They are: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/four-additional-states-join-justice-departments-suit-against-apple-monopolizing-smartphone

Apple lay out some details here: https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

They control the cloud hardware. Information used for cloud requests is deleted as soon as the request is done. Everything end-to-end encrypted. Server builds are publicly available to inspect. And all of this is only used unless the on-device processing can’t handle a request.

If somebody wanted to actually create a private AI system, this is probably how they’d do it.

You can disagree with this or claim somehow that they are actually accessing and selling people’s data, but Apple are going out of their way to show (and cryptographically prove) how they’re not. It would also be incredible fraudulent and illegal for them to make these claims and not follow through.

I have a 50 terabyte NAS for storing my movies and TV shows. And access it from any of the TVs in my house.

For music…I have a music streaming subscription for convenience, but also have some vinyl records for the small-ish number of albums I want to keep forever.

I run an LG OLED TV (disconnected from network), AppleTV, and my own media server. I haven’t seen an ad in my TV for years.

These threads always have comments like “I want a fast device that’s well built and has years of software update support and doesn’t have ads and respects my privacy…but I’m not an Apple customer”.

I mean, fine, fuck Apple. But stop buying the cheap alternatives and complaining about them.

This is one area where Apple have actually done a decent job.

Even the article reluctantly admits the AppleTV is the best media box now. Because it’s the only one that doesn’t throw ads on the home screen.

HomeKit also enforces local network control so you don’t need the manufacturer app or third party cloud services.

But the industry as a whole really needs better standards and accountability. And people need to stop buying products from an ad company (Google).

It’s sad how Apple’s strategy of “just use an actually fast CPU and make a Home Screen without ads” is a breakthrough in the industry. It shows what a fucking mess everyone else is in.

The fun way to watch movies is to have a NAS with a Plex/Jellyfin server and browse them on your TV with a nice UI in the comfort of your living room.

Want to watch this movie in 4K Dolby Vision with atmos? Just browse or search for it and click on the poster art. Want to stop that half way through and watch a tv series instead? Go for it. It’ll take all of 5 seconds to navigate to it and have it playing.

After going through the effort to set that up, I can’t go back to anything else.

If a drive fails or other issue occurs with my NAS, it will send me an email and then shut itself down. Replace a dead drive and off I go again. No data loss due to RAID. (insert obligatory comment that RAID is not a backup solution and that you should have a separate backup for important files)

For TMDB to end their stupid policy of setting broadcast episode order as the default. Any app that uses them for metadata to match files names ends up with wrong episodes because obviously nobody wants broadcast order.

The worst part is that even buying SG1 on Bluray gives a bad experience, because they fucked up the 5.1 audio.

So what did the pirates do? Combined the Bluray video with the better DVD 5.1 audio! Best of both worlds.

Charging at work via solar would be even better. If there was some way for businesses to be incentivised for it.

Are you wanting to play it back on a TV? Get an AppleTV 4K and run the Infuse app. It’ll scan the network folder and build a library with its UI.

Although I’m pretty sure you can do the same with Kodi and its various themes.

AppleTV4K + Infuse + LG OLED TV.

This gets me 4K HDR and Dolby Vision support. 24Hz frame rate matching, and lossless audio to my 5.1 audio system. And a UI that doesn’t lag or have any ads.

I personally use an AppleTV with the Infuse app. Great UI, no lag, and it plays everything including 4K Bluray remuxes. You also get Dolby Vision, frame rate matching, and Jellyfin support.

You get diminishing returns. But yes, on a large 4K TV you can notice the difference.