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Let's hope this move from Apple forces Google to put some more effort into marketing Android TV. It's a good (superior?) platform, but could definitely use a l

Let's hope this move from Apple forces Google to put some more effort into marketing Android TV. It's a good (superior?) platform, but could definitely use a little better app-support.

tootie 11y ago
FireTV is pretty awesome. By far the best FireOS product. I love voice search via the Android app. It's actually the only voice recognition software I use. Games aren't very interesting, but I am extremely dubious of AppleTV stealing much market share from the consoles. It'll be big screen versions of Candy Crush.
dominotw 11y ago
is it same as chromecast?
- gmrple 11y ago
  Android TV is different from Chromecast. Android TV can behave exactly as a Chromecast (you can wake it up by casting from your phone), but it also has a remote driven interface, voice recognition, and apps with non touch interfaces. Developers must release a android TV version of their application in order for their app to work with Android TV, the entire android ecosystem is not available to TV by default.
- therealmarv 11y ago
  no, it's totally different approach. At Chromecast the center is your phone/tablet and it seems for tvOS it is Siri and the remote control.
  - Tloewald 11y ago
    tvOS seems to support seamless transitions of apps across iOS devices (they mentioned it in a game context) so it may prove to be much better than that -- e.g. watch a show on Hulu, walk into room and hand the app over to the TV and so forth.
    - mmebane 11y ago
      Android TV devices act as Chromecast receivers, so you can do the same thing on Android TV, at least with media player apps. However, I don't think there's a built-in way of transitioning state for full-fledged Android apps. Samsung's apparently been experimenting with it [1], but it's still in beta, currently only works with a few Galaxy devices, and requires apps to integrate their SDK. I'm interested to see what Apple's approach looks like. [1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.flow https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.fl...
    - benologist 11y ago
      That's already a thing on Amazon's Kindle + FireTV, for us it's really only useful occasionally moving my daughter to a tablet so we can use the tv.
exelius 11y ago
Google is marketing Android TV more as an OEM solution for smart TV vendors at this point. And I don't know that superior / inferior plays into it really. Standalone Android TV devices just don't make a lot of sense because there's no demand for them. Consumers trust Apple to make shitty experiences less shitty, so until Apple leads, there is no market. It's the same as it was (is?) for tablets: there's not really a market for tablets, but there's a market for iPads. I think that's what we'll see with the Apple TV.
- minthd 11y ago
  But haven't things changed? Google can do good design today, unlike before.Do consumers not believe this ?
  - simonh 11y ago
    Remember Google TV? Flash support on Android? How is Google Glass working out? What proportion of Android phones get regular OS updates, and how does that bode for Android TV updates? Google's corporate culture is to move fast and break things. That works great for online services that you can iterate on rapidly and fix for everyone quickly, but once you sell a product to a consumer how does it get updates? How does it get fixed? How do you overcome a bad initial experience? Apple has faced all of these problems and over many years has built addressing them in to it's DNA, it's corporate instincts. Google has never had a good answer to these questions.
supercoder 11y ago
Android TV is a buggy, slow, confusing experience. I'm trying to buy a new TV at the moment and after having used it on a few TV's don't have good feelings towards it.

Let's hope this move from Apple forces Google to put some more effort into marketing Android TV. It's a good (superior?) platform, but could definitely use a little better app-support.

tootie 11y ago

FireTV is pretty awesome. By far the best FireOS product. I love voice search via the Android app. It's actually the only voice recognition software I use. Games aren't very interesting, but I am extremely dubious of AppleTV stealing much market share from the consoles. It'll be big screen versions of Candy Crush.

dominotw 11y ago

is it same as chromecast?

gmrple 11y ago
Android TV is different from Chromecast. Android TV can behave exactly as a Chromecast (you can wake it up by casting from your phone), but it also has a remote driven interface, voice recognition, and apps with non touch interfaces. Developers must release a android TV version of their application in order for their app to work with Android TV, the entire android ecosystem is not available to TV by default.
therealmarv 11y ago
no, it's totally different approach. At Chromecast the center is your phone/tablet and it seems for tvOS it is Siri and the remote control.
- Tloewald 11y ago
  tvOS seems to support seamless transitions of apps across iOS devices (they mentioned it in a game context) so it may prove to be much better than that -- e.g. watch a show on Hulu, walk into room and hand the app over to the TV and so forth.
  - mmebane 11y ago
    Android TV devices act as Chromecast receivers, so you can do the same thing on Android TV, at least with media player apps. However, I don't think there's a built-in way of transitioning state for full-fledged Android apps. Samsung's apparently been experimenting with it [1], but it's still in beta, currently only works with a few Galaxy devices, and requires apps to integrate their SDK. I'm interested to see what Apple's approach looks like. [1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.flow https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.fl...
  - benologist 11y ago
    That's already a thing on Amazon's Kindle + FireTV, for us it's really only useful occasionally moving my daughter to a tablet so we can use the tv.

exelius 11y ago

Google is marketing Android TV more as an OEM solution for smart TV vendors at this point. And I don't know that superior / inferior plays into it really. Standalone Android TV devices just don't make a lot of sense because there's no demand for them. Consumers trust Apple to make shitty experiences less shitty, so until Apple leads, there is no market. It's the same as it was (is?) for tablets: there's not really a market for tablets, but there's a market for iPads. I think that's what we'll see with the Apple TV.

minthd 11y ago
But haven't things changed? Google can do good design today, unlike before.Do consumers not believe this ?
- simonh 11y ago
  Remember Google TV? Flash support on Android? How is Google Glass working out? What proportion of Android phones get regular OS updates, and how does that bode for Android TV updates? Google's corporate culture is to move fast and break things. That works great for online services that you can iterate on rapidly and fix for everyone quickly, but once you sell a product to a consumer how does it get updates? How does it get fixed? How do you overcome a bad initial experience? Apple has faced all of these problems and over many years has built addressing them in to it's DNA, it's corporate instincts. Google has never had a good answer to these questions.

supercoder 11y ago

Android TV is a buggy, slow, confusing experience. I'm trying to buy a new TV at the moment and after having used it on a few TV's don't have good feelings towards it.