MLB App Now Supports Live Activities

[gank41]

Considering how awesome the Sports Alerts app is, this weird "selective rollout" to Live Activities with the MLB app just looks like they're trolling us. There's already a pretty high bar set as a standard with that app, in my opinion. To not be able to at least just shove a sometimes updating score of any MLB game you want up there seems like a joke.

 

[dannyyankou]

It only seemed to be for the Red Sox/Yankees game today so check tomorrow to see if it's available for other teams/games. It wouldn't surprise me if they are doing a quiet test run to see how well it works or what the reception is.

I think it might only work for teams you follow

Edit: Nevermind, that's wrong

 

[bsbeamer]

Where are the better Apple Watch integrations from MLB? Should be easy for them to make a useable watch face complication...

 

[redbeard331]

I love watching Baseball games so so much lol

I watch paint dry from time to time, I could use a live activity for that to track my evaporation rate.

 

[gleepskip]

Considering how awesome the Sports Alerts app is, this weird "selective rollout" to Live Activities with the MLB app just looks like they're trolling us. There's already a pretty high bar set as a standard with that app, in my opinion. To not be able to at least just shove a sometimes updating score of any MLB game you want up there seems like a joke.

I installed Sports Alerts and it doesn't work for me. My default DNS privacy settings prevent it starting up. The MLB app is far ahead in that category.

 

[BaldiMac]

Where are the better Apple Watch integrations from MLB? Should be easy for them to make a useable watch face complication...

What's wrong with the current complication?

 

[temende]

I think a lot of businesses do not use these features that take the user out of their apps since they want you to engage WITH / inside the app

Agreed usually, but for something like food delivery, the live activity would only happen after i've already placed the order. And i'm much more likely to use that same food delivery app again instead of a competitor if i know it supports live activities.

 

[mebehere]

Can live activities start automatically for the team you follow? With the Apple TV app, I have to go into each individual NBA game to activate the live activity.

And how does this even make sense? So we want live activities on our iPhone and we have to use Apple TV? Seems to make zero sense to me. I‘ve actually never seen anything this ridiculous on an Apple device.

 

[mebehere]

Live activities are a total bust. Too weird to even get working on an iPhone, and there’s practically nothing taking advantage of this “feature.”

And dynamic island is also a bust. Timers and music. That’s about it. When I search for how to take advantage of dynamic island, it’s essentially timers and music. And maybe a pixelated squirrel on it.

AND, you can set multiple timers on an Apple Watch but only one at a time on the iPhone. Truly ridiculous.

 

[ethanwa79]

Nobody watches baseball so these will be good for those that want to keep track of scores.

Speak for yourself. I watch baseball every day during the regular season. Easily my favorite sport.

 

[gank41]

I installed Sports Alerts and it doesn't work for me. My default DNS privacy settings prevent it starting up. The MLB app is far ahead in that category.

Weird that whatever default privacy settings prevent the Sports Alert app for you, while the default privacy settings don’t prevent it from working for me…

 

[gank41]

Live activities are a total bust. Too weird to even get working on an iPhone, and there’s practically nothing taking advantage of this “feature.”

And dynamic island is also a bust. Timers and music. That’s about it. When I search for how to take advantage of dynamic island, it’s essentially timers and music. And maybe a pixelated squirrel on it.

AND, you can set multiple timers on an Apple Watch but only one at a time on the iPhone. Truly ridiculous.

I love Carrot’s Live Activities, showing upcoming or ongoing rain/snow. The Now Playing works great as a way to get to the Remote app after using it to control an Apple TV. And then the Sports Alerts app. Everything updates when it needs to. Timers, obviously.. To each their own I guess. I love it.

 

[mebehere]

I love Carrot’s Live Activities, showing upcoming or ongoing rain/snow. The Now Playing works great as a way to get to the Remote app after using it to control an Apple TV. And then the Sports Alerts app. Everything updates when it needs to. Timers, obviously.. To each their own I guess. I love it.

Thanks for listing some existing uses. Regarding sports, isn’t it tied to Apple TV? Seems like there should be a dedicated Apple sports app or something.

Yahoo! Sports is a great app to use for all things sports where you can get literally all info and stats for any game in virtually any sport in real time. It’s not hard to just open the app. And you can set any occurring game to send notifications for anything. Like anything. Game start. Score change. Halftime. The list of different notifications regarding the games that they can send is mind boggling.

NFL is my favorite sport, but the season’s over so I’ll attach an example from an NHL game (Being played right now). NFL has even more types of notifications.

So, yeah, live activities and dynamic island can’t compare to this. And I promise I don’t work for Yahoo! It’s just a great app.

 

[svish]

Good to see live activities being supported by more apps.

 

[redbeard331]

I love Carrot’s Live Activities, showing upcoming or ongoing rain/snow. The Now Playing works great as a way to get to the Remote app after using it to control an Apple TV. And then the Sports Alerts app. Everything updates when it needs to. Timers, obviously.. To each their own I guess. I love it.

The app Tide Guide has some really nice ones too.

 

[WWP99]

This app has always been a disappointment. MLB needs a new UI team to build a new one from the ground up.

 

[PsykX]

Very nice feature, but not for me - I don't like baseball.
Would be awesome for the NHL.

 

[machpost]

Thanks for listing some existing uses. Regarding sports, isn’t it tied to Apple TV? Seems like there should be a dedicated Apple sports app or something.

Yahoo! Sports is a great app to use for all things sports where you can get literally all info and stats for any game in virtually any sport in real time. It’s not hard to just open the app. And you can set any occurring game to send notifications for anything. Like anything. Game start. Score change. Halftime. The list of different notifications regarding the games that they can send is mind boggling.

NFL is my favorite sport, but the season’s over so I’ll attach an example from an NHL game (Being played right now). NFL has even more types of notifications.

So, yeah, live activities and dynamic island can’t compare to this. And I promise I don’t work for Yahoo! It’s just a great app.

View attachment 2171210

I've found the CBS Sports app to be really handy for very quickly checking on scores.

 

[machpost]

From the MLB app, go into the "Scores" tab. From there, you'll see an option to track a game. Click on the track game button and you'll get something like this

View attachment 2171076

What's interesting though is that this only seemed to work for the Red Sox/Yankees game today. I tried to do the same thing with the Dodgers and Mariners game and wasnt given the option to track the game. Also, changing your "Favorite" team didnt seem to do anything either but that might be a thing they change later on.

Hmmm, that game was probably over when I was first trying it out at a little after 4PM Eastern. I'll give it a look again today.

 

[gleepskip]

Weird that whatever default privacy settings prevent the Sports Alert app for you, while the default privacy settings don’t prevent it from working for me…

There are a number of URLs that the app connects to on startup. I added the developer's domain to the whitelist, but that didn't suffice. The other domains it sought are on multiple privacy/anti-tracking blocklists. The developer means absolutely no harm, no doubt, but the services they built their app on are typical data vacuum cleaners.

 

[theman510]

Hopefully it will auto-track games. It would be silly to open the app for every single game to tap Track.

Would love to see this. Seems stupid to have to go into an app 162 times to get live tracking. Give us the option to do it automatically. Have it turned off by default if there's a concern people won't like it. But at least give the option

 

[jmarsh5]

I don't follow sports (which seems to be a common use case for live activities), but here in the USA I have yet to see a single live activity from any of the ride-sharing or delivery apps.

Uber

 

[thejadedmonkey]

I don't follow sports (which seems to be a common use case for live activities), but here in the USA I have yet to see a single live activity from any of the ride-sharing or delivery apps.

I have yet to see a single live activity, either, from any app. IMO, the problem is that they're designed for large companies that use push notifications (such as to promote Apple's sports streaming service). The APIs around using them for small developers are massively lacking. It's almost like Apple developed the feature exclusively to help promote their own sports streaming services.

 

[gank41]

Thanks for listing some existing uses. Regarding sports, isn’t it tied to Apple TV? Seems like there should be a dedicated Apple sports app or something.

Yahoo! Sports is a great app to use for all things sports where you can get literally all info and stats for any game in virtually any sport in real time. It’s not hard to just open the app. And you can set any occurring game to send notifications for anything. Like anything. Game start. Score change. Halftime. The list of different notifications regarding the games that they can send is mind boggling.

NFL is my favorite sport, but the season’s over so I’ll attach an example from an NHL game (Being played right now). NFL has even more types of notifications.

So, yeah, live activities and dynamic island can’t compare to this. And I promise I don’t work for Yahoo! It’s just a great app.

View attachment 2171210

The Sports Alerts app does all of these things, too, for basically any sports league you can think of.


As for the “Now Playing” live tile, I’m referring to when you just use your phone as an Apple TV remote, and then swipe up out of the remote app. It turns into a Live Activity which makes it easier to get back to the remote app again…

 

[TruthWatcher412]

The Sports Alerts app does all of these things, too, for basically any sports league you can think of.
View attachment 2171408

As for the “Now Playing” live tile, I’m referring to when you just use your phone as an Apple TV remote, and then swipe up out of the remote app. It turns into a Live Activity which makes it easier to get back to the remote app again…

I used this one for football, it worked really well!