Talking stocks, trading, and investing in general

[Black Lotus]

I’d probably buy the $99 Google TV Streamer 4k if I was shopping today and didn’t want to go into the AppleTV ecosystem.

AppleTV seems the lesser of the two evils.

 

[otc]

AppleTV seems the lesser of the two evils.

Running android TV gives you a lot more flexibility IMHO. Can install whatever apps anyone cares to make.

Obviously all the major services work on Apple TV, but random stuff is less likely to be available. I believe Plex also has some format incompatibility issues on Apple.

 

[Black Lotus]

Running android TV gives you a lot more flexibility IMHO. Can install whatever apps anyone cares to make.

I understand the flexibility. The cost comes at giving Google, an advertising company masquerading as a "tech" company, way more data than Apple. At least the latter makes it a point to take customer privacy seriously... to an extent, of course.

 

[imatlas]

I understand the flexibility. The cost comes at giving Google, an advertising company masquerading as a "tech" company, way more data than Apple. At least the latter makes it a point to take customer privacy seriously... to an extent, of course.

I just switched back to iPhone in part for this reason. Of course i still use a bunch of Google apps on my iPhone…

 

[otc]

I understand the flexibility. The cost comes at giving Google, an advertising company masquerading as a "tech" company, way more data than Apple. At least the latter makes it a point to take customer privacy seriously... to an extent, of course.

Fwiw, the nvidia shield (and many other streaming devices) are running android under the hood so it isn't really any different from using Google's own device. I have even less trust in someone like Roku (and my parent's Roku is way crappier than my Shield Pro).

I do believe Apple is better about that stuff right now, but only because there's a marketing advantage to doing so (and they aren't giving up much on the other side since their business model is different). Edit: and honestly, I find Apple's extreme walled-garden approach almost as distasteful as Google's privacy risks.

That being said...I don't have a Nielsen box and I don't have entirely mainstream tastes...so I'm not opposed to letting marketers see what content I watch. I'd rather stuff I like be seen to have an audience!

 

[the shah]

Both Apple and Google are collecting a lot of data from your devices, even if you opt out (https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf). It seems the actual transmutation packets for Google are much larger, though. But it's a question of what the companies do with that information.

I understand the flexibility. The cost comes at giving Google, an advertising company masquerading as a "tech" company, way more data than Apple. At least the latter makes it a point to take customer privacy seriously... to an extent, of course.

Relying on Google for any service is also a risk, they're liable to cancel projects at any point (https://killedbygoogle.com, https://gcemetery.co), though something like Gmail is probably safer than. They also can't figure out how to deduplicate efforts (e.g. how many different message apps/platforms have they come up with in the past 5 years?), or not confuse people (Android Auto vs Android Automotive, two different products, one mirrors your phone in the car infotainment system the other is the OS running directly in the car's unit...). It's largely driven by their short-term performance review culture. Apple is the opposite, you have no idea what you're working on in the grander scheme, internal privacy and security is ridiculous.