729
After luring customers with low prices, Amazon stuffs Fire TVs with ads
(arstechnica.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
729 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
59517 readers
2787 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
They're not late. I've been using Fire Sticks for years and Amazon has been working hard the whole time to shove more and more ads all over the UI. The main row of apps gets smaller with every update and more and more ads are plastered around and between them to try to sell you more shit you don't want or already have.
I managed to jailbreak mine before they locked them down and install a custom launcher so they're actually usable, but the stock UI is god-awful. I'll be replacing them once the next round of Apple TVs come out.
The Nvidia Shield Pro is quite capable. Sideload a different launcher and install Aerial Views and you're good to go!
How did they lock them down?
Pushed a software update that disabled third party launchers and disallowed disabling future software updates.
Oh, shit!
My Xiaomi Mi Box S 4K doesn't auto-update because there's not enough storage space left.
No idea if Xiaomi have pushed any Amazon-level evil updates since last update though.
All I know is, 3rd-party launchers changed my life for the better, and I don't want it to change anytime soon.
My favorite 3rd party launchers
AndroidTV
Android