Ultimately the choice of platform is about trust rather than capability. Apple has been a much better citizen historically than any of the smart TV companies.

Those other smart TV companies write shit software that performs terribly on bad hardware and may have ads - YMMV but that's not really "worse" than Apple's anti-steering clauses concealing massive fees on ATV apps like Plex or ESPN and causing half the western world to revise their competition laws to outlaw many of their practices. It's just bad for different reasons.

super ultimately, the choice of platform of trust is about farming long enough to get monopoly lock in and then slot in a MBA to convert that trust to cash.

Anyone who see anything other than enshittification is living on the same month-to-month timeline that capitalism wants in their consumers.

Apple TV is much better about this. I have never had it pop up or interrupt me. When it is idle it just goes to a pleasant screen saver and then powers off after a while. It doesn’t try and promote content or display ads for shows. Granted, that could change at any time, but right now I think it is better than all the alternatives.

Ads are coming to Apple Maps so it’s probably only a matter of time before the rest of the ecosystem is infected.

It is better, but I hated how some time ago they started showing trailers at the start of a show, with no option to turn this off. It’s a small thing but it’s super annoying, if I want to check out what’s new I will do it myself, thank you very much.

I'm not an Apple fan, but if someone wants a 'smart TV' (access to streaming services, etc) and doesn't want to go the Linux-box-connected-to-Jellyfin route, then Apple really is just the best option.

In my experience, they've been fine for a few years so far.

That's where I ended up; I was running a linux box with Kodi for a while, but that was a subpar experience for connecting to commercial streaming services (I never was able to figure out how to get Kodi to launch firefox on the site's URL, which would have been Just Fine for us).

I use Chromecast. But I changed the home page to show app screen by defult instead of recommendations.