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I'm using an Apple TV (device) to stream Apple TV (the streaming service.) Streaming quality is great, so agree on that. It is the bugginess of the app.

For example, with the Apple TV native remote, the silly touchpad is super clunky, painfully lacking the exponential fast forwarding i'm so used to with better services. The experience with the Samsung remote is very buggy. For example, when the "Dismiss" or "Skip" button shows up, the focus isnt the button, so you press it and the show stops and goes back to the main screen.

The buttons dont properly highlight when scrolling, the difference is so subtle it is hard to know what you are selecting (or not)

With the remote, it is easy to over or underscroll because of the sensitivity of the touchpad.






I'm not defending the stupid touchpad because it is indeed awful, but I worry you're not taking advantage of literally its only feature, because you say "lacking the exponential fast forwarding". The only reason I keep that annoying thing enabled at all, or that I don't just have it learn a random "real" remote and use that, is how good the Apple remote is with FF/Rewind. Assuming your streaming app is using the correct "native" video player, you're meant to hit (Center button) to pause/bring up the scrubber, then swipe quickly horizontally across the touchpad to move the playhead in large chunks. It's very accelerated, and if you need to say, rewind a movie from the credits to the beginning, it's about 3 swipes if you're swiping fast and vigorously. If you swipe slowly, on the other hand, you can go a couple minutes at a time.

Finally, if you want to jump a few seconds instantly, like if you just missed a few lines of dialogue, the thing to do is to physically press down the left or right directional pad (the edges of the circle) while praying to the touchpad gods that you don't accidentally quiver by 0.2mm and be detected as a swipe which will do the wrong thing.

Of course, it's proof of Apple's poor usability that literally anyone reading this who owns the device doesn't already know how to do all three of those functions. But we're still at the peak of the fad of 'minimalism' instead of putting dedicated buttons for each of these in an ergonomic arrangement and printing labels on them.


Honestly I turned the touchpad off within a few minutes of getting my Apple TV

When I got my second I decided to try again and that lasted all of five minutes.

I love my Apple TV otherwise (well after that and making the home button a home button instead of an Apple TV+ button!)


Weird, I also can’t relate to this at all.

Do you have the old black remote that looks like a small elongated trackpad? The newer gray remote with the 4k Apple TV is excellent.


I don't get this, I love the touchpad on the Apple TV, makes using it so much nicer than anything else I have tried.

Apple TV+ is great on Roku (have an older 4K box that still has Toslink output). Also liked the experience on a newer Apple TV box that now has buttons for scrolling (only other Apple TV box I've used is the first generation which is touchpad only and I'm not a fan of)



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