You know that's not what "exactly" means. You painted a very vivid picture with your earlier words and you know god damn well that it wasn't: "Apple has a limited hardware selection." No, you claimed that all of their products are "extremely limited" and "dumbed down." Meanwhile half of your argument relies on the fact that just the selection process simplified. That's like calling Mazda products dumbed down because they only sell a handful of cars. Its an absurd metric, its absurd for it to be a large part of why you bad-mouth the entirety of their products, and it is absurd to imply that bad-mouthing the entirety of their products in a vacuum exactly implies that the selection process is limited. And by the way limiting the hardware selection only to the high-end and providing a tighter integration the software is a major reason why Apple is the company it is today. That means regardless of how strongly you feel about this you have to concede that you are being subjective. So what you've got here is a subjective opinion about just the selection process being leveraged into calling all products dumbed-down. Its just ridiculous.

> Being able to change the color of the cursor is not a "theming" option, it's a usability option because I can see the white cursor and find it on the screen much better than the black one. It's just one example though.

A large part of my objective was how you were heavily implying that this one example strongly supports your grandiose claims.

I am not familiar with accessibility options on Macs historically but on my work Mac there is an option to increase cursor size, and it can be made quite big. Also, it's black precisely for visibility. The OSX themes have always been bright and the vast majority of web pages and apps are bright so a black cursor offers contrast. Doesn't Windows offer a black cursor as a means to increase visibility?

> - Just added the ability to cut and paste in Lion/2011!

Note how you're not complaining about the underlying functionality but only about the UX differences. This is a complaint that OSX is not Windows and its four years old.

> - No hooks to extend it the way you can Windows Explorer. (So, you simply cannot have a whole class of software, like TortoiseGit.)

I'm not familiar with this so I can't comment about specifics. Though this does seem like a very niche use case, the lack of which does not warrant calling the entire operating system "extremely simplified" and "dumbed down."

Why not just use git? Oh, right, dos. That's why I develop on macs.

> - No address bar to quickly see and/or enter a path. You can get close with the status bar thingy, but it's still limited in ways that matter - namely, having an obvious place to enter a path...

From the menu: Go > Go to Folder ... or Command + Shift + G. Functionality is there, it could be easier to access, its a trade-off. Though the vast majority of the time that I go to specific code paths I'm in bash.

> - Cannot remove it from the Dock because reasons. (I don't care about the reasons, you simply cannot do it.)

Hiding Finder is the equivalent of hiding the start menu on Windows. I have no idea how to do either, I'm not sure why anybody would want to, and I don't see a logical relation between this and calling the operating system "dumbed down".