The single worst feature of the new Apple TV

The new Apple TV is an excellent, excellent device. In fact, right now, it's my favorite streaming box on the market (and I have all of them). Apps are the new channels, and Siri on the Apple TV is legitimately awesome.

In my review, I called out Siri as one of the best features of the Apple TV — and it is. Voice search, when it works this well and across so many different services, is a genuine game-changer.
And it's a good thing voice search works well. Because one of the very few flaws in the new Apple TV is doing a manual search via text entry.

It's bad. It's really, really bad.

It's bad. It's really, really bad. Apple updated the way text entry takes place. Rather than using the typical grid system employed by set-top boxes since the days of WebTV and TiVo, there is a single line of text you scroll across with the new touchpad-enabled remote.
Want to add a symbol or an upper or lowercase letter? You'll need to go to a row on the bottom and then back up. The process is tedious and takes longer than it should. In the comments, Dan points out that "A quick way to change between upper and lower case letters is to hit the Play/Pause button on the remote while on the text entry. You can also long press on a character to get an uppercase version or alternates and a quick delete key (be sure to hit Menu to go back without selecting a character in this shortcut)." This is great to know, but really, that should be more discoverable.

Again, the good news is that, most of the time, you don't have to search for anything with the remote. You can do it with voice. But when you log into an app for the first time, having to enter in your username and password is a tedious experience. Especially if you find yourself entering in the same set of credentials over and over.
I never realized how far apart the letters in "Christina" were in the alphabet until I had to enter in that as part of my username 18 times.
Apple, we implore you to make the text entry experience better in an update. Put the letters on more than one row, or at least make it easier to change cases. Or even better — use Siri's excellent voice recognition to let us enter in usernames and passwords with voice. At the very least, consider updating the old Apple TV remote app for iOS so we can use an iPhone or iPad keyboard instead.
Because as much as I love the Apple TV — and I do love it — entering text is bullshit.

Source mashable


 For more interesting discussions and gist updates, pls click HERE to join GIST360  bbm channel

Click Receive our latest updates on Email.

If you Find  this post interesting, please SHARE IT.