Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple TV App Store Gains Categories Section for Better App Discovery
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
These options only came up for me after reboot, but I am finding some nice new apps.
Personally I'm enjoying this App Store, and these additions are making it better. Finding it quite nice just sitting on the couch flicking through apps and seeing what's around.
Personally I'm enjoying this App Store, and these additions are making it better. Finding it quite nice just sitting on the couch flicking through apps and seeing what's around.
Try going into the settings and restarting your Apple TV a couple of times, it'll show up.
After reading this thread, I'm pondering what's worse here, the people complaining about AppleTV or the the misogynists who can't help but refer to them as girls for doing so.
They wouldn't have had metrics to determine 'popular apps' or 'highest grossing' until it was live. They updated when they were ready.
Categories would have looked empty, until they had a few days to sort and populate based on popularity metrics.
The fact that no software update was necessary, is proof alone, that it was built in, they just needed the metrics to base the features on.
The features were there, weren't missing, just weren't populated. They were empty. There has been no software update to add top charts and categories... because they have been there all along.Isn't the app number still relatively the same? Was there a huge influx in the past couple of days? Serious question b/c I have no idea.
Couldn't Apple have easily avoided the entire problem by having the app store fully fleshed out when the ATV went on sale? The number of apps hasn't increased exponentially. A bit disingenuous of you to claim "empty shelves". The app store had over 1000 apps. Hardly empty. It's pretty obvious the UI omissions should have been there when the ATV was released. A big part of the reason people like Apple is their attention to detail. That app store at release lacked detail.
To me it seems like Apple could have followed the old adage "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
Then we would have had to find something else to b***ch about.But at least it wouldn't have been about an unfinished app store UI.
They now have 6 days were of metrics, to list 'top grossed' 'top paid' and categories are listed in ranking of popularity. They needed metrics to start the system.
That includes parent and sibling homes. I have seven units on my sets alone. My tv viewing is mainly done in three rooms, with an older Apple TV getting kicked over to a less used TV when a new one is released each time. I've also take two older units to my business, one in the projector room and one in my office.
Before the first unit, I was a big media collector. But I noticed my son could not keep a movie in the case. I've since went all digital and have around 900 movies on the iTunes cloud. My group has been a cash cow for Apple.
To me it seems like Apple could have followed the old adage "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
Then we would have had to find something else to b***ch about.
I don't think they're worried about people that have nothing better to do than b**ch in comments threads about stuff like this. It seems to me anyone spending their time complaining about stuff like this should find something better to do with their time.
Yes, and to people who did exhaustive real world testing instead of attention grabbing whining the truth is known...
Sometimes true; but companies don't change their plans, implement, and bring stuff to market six days after the complaining starts. Ninety days would be more like it for a "rush" job.
Of course Apple cares about their customers!
Oh wait, you are in IRELAND... nvm.
The problem being... 30 or 50 people complaining on MR for a few days? I think Apple should focus their attention on real problems, rather than worrying about the embarrassment to a handful of folks having to rollback and re-spin their complaints.
This is a service rollout, and all service rollouts have glitches. For example, double charges with ApplePay. The seriousness of the glitches with this TV app store rollout has been... not at all serious.
Last edited by a moderator:
Relegating the complaints about the UI omissions on the ATV to MR members drastically downplays the attention this subject has gotten. Every review I've read (on numerous sites) has mentioned it. Almost all of them said they expected the situation to be corrected in short order, and for the most part, it has been. My point was it shouldn't have had to be fixed. This complaint isn't necessarily about Apple. As consumers, we've allowed "ship then fix" to become SOP for vendors (video games
). We shouldn't have but that horse has left the barn. Soapbox topic for another day.I still contend Apple could have avoided any complaint, whether from MR members or the tech media in general. Apple is arguably one of the best companies when dealing with UI/UX. App Store UI is one of the things I think they are best at doing. It's not like it's their first rodeo with an app store. It's just hard for me to believe they couldn't have fleshed out the ATV app store before shipping. I definitely don't buy the argument being bandied about in this forum that there weren't enough apps for categories. We now have categories and the app selection hasn't increased appreciably.
Real problems? I'm not sure what that means or why people say it so much. It sort of implies they can only do one thing at a time. We all know that's not true. Also not sure why anyone would have to rollback or re-spin their complaints. When the complaints were leveled the ATV was missing what Apple just updated.
Issue not all that serious? Of course it's not. But what is serious on this site? We have posts with 3-, 4-, and 500 comments where the subject is HTC's phone design, new emoji's, and astute analysis from the great Ming Chi Kuo. This one is no more or less serious.
Last edited:
Is there that much more apps than at launch, I wonder.
Or maybe Apple simply wasn't ready to launch it, and thus disabled the feature.
Featured apps working in the UK now, but stil no categories page. And Badlands app page still doesn't load since day 0.
There are a good number more apps now that at launch. Many try to get their apps in for launch but don't do so in time to get through the approval process in time to hit on launch day. There were plenty held up in approval when the Apple TV launched last Friday. Plex was one of them.