{"id":46421,"date":"2025-01-13T15:13:02","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T20:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=46421"},"modified":"2025-01-13T15:13:02","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T20:13:02","slug":"this-remote-has-me-questioning-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/13\/this-remote-has-me-questioning-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"This Remote Has Me Questioning Everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Birchler<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I recently lost my Apple TV remote (the latest model) and despite apparently being somewhere in the couch according to Find My, my wife and I can not find it. We were using our phones as remotes for a couple days, which was annoying, but got the job done. But then I was doing something random with the TVs standard remote and for whatever reason I had the Apple TV on screen and used my Hisense remote to arrow around. To my surprise, it totally worked.<\/p>

I’m sure this is a well-known thing, but I just hadn’t thought about my TV remote being able to control the UI of my Apple TV. I assume this is something to do with ARC over HDMI or something, but whatever the reason it works!<\/p>

Now, I expected for this to feel like a stopgap until we found the actual Apple TV remote, but I actually really like using this compared to the Apple TV’s real remote. It feels better in the hand, the buttons are more satisfying to press, the buttons are less prone to accidental presses, there’s no trackpad I can accidentally brush and select the wrong thing, and the button layout is more logical to me. Seriously, I’ve been using the redesigned Apple TV remote since 2021 and I still have to look at it to remember where the mute and play buttons are because they’re not where I’d expect. 4 years of use and it’s still not muscle memory!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

I stand by my original assessment that even the revised Siri Remote is just not very good.<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n