I’ve been a card-carrying member of Team Apple™ for about 5 years now. In late 2019, I started a new job that offered me a choice of what device I’d like for my work. Having been frustrated with Windows clients and servers for a decade as an Active Directory systems administrator in a very large environment, I decided to opt for a MacBook Pro. I had a MacBook Air at the previous job for “testing”, and I commonly liked using it better for my daily tasks than my Dell laptop running Windows 10.
I took the opposite path as most users, as the MacBook Pro was my first real foray into the world of Apple. Shortly after that, I finally gave up on Android, which had frustrated me endlessly for years, and got an iPhone 11. I was immediately in love with it. I previously had struggled to use any Android device for more than a year before becoming so irritated with the bugs and problems that I would try something different. With iOS, I used my iPhone 11 for years and only upgraded after 2 because I was getting reimbursed for it through work; I had no qualms with the device (and the same holds true today for the iPhone 13 that I replaced it with.)
After the phone, I sprung for an iPad, which I immediately found to be superior to any other tablet I had used before. While each Apple device is extremely good on its own, the true benefits start to roll in when using them all together. iMessages appear across all devices, they share WiFi information, and everything just kind of works. Under the hood, though, macOS is BSD, meaning that all of the tooling I use and love with Linux also typically just works.
That’s not to say that I’ve loved every Apple product. At one point I had an Apple Watch SE that frankly was more of an annoyance than anything else with notifications constantly buzzing at my wrist. I thought I’d like it for sleep tracking, but having a watch tell me that I slept horribly — which I would already know simply from how I felt in the morning — didn’t exactly give me anything actionable.
Full Circle
This weekend, however, I got to see the beauty of Apple’s ecosystem working together on full display. As someone who has recently become re-obsessed with sports after not paying attention to athletics for the better part of a decade, I subscribed to a month of MLS Season Pass to watch the local football club kick butt and take names. At the same time, my SO has been moving out of her apartment, putting some of her belongings with family members while putting others in my apartment. As a result, there’s now an Apple TV connected to my TV.
I’ve historically streamed Apple TV (the app) on my Amazon Fire TV Stick, and while it’s okay, the Fire Stick itself tends to be fairly slow and clunky. I figured that watching on Apple TV (the device) would be much more performant. As I tried to turn on the game right at starting time, though, I realized that I had 2 problems:
- The Apple TV device wasn’t connected to my WiFi; we had just plugged it into the TV and left it at that.
- I wasn’t signed in to Apple TV (the app) on the Apple TV (the device.)
Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that the naming isn’t great here; it’s kind of like how Microsoft offers OneDrive… multiple of them. Regardless, I needed to get things taken care of before the game started in about 3 minutes. I opened the settings, went to networking, and picked my WiFi. Rather than having to type in my horribly complex pre-shared key for my WiFi (with an on-screen keyboard, no less), the Apple TV just automatically connected since other devices under the same iCloud account were already connected to it. The first problem wasn’t a problem at all.
Next up I needed to add my account to the Apple TV app since that’s where the MLS Season Pass subscription was. This also wasn’t a problem, though, as it simply triggered a notification on the Apple TV app on my phone. I tapped a button to confirm that I wanted to add my account to Apple TV on the device, and after a few moments it also just appeared. I was able to get the game streaming with time to spare even though I started with 3 minutes. Compared to typing horrible passwords out with on-screen keyboards on the TV, going through MFA hurdles, etc., it’s easy to appreciate how easy Apple makes things sometimes.