About

Was the Apple TV HD worth it?

It sounds funny that you’d volunteer to use the Apple TV HD when it is so old (and only just recently made it fully to the unsupported product list), but I actually have been enjoying it. I think of it more as an entry into Apple ecosystem apps that ever grow on the platform. If you’ve ever wanted to use Trakt or Letterboxd on the big screen, now you can! Do you use Infuse on iPhone, Mac or iPad? It’s a simple $30 1080p streamer with great Apple ecosystem connections and good, occasionally laggy, performance.

As I probably said the last time, it is all many people need. Back in 2024, I was using the same Mac I still use today, and I said “It fills the needs of many students who often buy expensive devices they never fully use or understand just because it’s an Apple device, or just what they needed for school, when all they may do all day is read PDFs and do schoolwork” and the MacBook Neo was a great example of that exact premise. It seems that over time, a lot of, even some of the oldest Apple devices, end up working great years into their lifetime.

Things are running on a new server

I have a new server running Invidious, SearXNG, (and more to come).

I have bit the metaphorical bullet and spent a little more to get a server with 96 gigs of RAM, double the CPU capacity and more storage. I needed to upgrade, and the next upgrade was close to this amount, just not as obsensely specced as the current machine. Like I said, I only did it to try and improve the reliability of your connection to my services, although, not exactly without more cost of course. So if you can, donate to my instance so it can stay on as long as possible.

Successful public listing of my Invidious server

Part of the process when making my Invidious instance was to eventually put it in the public list of instances, since I rarely ever published or talked about the stuff I do beyond what I am already familiar with. This allowed me to make a public server that people could actively use and gives people more options.

When I made the compose file, which is now like 500 lines, I really just aimed to customize it because customization is fun and to make it fast. On my daily computer, regular YouTube is slow. I usually end up using my TV or something. Plus, using it has gotten worse over time. I was a premium user, but I stopped paying, and I forgot how many ads there were. I understand people already had public instances, but this was my cool way of providing back to something I had used for a while.