All my favorite shows for the past 2 years have been on AppleTV+. They make damned good shows. I personally have no issue paying for what they offer.
I think this issue they need to address is that they just have not communicated to the public nearly enough for anyone to even be aware of what they are offering when it comes to their TV services. There was a long period of time where I was deeply confused as to what AppleTV was. Just literally, I did not know what the product offered or even looked like. They had talked about making their own TV at some point, so I thought it was that. Then they came out with a service called AppleTV+, and I thought it was the next generation of the AppleTV boxes. I still don't know if you can use the AppleTV+ service on something other than an AppleTV and if you can use it if you don't have an Apple account. I also don't know where their rental and "to buy" really is and where the stuff I buy lives. It seems to be iTunes still for some reason, which is very weird because I thought that was pretty much gone now and why would I go to my MP3 player to watch a TV show?
I don't remember ever being made aware that AppleTV+ had launched. Did anyone even pay the remotest bit of attention to that at the time? Also, have there ever been Apple TV ads? I've seen ads for almost every other Apple product but never their ads.
It's just bad. They have the money and they could make this all work if they just made it all less confusing.
No, silly, that's iTunes Store, which is another pink app with a star, not the iTunes app. But lately, you can launch the AppleTV app, not the AppleTV+ app, because that doesn't seem to exist but that's what you have to be subscribed to play things in the AppleTV. But it's very important so they added the +.
It's like Apple has it's own EU-ish regulatory authority to confuse the user as much as possible.
I burst out laughing. It’s true, and I had totally forgotten about there being a separate “iTunes Store” app. You also reminded me of the weird way you that all works. Like how you to authenticate devices for reasons that feel very data-centric. And about how you can have a “Home Media Center” which doesn’t really feel supported anymore but every so often it’ll ask you about.
I accidentally click on the iTunes Store app when I really meant to click on the Apple Store app quite a bit. Oh, sorry, I mean the App Store. Anyway, it always leaves me briefly confused.
I thjink the Apple marketing team has chosen to only ever use 10 words and prefixes and just cycle their way through the factorial of possible combinations for every product.. I’m starting to get confused over the “Pro” and “Pro Max” variants. You could tell me there’s an iMac Mini Pod 7 Pro Max with AppleBuds and I wouldn’t immediately doubt it existed it.
Agreed on all counts, everything you mention I've been through myself. Including some of the best shows I've watched the past years.
It seems like Apple is falling into the same stupid user experience that Microsoft provides. I have a Microsoft Account, which is used on my Xbox, but also it can be on Skype but my Skype account was linked from an older Skype account and the auth system keeps messing up my logged in user in Skype with my Xbox account. All the auth flows and apps that use a Microsoft Account are confusing as fuck and I got to the point where I simply don't trust it at all.
Apple is going this way, I have my Apple ID paying a family account with my partner but the amount of fuck ups we encountered when setting it up to migrate her own account into the family one made me start seriously questioning if I trust Apple's auth flow, not in the security sense but in the sense that I can't tell if I'm doing something wrong or if it's a bug/bad experience from their side.
For some reason these trillion+ dollars companies cannot create a cohesive logged in experience, it's mind-boggling.
Let alone advertising their shows! Sometimes I read a review in the NY Times, but mostly I first learn about new content when I launch the app and happen to see it. I agree that their programming is generally good, and deserves more attention.
I’ve been told Apple also aggressively goes after those who upload clips of their shows, which, if true, is just crazy to me. People share things they like, and if it’s just a clip, it’s basically free, organic advertisement.
Te only places I see ads for their shows and movies are before their shows and movies. It’s a little strange that they went through all the effort of making trailers to advertise their shows to only show it to those who are already paying for their service.
It's ironic that ~20 years ago (so, pre-YouTube) by far the best place to see all the trailers for all the current movies was www.apple.com/movies (or something like that): they aggregated everything, on servers that could handle streaming video. I couldn't really see what was in it for them (there weren't any ads, as I recall), but it was the place my friends and I went to figure out what to go see that weekend, and it was great.
I think this issue they need to address is that they just have not communicated to the public nearly enough for anyone to even be aware of what they are offering when it comes to their TV services. There was a long period of time where I was deeply confused as to what AppleTV was. Just literally, I did not know what the product offered or even looked like. They had talked about making their own TV at some point, so I thought it was that. Then they came out with a service called AppleTV+, and I thought it was the next generation of the AppleTV boxes. I still don't know if you can use the AppleTV+ service on something other than an AppleTV and if you can use it if you don't have an Apple account. I also don't know where their rental and "to buy" really is and where the stuff I buy lives. It seems to be iTunes still for some reason, which is very weird because I thought that was pretty much gone now and why would I go to my MP3 player to watch a TV show?
I don't remember ever being made aware that AppleTV+ had launched. Did anyone even pay the remotest bit of attention to that at the time? Also, have there ever been Apple TV ads? I've seen ads for almost every other Apple product but never their ads.
It's just bad. They have the money and they could make this all work if they just made it all less confusing.