I often wonder whats up with the dorks at Apple. Their penchant for high design versus logic makes me wonder if they ever get a date. There is this beautiful remote that feels so comfortable in your hand, yet it has so few buttons. You can pair it with your sound bar and raise and lower the volume, but would it have been such an eyesore to include a mute button? apparently at Apple they dont believe in muting so theres no way to mute. Then theres the touchpad at the top. Its a high maintenance gadget like someone who barks orders at you in bed. You have to touch it just right. Not only does it work as a touchpad when you want to fast forward, if you also push that pause button at the same time, it has a click feature so theres like a button underneath it. So when ... MoreI often wonder whats up with the dorks at Apple. Their penchant for high design versus logic makes me wonder if they ever get a date. There is this beautiful remote that feels so comfortable in your hand, yet it has so few buttons. You can pair it with your sound bar and raise and lower the volume, but would it have been such an eyesore to include a mute button? apparently at Apple they dont believe in muting so theres no way to mute. Then theres the touchpad at the top. Its a high maintenance gadget like someone who barks orders at you in bed. You have to touch it just right. Not only does it work as a touchpad when you want to fast forward, if you also push that pause button at the same time, it has a click feature so theres like a button underneath it. So when you want to tell Netflix yes continue watching Offspring, you click that button. Except sometimes it moves, because its also a touchpad. And thats the thing, you sort of have to be schooled in how to use it. You need to practice, and get your touch just right. There are special ways that you have to touch something to make it do what you want to do. Another remote would just have another button- out in plain sight. You wouldnt have to go to the college of Apple. Then there is the way it organizes shows. I like the idea that it would display a collection of the shows that youre watching no matter from what app. Except it doesnt really do that. It shows some of them and eventually it learns when you click on GOT that it should open HBO instead of offering to take you to iTunes or some other app to purchase it. Some shows never make it to the list because its clogged up with things that it wants you to buy on iTunes. Thats the thing with Apple, high minded design and constant whoring. In terms of the picture it does a good job producing clean images and it streams perfectly. You can put it to sleep which I couldnt do with my old Roku. Of course you have to learn which button to push and then hold to get it to go to sleep because only two buttons do everything. Well thats a little bit untrue because it has volume buttons and the fast-forward button. It also has the speaker button and thats when youre supposed to talk your commands. Sort of reminds me of my dad who used to sit in his easy chair and say out loud Gosh a cup of coffee would be great right now. Then my mother would go and get it. So you push the Siri button and then you have to hold it down while speaking, and you say open Netflix. And it does it. But you cant say play Offspring on Netflix even though you watchOffspring every day. Itll do something crazy and take you to someplace you dont want to go. Its sort of difficult when you open the Amazon prime app because it doesnt seem to bring up your own list immediately and theres all sorts of convolutions to find it. One day I just gave up because it kept scooting me to some other destinations. I am old and I get cranky and I dont want to die stomping on a remote. Im happy with this gadget though. I would just prefer it were a little less prissy because then it would be thinking about what was good for me instead of making me get schooled in the ways of Apple. Ultimately its like every other Apple gadget, beautiful in design but too complicated in its simplicity. With a Mac computer there are 12 ways to do any one thing. Does that really make it easier or do you have to learn 11 more things than you should normally have to master?

This would have been easy if I had an iPhone to set it up. Using an android phone, the process was more complicated and time consuming. I didn't know my QLED LG TV did not have appleplay, which have allowed Siri to control my TV and receiver. Everything still functions well with more manual setups. I probably would have went with fire cube instead, but appletv is a good, but expensive product. Everything works great with the proper equipment.

While Ive not tried the Roku stick, I have tried the Amazon fire tv. There are several free tv apps and Ive always had a subscription for Apple TV so for me this thing rocks it has more storage than the fire tv and each app unlike the fire tv stick has their own environment. I have other Apple devices and this device just flows well. I even was able to set it up with my iPhone. I recently purchased the Apple TV 3 before the 4K version and with the AppStore added everything just is better!