 Hello everyone, welcome back to another EthanJournal video. Today we have a very cool video that I've been working on for about a few days now researching this topic that I was kind of interested in and that is the history of every single Apple TV remote ever. Now, this won't be a very long video because there aren't as many remotes as most people think. Of course the first remote came out with the Apple TV first gen which was this remote. And then the Apple TV second gen and I think the third gen too used this remote. And then the fourth gen used all three of these just because they haven't really renamed the fourth gen in a while. Now I'm just called Apple TV HD and Apple TV 4k. So essentially what we're going to do in this video is we're going to go over the different types of Apple TV remotes that have existed. How to tell each one apart and the cool features that each of them have. Let's get started. Okay, starting off with the Apple TV first-gen remote. Now this remote was pretty familiar to most people when the Apple TV first generation was released because this remote was actually included on most iMacs at the time. The iMac G5 had used this remote for front row along with I believe the regular Intel iMac which looked like the iMac G5. This was the remote that was meant magnetically attached to the side of that computer. Now this remote was again introduced with the Apple TV first generation which basically was a front row device and if you don't know what front row was it was a piece of software that was used on Macs back in 2007 I think around that time period that essentially turned your iMac or whatever computer you were using into a media center where you could listen to music, watch movies, watch music videos and other things that you do with your Apple TV nowadays. Of course there were no streaming apps, it was mostly just what you bought in iTunes and files that you were to have. And that's where this remote came into play. Now the funny thing about this remote is this laptop I have here is an older laptop and watch what happens when I press the volume up button. That was the funny quirk about these remotes is that they can control Macs. This is because of the fact that it was originally used in that iMac and that led it to the point where it could actually work with the other Macs that had a built-in infrared sensor which this one does. So for the most part any Macs that came around out around the time that they would have had an infrared sensor on them this remote would work with it which is kind of funny because it kind of makes sense because the Apple TV first show was essentially a front row device and front row came on Macs so if I'm thinking I do have an older Mac an iMac G5 or if I press the menu button on this or I press front row this will immediately start working as a remote thinking the iMac is an Apple TV because front row was essentially what the first Apple TV ran. Alright moving on to the second generation remote this is probably I say like my middle favorite remote because the reason I don't like this one a bunch is because of its thin design it just did not feel like a good remote to hold. I felt like it was too thin to even do anything with because I mean it was fine. I mean my Apple TV that I had for about five years was a third gen and this is the remote that came with it so I used it and it worked fine but definitely not one of my most favorite remotes ever. This remote had was very simple just like the first one it had a simple D pad with up down left right and a middle button which was your select button it had a menu button which was indented in so you could figure out that was the menu button if you're in the dark watching movie I want to make sure you know which one it is and we're going to bring that up a little bit later in the video how that became a problem in the later version of the Apple TV remote. So yeah the menu button was indented the pause and play button was regular just like the D pad it was flush with the metal casing. Now this remote like the first one had a removable battery slot in the back because you do not charge you change them out with your normal coin cell battery and more or less this is a pretty good remote now this one does also control most max with an infrared receiver kind of like you can see here which is kind of funny that this one could also do that because this both of these remotes are essentially compatible with most all Apple TVs I'm not so sure about the later ones like the 4k and the HD because we don't have one of those currently but we do have one on the way actually that me and my family are going to start using but yeah for the most part I don't know if this one works with those newer ones but I do know that this works with the second gen Apple TV and the third gen Apple TV for sure and honestly this is probably middle range remote I would probably give this a five out of 10 if I had to rate it all right moving on to probably my least favorite vote Apple ever made and I'm not alone on this a lot of people really do hate this remote here now this remote I don't want to call it I kind of I'm gonna call it so the first gen was this one second gen was this one I'm gonna call this the third gen there was a lot of problems with this one that a lot of people did not like one reason being the fact that it had touch controls there was no deep pad anymore just had these touch controls and nobody really liked that there were some people that liked it I being one not that liked it I did not like this at all in fact if they would have given me a deep pad that with touch controls that would have been a lot better but essentially the thing that made this a hard thing not only because the touch controls were really finicky at times but because it had touch controls and no deep pad is you never knew which way you're holding it you could be holding it right side up with the touch pad or I'm gonna call it touch pad on the top which is how you should hold it or with the touch pad on the bottom you would never know because it feels the same no matter what way you're holding it of course the buttons that should tell you a line nope the buttons are in the center basically making impossible unless you can memorize which button is which to know which one which orientation was right another thing that really was nice about the old apple tree remotes was that the menu button was invented letting you know if you're in the dark you can know which one it is and this one nope there's nothing there all the buttons are essentially the pretty much the same other than the Siri button of all things which is the only button that's invented um the menu button is essentially flush just like the rest of them but these buttons aren't flush at least they're raised up which is a nice thing but honestly this is like a two out of ten this is an awful remote I really did not like it but one thing that was nice about it is that introduced lightning port charging no longer did you have to replace these with a c-cell battery no no no not anymore no you can plug it in with your normal lightning cord like I have here if I plug in my normal lightning cord that's how you charge your remote you literally never had to replace batteries you just plug it in essentially to the wall make sure apple tv and that is something that apple still has in the remote to this day moving on to the fourth generation remote as i'm calling it which is almost identical to the third generation remote as i'm calling it um other than the fact that the menu button has a right has a white circle around it this is apple's attempt to make it easier to use in the dark because the menu button was the only button that had this white circle around it I mean I can see how this kind of helped honestly but in most cases it was still as bad as the first one other than that this design was essentially the same as the third gen other than the fact that it did have that white circle around the menu button and now moving on to the fifth generation remote apple's newest remote and my personal favorite this remote has so many good things apple introduced this in the latest apple tv um announcement that they had about last year and honestly I think a lot of people like this one compared to the old ones after two generations of apple making awful remotes they finally came back and fixed it with this one honestly some of the things I like about this are the contrast because the buttons are black which makes them easy to see and um the fact that they are raised up kind of like in the old ones it essentially makes it really nice the design is really nice and the thing I like about it probably the most is how chunky it is um the first one was chunky you could feel like you could hold it it kind of felt like a phone uh in some ways and it was easier to hold than the second gen third gen and fourth gen remotes it was a lot easier they finally brought that back in this one like this thing is I could grip this these ones I cut this like slide around in my hand kind of like the iPhone 6 did because they were making them so skinny this one you can actually kind of hold and you don't lose it um the back is also beveled but um which these ones were flat kind of like the second gen in a way um but for the most part this was a nice design they moved the series button over to the right side which was nice and they added a power button now this power button depending on what tv you have can turn on and off your tv and sound system or in our case um it only turns off the apple tv which is fine it allows you to control your apple tv right from the remote if you want to shut it off or anything like that um the nice thing about this one is again there is a somewhat an easy way of figuring out they kind of took homage from the second generation where the menu button other than known now in this remote as the back button there's no menu button anymore this is now the back button is indented in so you can kind of feel it compared to the other ones but still not the best um but it's at least easier than the uh third and fourth gen and one of the nice things about this is they brought back the d-pad now remember how I was saying that these ones people did not like well they didn't they only had touch controls but when I said I wanted was a d-pad with touch controls and that's exactly what this thing is if you like the touch controls feel free to just swipe um your finger across this one and it works as a regular touch controls but there's also tactile uh d-pad buttons on this which make it so much nicer for the people that hated the touch controls aka me um so yeah that was really nice and like the other two um the third gen and fourth gen it does still have microphone it does still have serious support essentially it was like the third and fourth gen except a lot better improved design overall I think the history of the apple tv remotes are pretty cool seeing how apple advances from a pretty nice design to a good design and then again fails at two designs total at least in my opinion these were not good remotes the third and fourth gen and then coming back last year with a great design we've kind of seen this more recently with a lot of apple products as of right now looking at the math book lineup for many years they had overheating problems they were too skinny they didn't have ports um and a lot of problems were occurring with the macbooks for a long time now that we see apple switch away from intel processors and over to m1 it is really seeing improvements in the macbook pro line they brought back the ports they brought back mac safe they're really powerful they don't overheat as much anymore with their custom m1 processors we're kind of seeing this lately with apple where they take a turn that they they take four more of a function and people hate it for a long time and apple really does not change it for a little bit but recently they've come back and they've expressed it and they've essentially taken our feedback in most cases and made better products we've seen that with the mac we've seen it with the apple tv remote of all things i don't really know about the iphone i really never had a worst iphone design that i can say but honestly it was pretty nice and it's nice to see apple coming back and improving their products in some cases taking function over form finally rather than form over function i would like to thank you guys for watching this video if you want to support the future of this youtube channel along with see much more perks you can head over to my patreon which i have linked down below um other than that i'd like to thank you guys for watching this video have a good rest of your day and goodbye