31–40 of 94 posts
A Samsung Smart TV is similar. I have often ranted aloud to my television about hardware developers considering Single Responsibility when designing. Most of the time I just need my screen to be a screen.
It's time for Apple to step in and show everyone how it's done. Of course, once this happens, a lot of people will develop selective amnesia, as it happened with phones.
I once worked on a project that had large hardware and software components. The project was clearly lead by the hardware team - historically the company was a hardware company. At weekly status meetings we would spend 55 minutes talking about the hardware, then there would be 5 minutes for the software. I don't believe that this has to be inevitable, but I do believe that you can tell whether this is happening by sim…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are tons of TVs that are doing it right. Apple doesn't need to "show everyone how it's done". This particular example is of one manufacturer messing up one product line.
>There are tons of TVs that are doing it right. Like .... ?
As for dealing with switching the inputs, many older TVs and computer monitors come with a simple enough mechanism to switch between various inputs. This particular article may be about regression in the UI.
There is nothing "new" Apple can do here. If they end up doing something it will not be not that far off from existing and very functional UIs.
Why would anyone need a "smart TV"? I can use the internet better with my laptop. Everyone already has a personal computer, whether it's a laptop or a tablet. The usability is always worse. The only way it's useful to show the internet through a television is to transmit the image from a computer to the television. That's what I and my friends do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are tons of TVs that are doing it right. Apple doesn't need to "show everyone how it's done". This particular example is of one manufacturer messing up one product line.
>There are tons of TVs that are doing it right. Like .... ?
There were some caveats like the keyboard on the remote not working inside some 3rd party apps. that the TV allowed you to install.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are tons of TVs that are doing it right. Apple doesn't need to "show everyone how it's done". This particular example is of one manufacturer messing up one product line.
It's unfortunately endemic to the whole industry. My "smart" TV is a Vizio. Really I wish TV manufacturers would offer "monitors" (screens without TV tuners). If one manufacturer goes this way, people who only want a screen for e.g. their Roku might buy that one instead.
I should note the LG TVs in the OP are actually great test machines too...
I don't have a smart tv per se, but my TV does have a USB port, ostensibly to play back video, music, and pictures or something, all three of which it pretty much completely fails at if anything is the least bit atypical. Though it does mostly work with the pictures. I'm not sure why they even bothered. Of course it wasn't even a smart TV and it took me ages to figure out that I needed to enable 'gaming' mode to make…
Along with the big names there are a bunch of also-ran streaming apps with very little content. There's also things like a Facebook app but I have never tried to use it.
So what's the problem? The TV has to 'boot', like in the article. For the first 30 seconds after it's powered on, you can barely change the channels or volume. The interface will sometimes become unresponsive requiring a hard power off, or the TV will lock and reset itself completely. If you do a firmware update, which happens quite a bit, sometimes you have to re-enter all your account information for all your services.
Sometimes you have to quit and re-start viewing content to get the audio to sync up right. But the one thing that angers me the most about streaming content: you bump any button on the remote, and you exit back to the regular TV channels. It doesn't even have the sense to ask, "Are you sure you want to exit Netflix?". You can hit the home button, the volume buttons, and pause/fast forward. You even accidentally bump some other button, and bam. You're back navigating the glacially slow interface with a TV remote.