Revisiting the original Siri Remote for apple tV
I was doing some much-needed cleaning my living room this weekend when I stumbled across my OG Siri Remote. The much-maligned remote for Apple TV debuted with the first-generation Apple TV 4K (which I also still have) in September 2017. The Siri Remote looked perfectly good, if dead and a bit dusty. After wiping it off and charging the battery via the Lightning cable attached to my iMac, I decided to pair the old remote with my A15-powered Apple TV in said living room (attached to an 77-inch LG C3 OLED) and take a quick stroll down a technological memory lane. It was an experience I would describe as simultaneously enlightening and enraging—but undeniably fun/nerdy too.
First, the enlightening parts. For one thing, I think I prefer the trackpad on the OG Siri Remote to the trackpad on the new model. It feels easier to swipe and click because there’s more surface area; with the new remote, Apple surrounded the trackpad with a D-pad (which you can actually click, if desired in Settings) and the surface area feels smaller. I know the D-pad acts effectively as an iPod-like “click wheel” for certain actions in tvOS, but for my usage, I like the bigger, standalone trackpad on the original Siri Remote. The other controls on the Siri Remote are fine too, working just as well as their counterparts on the new remote. As a practical matter, I’d gladly trade the new version’s trackpad for that on the old one. It just feels nicer, akin to the Magic Trackpad I use at my desk with my Mac (I’ve switched from being a mouse user to a trackpad user).
Second, the enraging parts. First and foremost, it annoys me to no end that Apple omitted a Mute button on the OG Siri Remote. It was a curious design decision, especially considering most everyone wants to mute their audio at some point on another. Perhaps the company’s design team thought years ago pressing Pause was a good enough proxy, and they weren’t wrong per se, but Pause and Mute are bespoke functions for a reason: they exist to accomplish different tasks. Nonetheless, as someone who uses Mute a lot when, say, my partner wants to talk to me, playing around with the old Siri Remote reminded me how much I loathed not having a proper Mute button to quickly push. Elsewhere, I actually dislike the OG Siri Remote’s thinness. The remote, while svelte and sleek as a physical object, can be hard to hold (for me, at least) because its thin profile makes it such there’s less to grab onto. What’s more, the remote’s aluminum-and-glass composition makes it hard to grip, friction-wise; more often than not, I’ve inadvertently dropped the remote because it’s (a) super thin; and (b) a slippery sucker. As I wrote last week about Google Pixelsnap, hardware accessibility matters—this is the main reason I’m dubious the purported iPhone 17 Air coming next month will be right for me. To wit, like the OG Siri Remote, while I’m appreciative of cool industrial design, it’s true thinness can be nothing more than a parlor trick for people (like me) who have lower-than-average muscle tone. The aforementioned iPhone Air, as with the old Siri Remote, could be less accessible to carry and hold because, again, there’s less material to grab onto. It’s for this reason I insist on using cases with the thicker iPhone Pro Max phones because a case, besides adding protection, also crucially adds more friction and grip for my hand(s) to cling onto. On that note, I wonder if those inside Apple have considered such a thing given recent reports the company has contemplated offering an iPhone 4-like “bumper” case for the incoming iPhone Air.
A bugaboo for both generations of Siri Remotes: no backlit buttons.
On the whole, I find the new Siri Remote better for accessibility than the old one due to its discrete Mute button and more girth. The trackpad isn’t as nice as the old one’s, but I’ve grown accustomed to it. I hope a “Siri Remote 3” adds a larger trackpad and backlighting—wireless charging would also be helpful—but I’m happy to keep the OG remote around for emergencies. tvOS still supports it and it works great—if you like it.
