Most answers here are missing the benefits of a home Mac running 24/7 if you’re already part of the Apple ecosystem. For example, you can have it sync all your iCloud data (documents, photos, iTunes content) and back them up locally, then elsewhere outside of Apple’s ecosystem. You can also have it act as a local CDN for OS updates, whereby it will cache OS downloads locally so any subsequent updates will be super quick.

On the downside, I found native Docker on macOS kinda sucked, and just installed Ubuntu on my 2012 Mac Mini (now running Proxmox for funsies), but I have an old iMac to do the caching. You could probably virtualize and get both benefits, and I am considering moving to a new M4 mini for the power savings and sheer speed. That M4 Pro chip has absolutely incredible Geekbench numbers while sipping power.

generate some minor descriptions for generic stuff in my TTRPG campaigns.

Need a quick 200 word description of the interior of an apothecary? Or a band of marauding orcs? It’s been a huge time saver for me.

For iPhones, if you have Find My turned on, you can’t activate the device without the iCloud password, unless the owner removes the device from their iCloud account. Which is what the scammers are trying to get her to do here.

Interesting. I will take a look and see if that fixes it. Thanks for the tip!

The layout of Plex definitely fits my brain waaaaay better with respect to navigation. But I hardly use it because I keep running into playback stuttering which doesn’t happen on Infuse, which I point at Jellyfin in my Synology. Will give this version another try.

Why do you believe that judges (or even juries made of lay people) can make sense of the very things that you’re so confident legislators or regulators cannot?

I’m not saying regulation is perfect, and as a result, certainly there is a role for judicial review. But come on, man…lots of non sequiturs and straw dogs in your argument.

That’s more of a Shelbyville idea

Or maybe, like, regulation?

Agreed. The syncing can be managed other ways. The only thing I’m left with is using on a work computer for some reason, where one’s own devices aren’t available/permitted? But that’s probably not a common usage case.

To sync across different devices maybe?

Sorry friends. Here’s the Exalted form:

Yeah that’s what I expected. I think the Kodi suggestion for the Shield is the most promising lead. Hope it works out.

Infuse for Apple TV will do this. You can point it to any folder on your NAS as an SMB share. It’s how I play back my own Blu-ray Discs, 4K or otherwise. It doesn’t do menus that I remember, but you can select the title easily enough.

Highly recommend also pointing it to your Jellyfin instance and using that as your front end for other files as it seems to me to have the best ability to do direct playback without transcoding, and the fewest hiccups for audio playback sync issues which can be annoying.

While you can just point Infuse directly at your other folders, its metadata cache gets dumped frequently by the OS, and it has to get rebuilt which is slow and annoying when you just want to watch something. Pointing at Jellyfin also lets you use whatever custom Jellyfin posters you’ve selected which helps for keeping special versions/collections identifiable visually.

To give a non-snarky answer, it does AR with external cameras and an incredibly low lag such that those who have tried it have said makes it almost natural (the resolution apparently isn’t perfect, but there is no discernible input lag when looking around which happens on other similar devices). But you can dial up the opacity to wind up in a fully VR environment. So, it is in fact, both.

Your question about software is a big one. Apple is advertising 1M apps available at launch (good) but these are iPad apps, which can run on Vision OS without any modifications by the developers (not so good). That does not mean it will be a good experience. I was listening to a podcast today where a developer clearly stated that after getting a chance to try their app on device at a lab, they totally stopped development because they missed the mark completely with their imagination and the simulator on how it should work. You’ll still be able to run their iPad app, but until they get their hands on their own hardware to iterate more rapidly, they’re giving up.

All that to say it’s unclear how many apps will be natively designed to work with it on launch, and if these will be any good.

Thankfully I don’t live in the US so I am immune to this particular reality distortion field. For now…

Fastmail with a custom domain. It’s great, and has a nice migration tool for moving everything over from Gmail. Also integrates nicely with 1Password for personalized email addresses for each service I sign up for, which I can nuke as needed if needed.

I was very satisfied with their pricing for offsite backups, and the ease of setup. Definitely worth a look.

This all makes sense to me if there is a server side component to the app. But with Infuse, there isn’t, and I can’t figure out where the QR code is taking me to “authenticate” on my own, locally hosted SMB server? Not a biggie - typically only need to do this once per server, and the Remote app works fine for me.

For arbitrary text input id ask you to point at any other remote / UI that handles this limitation better.

I think you think you’re talking to someone else? I agree with you.

I don’t see how an app developer could really work around this, if I’m inputting a server address and password for an SMB share. For everything else, sure. I agree that the Remote app’s copy/paste functionality for these elements is literally the best possible solution.

99% of apps on Apple TV have the same kind of login option. If they don’t, it’s on the app developer to implement.

The exception to this that I run into regularly is connecting to a local media server, say through Infuse (seems to handle some codecs better than Plex, and has few if any audio sync issues, though I recommend pointing Infuse at a Jellyfin instance so your library’s metadata doesn’t get cleared and need to be re-indexed on the Apple TV somewhat regularly).

Maybe you ought to take the stance of not talking about something you’re unfamiliar with. Every thing you’ve pointed at has been wrong.

On the internet?? 🙃

I’ve never used the atv

We can tell, because…

Why doesn’t the remote have T9-like keys, or voice input?

It absolutely has voice input.

For passwords, copying and pasting my long, unique, complex passwords from my phone is way easier than any T9 input would ever be.

I have used numerous smart TVs native systems, Google TV boxes, and the NVIDIA Shield. I could not tolerate the UI paradigms or THE FUCKING ADVERTISEMENTS on literally every other system. It is repulsive.

Bonus points to the NVIDIA Shield for being alone it it’s ability to do Atmos from my own media files, though…