I finally subscribed to The Verge this afternoon. I got tired of hitting the paywall on most stories I try to read.
My inaugural story after subscribing was John Higgins’ review of the new Apple TV 4K, which goes on sale tomorrow alongside the HomeView. He says “Apple knows how to make a great streaming box to be the center of your home theater,” but laments, rightfully so, the box’s astronomical $299 price tag. Yet his take on the device left me uneasy.
“There’s no doubt that Apple still makes one of the best streaming devices available. It’s fast, has a great user experience, and the additions of Find My on the remote, far-field mics, and the home theater surround capability add good value (especially if you already have some newer HomePods),” Higgins wrote near the end of his review. “But the new Apple TV 4K is $300. And Siri AI isn’t there yet to consistently make it worth using. Right now, the Apple TV 4K is an excellent, premium-priced streaming device that doesn’t set itself apart enough from its previous model. And with every other streaming device a fraction of the Apple TV 4K’s price, most people would be well served by a cheaper Google Streamer, Fire TV stick, or Roku stick. Yes, the Apple TV 4K is better than all of them. But as it currently stands, especially with Siri AI still in beta, I don’t think it’s twice as better.”
In a vacuum, this is a reasonable stance—in fact, it’s almost a boilerplate reaction to most Apple products.
Where Higgins’ viewpoint fails, however, is (predictably) in accounting for accessibility. While the Apple TV 4K is undoubtedly an expensive streaming box, arguably too much for many wallets, the notion that a Fire TV or Roku stick, for instance, can stand as an adequate alternative for many people with disabilities is wrong. Yes, a Roku stick is less expensive than an Apple TV—but what tradeoffs are you making to save money for ostensibly the same functionality? Roku’s accessibility suite is far less robust than Apple’s, and that says nothing for the de-facto accessibility benefits of being in the Apple ecosystem. However expensive, a cogent argument can be made the $300 Apple TV 4K could be worth its weight in gold for users comfortable in Apple’s ecosystem and, crucially, who need accessibility features Apple puts into tvOS that Roku (or Amazon or Google) just don’t provide for whatever reason(s). This is not an esoteric, trivial detail; accessibility is part of the Apple TV’s story in a way that’s just as integral and newsworthy as, say, the limitations of Siri AI that Higgins gripes over. So, sure, the Apple TV 4K may be the nicest streaming box on the market—but it’s also the most accessible and that deservedly should be part of the calculus if you’re going to anoint it as such.
Higgins’ review is not at all bad. It’s par for the course as mainstream tech news outlets go. What’s bad is accessibility perpetually being left out of reviewers’ supposed “complete” tellings of a product. The tech media needs to do better.
