I tried Jellyfin after some frustration with Plex and found it an inferior relative to Plex so I'm still on Plex. Lifetime Plex Pass is the solution here for now given Plex has not clawed back any features and in fact has added features to the pass.
Same. I started out early in 2003/2004 with XBMC, and used all sorts over the years - probably Plex for 4/5 years or so in there… the writing was on the wall 4(?) years or so back when the nag emails and data capture all started ratcheting up. I dumped it for Jellyfin and never looked back once. I pay for Infuse to make it work on Apple stuff, but it’s < £10 year (mainly to cover codec licence nonsense?), which seems a small price to pay compared to any other alternatives I could find.
One thing Plex does better is media detection. Like you can plop all your shows in a folder and it still will make sense of it. Jellyfin insists on a very specific directory structure and file naming. It’s very frustrating if you only want to watch a show and not interested in maintaining a perfect library.
Is there anything around that does _not_ force a management system? I really just want a thing that primarily just tracks if I've seen a particular file, secondarily maybe let me control playback from a different device. Actually figuring out what media those files map to is a distant third.
DLNA usually doesn’t force any system and more or less exposes fs. Some TVs natively have a client. Otherwise Kody or some other client app can be used to browse and play files.
As far as I can tell plex only wants separate folders for different kinds of media and file names that give at least some clue to what it is. Plex is much more lax.
The problem with Plex is that is has a very opinionated system that ignores how things are in real life.
One example I can point to is Stargate SG-1. Episode 1 is a two parter and depending on who you ask it's either Episode 1 and 2 or Episode 1 which causes all subsequent episode numbers to be thrown off by 1 depending on how you count.
This confusion is further complicated by the release order on DVD/Bluray, the order of airing, and the fact that all of these things can be different in different regions of the world.
That has more to do with TheTVDB than with Plex itself, and it's really nothing compared to what Jellyfin demands. Plex at least supports several different alternative directory structures and file naming schemes. In order to transition to Jellyfin I would have to rename thousands of files to comply to its specific requirements, whereas Plex was mostly okay with the way I had organized my files offline.
It's a big deal because there's no rhyme or reason why it's one way or another way in different series so when you ask your TV through voice command to "Play Season 3 Episode 2 of [Show] through Plex] and then your TV plays the wrong episode it becomes a big deal.
It's astounding how much every single system out there fights and fights and fights against showing you your directories, as they are.
I started but didn't finish a Rygel + local-search (nee Tracker) plugin to try to finally get that. I wish the upnp media services were better. I keep telling myself I'll build a nice client/controller... Some day.
For a time and I have no idea if this is still true Plex had a serious advantage in the sheer range of client platforms it supported (iOS, Android, smart TVs, Roku, etc.)
Ouch. I wonder if this is related to when Plex tried to unify development of their mobile app in late 2025 so they’d have a single shared codebase for both Android and iOS?
I’ve heard from a lot of people who accidentally upgraded to the latest version of Plex on their iPads that it’s a shadow of its former self: tons of features are missing, SRT are unreliable, picture-in-picture flakes out, etc etc.
It's possible, because I used the Plex app on that same hardware for years. It certainly wasn't Google's software gettng heavier (it was already RAM and battery-hungry enough I'd dropped it), but trying to use Plex became an exercise in frustration around that time
Yesterday, I went to try to cast music from the Plex app to the Vizio Smartcast SP70 I had just bought (awesome speaker, weighs 900 lbs and is as wide as my closet door)... but you can't do music on the Plex phone app. Like, wtf, when did this happen?
So, now I need to try to install the older Plex app on my phone with Sideloadly, because Plex is more interested in streaming shit to me and trying to be Netflix or Paramount+ than it is in doing the the thing it always did best and that no one else was doing: allowing me to stream things to my own devices from my own storage.
It gets frustrating. At some point, no matter how bad Jellyfin is, it will be better than Plex because Plex is trying to become worse than anything else. I guess I got my Lifetime Pass long enough ago ($75) that I've gotten my money's worth out of it, but goddamn.
Someone forgot to put figurative weights and measures into the model's instructions again. Going to take twice as long to farm updoots with such lazy prompt engineering.
three paragraphs of complaining all because you didn’t look this up? because if you did, you would’ve seen that Plex has a separate, dedicated app for listening to music. If your complaint is that “it should be in the same app!” then that’s just an absurdly silly thing to have gotten yourself worked up about.
>three paragraphs of complaining all because you didn’t look this up?
Because they did it wrong. Me looking it up and finding out that they did it wrong doesn't mean I'm wrong.
>you would’ve seen that Plex has a separate, dedicated app for l
I don't want 10,000 fucking icon on my phone screens, having to swipe through 5 of them to find anything. Why do I want this split into two apps? That serves them. Not me. That makes it easier for them to try to become Spotify in one place while trying to be Disney+ in another. Fuck that shit. They're breaking something that wasn't broken.
No one everything's being enshittified. It's because I have to share a planet with losers who not only tolerate it, but cheer it on like stooges.
It's certainly not true that it focused on stability even if Bertrand said it. Any kind of change reduces stability by introducing regressions. This includes performance improvements and it even includes other stability fixes.
> They consistently incentivize you to scan pokestops (physical locations) through "research tasks" and give you some useful items as rewards.
There are plenty of non-scan tasks you can do to get those rewards as well but I do think Poffins (largely useless unless you are grinding Best Buddies) are locked behind scan tasks.
Source: Me. This is the one topic I am very qualified to speak to on this website.
This is a major pet peeve of mine. In politicians's mouth it seems so offending, condescending and passive-agressive: "If my words have offended you I give you my apologies". They rarely take responsibility for themselves, offloading it on their « words » and « if » or « may have offended ». Like "I am sorry if you are too emotive to hear my words". Gah.
I run into a lot of people with the same situation as you and I always tell them to just write about whatever gets them putting words down and out there. Programming problems, pearls, learnings, video games, food, whatever floats your boat.
Ultimately almost no one will read it save for one person who runs into the exact same issue or loves the same exact dish at the restaurant you love. Fear of being judged shouldn't stop you.
Haha hey Mark! Yeah, there's a lot of inertia to getting started, but it feels really good to produce writing rather than just consume it all the time.
> If you're buying an Android device, you're statistically likely trying to save money and therefore a new iPhone isn't a realistic option.
Disagree strongly. Yes, plenty of Android phones come in at lower price-points so they will be more appealing to people looking to save money when purchasing a smartphone. But calling this is "statistically likely" is a gross exaggeration of the situation.
I think by "statistically likely" they just mean "more than 50%," or, in other words, that lower-price-point Android phones outsell top-shelf ones. Given that upmarket they compete with the iPhone but downmarket they pretty much own the entire product space, this doesn't seem particularly unrealistic to me.
You're hiding behind bad statistics to basically ignore all high end android phones, Galaxy devices etc. You're pretending the entire high end android market is "negligible" by using such shoddy statistics to essentially claim "Android = Budget". We all know what you're doing when you make cheap, short comments which obscure context to push narrative.
This is a very similar situation to people who use averages because medians don't tell the narrative they want.
You have a narrative, and you have damned statistics, so reality doesn't really get in your way.
As mentioned already, I dont see whats hard to understand.
High end android are similar to high end Iphone.
Low end android are similar to...nothing in the iphone world.
So people with money who like Android buy Android
People with money who like iPhones buy iPhones
People with low money who like Android buy Android
People with low money who like iPhone...buy Android
(there's the used market that make things a bit more complicated, but I still think the data would work out)
The statistics are fine. The point is that you’d expect Android -> iPhone switches to be rarer than iPhone to Android switches. Nearly everyone who can afford an iPhone who wants an Android phone can afford to switch. But many people who have an Android phone but want an iPhone cannot afford to switch. (Indeed, if you look at average selling prices, the average Android user could not afford to switch to even the lowest end iPhone, even if they wanted to).
I'm not making a value judgement about the devices or them being "budget". You're imposing that on my comment because for some reason you feel attacked by my statements.
I am simply pointing out the realities of the market and what the data says. Emerging markets are incredibly important in these numbers and emerging markets overwhelmingly choose Android for obvious reasons. Android simply has more market penetration in price-sensitive areas.
Look at Samsung's device ASP, it's around $300. Apple's is closer to $700. If you cross reference these ASP numbers with market penetration, the narrative will become clear. If Samsung's Galaxy line had significant impact, you'd see it reflected in the ASP numbers.
If you want to have an actual measured conversation, feel free to introduce new facts or data that might help us both gain a better understanding of the mobile landscape. Until then, I don't think this conversation is entirely productive if you choose to throw away all the data I pointed out and attack me personally.
Sure. Let's add to the discussion using your data, hope you won't feel offended or attacked since we're only discussing data
"iPhone owners are willing to spend more than double what Android owners are for what is essentially same thing"
"iPhone owners demonstrably have less concept of frugality/value -- is it advertising, branding or something else which overwhelms their judgement?"
I wonder why this is. Is it the marketing which makes iPhone owners spend double? Is it the branding, the social status of buying a $1000 status object? Or do iPhone users really believe that their phone calls and web browsers are actually worth 3X the price?
I'll look past your unwarranted snark - even with everything you said, my point is simple and nothing you say contradicts it: if you can only afford a phone for $300 or you only want to spend $300 on a phone, you are going to pick Android because iOS isn't even an option for you.
Whether you think people who buy Apple products have a poor concept of value or not is frankly irrelevant to the discussion.
I don't think it's irrelevant to a conversation where I explicitly said "what else can we learn from your data", but I understand why my looking for other conclusions from your data made you uncomfortable and made you use a weird "irrelevance" attack to discard the observations instead of actually responding.
I find it interesting that many of the folks who own everything choose Android (unless they need iMessage).
>if you can only afford a phone for $300 or you only want to spend $300 on a phone, you are going to pick Android because iOS isn't even an option for you.
Absolutely, you can get near flagship level Android devices for $250 (I just picked up a Moto X4 for $250 myself) while such an Apple device would be more than twice as much (and be unpopular enough that Apple's average sale is much closer to full price).
I think this data makes a very strong case for iPhone users having a very poor sense of value, regardless of whether or not you think this conclusion from your data is "relevant" to discussion of your data or not.
The only point I made is about optionality at a price point and how that can be one factor that's important to keep in mind when looking at the data presented in the article. That's literally all I pointed out.
You can either agree with me, or disagree with me and offer evidence to disprove the value of what I said. I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish by bringing taste or sense of value into this. If iPhone users have a poor sense of value then so be it, it still neither helps strengthen nor helps disprove my original point...
I'm sorry but I don't get your angle. I get the sense that you just want some friends to argue with but I'm sorry - I can't be that person for you. You'll have to find someone else. I think it's best for both of us to move on from this conversation. It's been a pleasure, cheers.
> Emerging markets are incredibly important in these numbers and emerging markets overwhelmingly choose Android for obvious reasons. Android simply has more market penetration in price-sensitive areas.
The study covers only USA.It is not an emerging market and it is one of the few that market share of iOS and Android are not very different
> Not even Apple can make iCloud “Just Work™” the way Dropbox’s client apps and service work.
Not surprising. Apple's main business isn't building a file syncing service and while they're a much larger corporation I'd bet that Dropbox has more resources dedicated to its core product compared to Apple's iCloud file syncing offerings.
I don’t think it’s resources as much as culture. Apple makes products for Apple users and their products for the benighted are dogshit (eg Itunes for windows). Dropbox on the other hand treats every platform as first class.
At first I thought this too, but now I prefer for my file storage to be platform agnostic. For instance, if I decide to switch from iOS to Android in the future, I can just download the Dropbox app instead of implementing workarounds.
For me it's beyond that. I make constant use of my Dropbox files from Linux boxen, my iPhone, and a couple of MacBook Pros. I severely doubt iCloud would ever support Linux in a meaningful way.
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