

The company must work relentlessly for one of two results: either make these holdouts an offer they can’t refuse, or make the TV app such a hit with users that any company not on board will be missing out.
TTV APP REVIEW FULL
I understand why these companies aren’t waving the white flag and giving Apple full user interface control, but if Apple truly wants to offer users the best experience, something has to give. It weakens what Apple is trying to do with TV. If the TV app integrated with every major streaming service, this likely wouldn’t be an issue, but at TV’s launch there are two major holdouts that do not have their content available in TV: Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

You’ll be limited to content that comes from streaming services like Hulu, HBO Now, or Showtime. If you don’t pay for a traditional cable or satellite package, there will likely be a lot less content available to you in the TV app. Your credentials are stored in iCloud, meaning they populate across all devices, and they automatically sign you in to every app that your TV plan entitles you to.ĭownload an app, then grant permission for it to use your Single Sign-on credentials But with Single Sign-on, that annoyance is solved you simply enter your TV provider credentials once, in the Settings app.
TTV APP REVIEW VERIFICATION
1 Before the TV app and Single Sign-on, every video app with content you wanted to watch would require an independent verification that you’re a paying customer. The more content you pay for, the more valuable TV becomes.įor anyone paying for traditional cable or satellite service, a new feature called Single Sign-on is the best way to funnel content into TV. You can only have a great experience with the TV app if you pay for content. Since TV’s value is found in its ability to pull content from various providers into a single unified experience, a TV app with no content feeding it is useless. So Apple built TV to be the new hub of our video-watching life. We’ve all learned to tolerate it, but none of us wants it. No one wants to juggle an assortment of video apps, jumping from one app to another to find the content they’re looking for. The TV app on tvOS and iOS centralizes content from a wide array of video apps in one place, presenting that content in a simple and familiar interface. More time navigating means less time watching. While the future of television may be apps, up until now Apple’s implementation of that vision has been lacking it’s been lacking because the more video apps you have, the more navigating it requires to find the content you love. TV is intended to address a modern issue. The newly released TV app is a significant step forward in realizing that goal. It set out to create the best TV experience possible. With modern hardware, a new operating system dubbed tvOS, and a vision that the future of TV is apps, Apple dove full force into the television market. But the fourth generation Apple TV represented a shift. It was Apple dipping its toes in the TV market.

Throughout its first three iterations, the Apple TV was never a hallmark product like the iPod, Mac, or iPhone it was simply a hobby for the company.

At its birth, the Apple TV was not meant to revolutionize television it was made to support the iTunes ecosystem Apple was building. That product unveiling came at the tail end of a keynote focused on the iPod and iTunes, where Jobs announced the additions of Movies and TV Shows to the iTunes Store. Steve Jobs introduced the first Apple TV set-top box over ten years ago, in September 2006. When Tim Cook announced this app onstage earlier this fall, he plainly stated its purpose: TV exists to create a unified TV experience, one place to access all TV shows and movies.ĭoes it succeed? Is this the best television experience available today?īefore answering those questions, it’s important to consider the history of underwhelming television endeavors that brought Apple to this point. Chief among all additions, the clear centerpiece of these updates is a brand new app called TV. Today Apple released tvOS 10.1 and iOS 10.2, both of which bring several additions to the operating systems.
