State of Apple TV apps, 6 months in →
Great article by Josh Centers that starts with the simple question, “Where are the Apple TV apps?”, and thoroughly explores Apple’s product and developer issues in order to answer it.1
The new Apple TV is decent, but not great — exactly what I’d say about the Apple Watch, the other new Apple platform launched last year. Both are far better than last year’s high-profile service launch, Apple Music, and not nearly as good as the revisions to core hardware lines, like the iPad Pro and iPhone 6S.
I’d say Apple TV, Apple Watch, and Apple Music all suffer from the same issues facing many Apple products today:
- Visual design taking too much priority over working well.
- Ship dates seeming more important than shipped product quality.
- Insufficient resources as Apple spreads itself very thinly, leading to important feature omissions, quality problems, and neglect.
- Increased difficulty for developers to succeed, resulting in stagnation of existing platforms and low adoption of new ones.
To summarize it in one word: hubris.
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Including a quote from me about whether I’m planning Overcast for Apple TV. In short: I’m not currently working on it due to insufficient demand, but may do it in the future. ↩︎