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I don't like how Apple is becoming.

This is a clear sign of decline. It is widely known how hated it is that every streaming service deliberately hides what you were watching and tries to push more stuff to increase engagement.

Apple used to be the one that was better than this. We pay a premium for a premium experience. If everything is going to be low quality and high ads, might as well use Windows and Android.
 
YouTube and Gmail has an option to pay for ad-free. For the former, $12 a month for individual plan, or $23 a month for the YouTube Premium Family plan which is for up to 6 people. Both also come with extra storage space (for the family plan I'm on, the account holder isn't asking me to pay my share, they use A LOT of that extra space for Google Photos, so I'm fine that they ask me not to use that), YouTube Music (I was never really into music subscriptions. Sirius XM I do have since it works for those trips I pass areas with low to no internet coverage).

You can also use ad-blockers against YouTube ads. I'm told it's not difficult, but I use YouTube across 4 different devices (2 to 3 primary ones), and nm I'd have to set up 4 different times.. not sure how well ad-blockers work with Chrombook, and on a Windows computer without admin privileges (my office workstation).

Not sure what Gmail's deal is, but I leave it on the free version since it's worked for me.
We might have tried YTP for a bit since it was only a little more that Music, but literally two days after we joined the trial, up $6. Found cancel ASAP
 
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Ah, Apple. Ads being added in Apple TV, inappropriate ads in app listings in the App Store, failing to fix glaring VPN security and leakage issues, shaking down developers at every turn... the list goes on and on.

Tim Cook may be the CEO you *deserve*, but he's certainly not the CEO you *need*.
 
If you've ever seen the google TV interface on the Shield TV you'd understand why some are upset. When you see the content advertised.
In fact some users such as myself actually switched from the Shield TV to the Apple TV because of the ad crap, when your paying premium prices you don't expect ads to be introduced.
Ehh, I'd hardly consider this an ad. I'm not being forced to watch trailers, they just lined up these options at the top of the list. Would you consider yourself being advertised to when a different service gives you a similar "Trending" row in their interface?

The TV app however also wants to be positioned as a central hub for all content from all channels, so I'm not surprised they'd show you the hottest trends from across the other platforms.

I'd probably be asking for a separation of TV+ and TV, since this is eerily similar to the Apple Music (streaming) and vestigial iTunes functionality of the Music app, crammed together.
 
Ehh, I'd hardly consider this an ad. I'm not being forced to watch trailers, they just lined up these options at the top of the list. Would you consider yourself being advertised to when a different service gives you a similar "Trending" row in their interface?

The TV app however also wants to be positioned as a central hub for all content from all channels, so I'm not surprised they'd show you the hottest trends from across the other platforms.

I'd probably be asking for a separation of TV+ and TV, since this is eerily similar to the Music and vestigial iTunes functionality of the Music app.
It’s the fact it’s presented above the user’s own watch list, cannot be disabled and opens the doors for Ads proper to be put in their place.

If it could be disabled or have it’s prevalence reordered, I’d have less of an issue.
 
Ehh, I'd hardly consider this an ad. I'm not being forced to watch trailers, they just lined up these options at the top of the list. Would you consider yourself being advertised to when a different service gives you a similar "Trending" row in their interface?

The TV app however also wants to be positioned as a central hub for all content from all channels, so I'm not surprised they'd show you the hottest trends from across the other platforms.

I'd probably be asking for a separation of TV+ and TV, since this is eerily similar to the Music and vestigial iTunes functionality of the Music app.
Right now whenever you can't exit a tvOS app back to main icon array, you end up pressing the TV Control center button which takes you back to Apple TV plus app instead. It's a bit of snakes and ladders sometimes with the way things behave. I think Apple has purposely not fixed this actions so they could use this "Just Watch" based on usage history. :D
 
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More brilliant design decisions from Tim Cook’s Apple. I’m pretty sure all of this nonsense we’ve seen creep up from Apple particularly in the last 4-5 years is what Steve was worried about when he said Tim Cook “isn’t a product person.”
 
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It’s the fact it’s presented above the user’s own watch list, cannot be disabled and opens the doors for Ads proper to be put in their place.

If it could be disabled or have it’s prevalence reordered, I’d have less of an issue.
It "opens the door" for ads. So we're worrying about what could come to pass, rather than what is?

And while I agree about the reordering of the rows, sadly all the streaming service interfaces (at least that I've seen) dictate the order in which content is presented to you. Sure, Apple could give you more control over it, but until they bother to, in order to use it as a "selling" point, they won't.

While we're on it, I'd like Youtube to default to the subscriptions page instead of their home page. But I understand the reasoning behind not letting me do that, and while they own the service and app, they will dictate what pops up first.
Right now whenever you can't exit a tvOS app back to main icon array, you end up pressing the TV Control center button which takes you back to Apple TV plus app instead. It's a bit of snakes and ladders sometimes with the way things behave. I think Apple has purposely not fixed this actions so they could use this "Just Watch" based on usage history. :D
Never liked that back button (or Menu button) on the remote for the Apple TV, because it does weird things. But I tend to just hit the Home button and get back to the top menu where possible.
 
This is the new Apple.


Apple has been steadily going down hill for a long time now. This is the natural evolution of a great company to a pathetic company due to poor leadership.

They’re too stupid to know that customer satisfaction wins business. This will give a nice, beautiful hit to customer satisfaction because their leadership is incompetent morons who aren’t visionaries.

The intelligent people of the world see ramifications of actions before they take place. The unintelligent don’t think things through. This is your classic example of unintelligent changes that will later or immediately be walked back. With an overall negative affect on their business.

Apple has been phase-changing to this current state. It’s going further still though, with increased ads, and increased intrusive and annoying anti-consumer practices. iCloud Storage full? They will absolutely bombard you trying to get you to upgrade. They put a badge on the Settings app to annoy customers and make you have to physically tap in order to hit ‘not now’ to upgrading, only for that same notification to hit you again later.

In conclusion: Apple has incredibly poor leadership on many teams now, and it’s only getting worse. There’s no fixing it either; once it starts it’s like a snowball. Enjoy the final embers of the greatness that once was.
They just want to get to $3 trillion (and I say that in all sincerity). Hardware sales can only take you so far. It truly is a "victim of your own success" situations where people would rather hold on to their iPads for 6 to 8 years than replace them. Even for the lowest end models!

If Apple charged industry standard prices then I wouldn't have as much of a problem with this as I do.
You mean like Netflix, or how some of the other streaming services have gone up? O1H, people are already complaining about them, and they've got solid content in terms of both quality and quantity. OTOH, if anybody can take a hit for that service, it would be Apple :|
 
Netflix and others do this too. I wish they'd Open with my list.

amazon is the worst, because it mixes paid, free, and ad based content with no way to filter.

One major reason I stream is to avoid advertising. It's one thing to provide suggestions, advertising is a whole different beast. If the app gets ads, I'll stop using it and go back to the individual services.
 
This, this, this.

The ‘Apple Tax’ was a premium for UX and no ads. Now I might as well get the cheapest option if there’s no tangible difference.
I agree. I hope I don’t seem like a troll - I’m an Apple fan and obviously here because I like their products. I came from a Samsung a year ago and honestly don’t feel like there’s much of an UX difference in recent years because there’s many tradeoffs. My iPhone has been a lot more predictable with the battery and syncs nice with my other devices but it’s been way, way buggier than my Samsung. Apps freezing was never a thing on it while Apple Music or the Camera becoming unresponsive is a daily thing on iOS. There’s random UI glitches galore all throughout the OS and a lot of hangs (very prominent when deleting many message attachments without deleting the whole conversation, which is also a bad UX example btw because you have to select all one by one as there isn’t a select all option .. but anyway…) Continuity and especially the universal clipboard feature is also very random about when it will function and when it simply won’t, despite all the conditions for it to work being met. Storage is also a huge issue because of this bug where even if you delete 20GB of stuff it will add those 20GB to a huge non-descript ‘System Data’. Resets fix none of these issues.

To be transparent, the Samsung was an S-series device in the same price class. I had a sideloaded system-wide ad-blocker on it which was great. It wasn’t perfect and there’s reasons I currently prefer the iPhone but it’s certainly less stable than whatever Android that Samsung ran. I don’t see myself spending that much on a phone again if it acts like that, regardless the brand. I don’t mind ads when they’re not intrusive but if they’re daring to make a UX compromise for money, they will make more.
 
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So... the complaint is that the Featured section is now above Up Next, and it's bigger and more advertiser-y, forcing users to have to click twice to reach what they want now, instead of once?

What a terrible thing. How will the TV app ever overcome this travesty?
Its is a user hostile design... the bigger issue is that the large preview no longer changes for things you highlight on the Up Next row because it isn't on the top...
 
It does not bother me at all. I am running the latest beta on all my devices except iMac.
 
It was the one thing that I enjoyed about Apple TV is that I had no ads unlike Roku and the other streaming boxes. If this does happen, I may cancel my AppleTV account and return my device to Apple so they can recycle it. I may be done with the streaming. The good news is, I will save money by canceling all the streaming subscriptions I have.
 
Apple is making a big shift toward an ad heavy direction. Much more to come. Probably Facebook-like tracking next.
Can you imagine you turn on your Mac to get some work done one morning and suddenly an add pops up for some movie or Apple service, or worse yet... a game that paid top dollar for that add. Or you're looking for a file and there in the finder on the left side of the screen in the lower corner is an add for paper... or you open iMessage to find that the lower part of iMessage is now an add banner... Hopefully unlikely, but I wouldn't put it past Tim to use what he considers "dead" real estate to fill his pockets.
 
We might have tried YTP for a bit since it was only a little more that Music, but literally two days after we joined the trial, up $6. Found cancel ASAP
Yeah, I really wish there was an option to just pay $5 to $6 a month, just for the ad-free portion. I really don't care about anything else.

This same with Amazon Prime. I don't care about all the other services that are part of it, including but not limited to: Amazon Music, Amazon Photos, Whole Foods, prescription drugs, Audible, Kindle, baby and wedding registries. In other countries, Amazon Prime is only a fraction of the price we pay here because those other services aren't available to them. It's only Video and the shipping, which are the only things I've used. Prime Video can be had a la carte for $9 a month, which I'll do later next year (if not 2024). I've had to pay $6 thus far (I'm keeping a tally) to buy some stuff from Amazon (since I cancelled Prime), so it'll be interesting to see if I get anywhere near the new $150 annual rate ($140, but after taxes). One order was supposed to take 9 days, but it arrived in 5, so shipping time there wasn't far off! :cool:
 
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