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New Apple TV Tidbits: Limited App Discovery, User Guide, Amazon Pulls Apple TVs, and More
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Does Apple sell the Amazon fire video devices in it's store or web sites?
That wouldn't work at all on a TV interface. How would you select an app if the scrolling wasn't one row at a time?
I'd much rather Amazon show up on AppleTV than the opposite. That said, Apple not exposing iTunes on any other devices is a long-standing policy. Back when songs were DRM'd, iTunes songs did not play on non-Apple devices. iTunes videos and books etc have always been fully DRM'd and have never played outside that small ecosystem. It is hard to imagine someone being surprised by the fact that iTunes movies will not play on their FireTV.
On the opposite side, I know a lot of people who have invested in Amazon Instant Video content specifically because Amazon was supporting their library on pretty much every device out there. Amazon's about-face protectionism is new, and breaks the main reason they had risen to popularity in the first place.
Amazon is making a very bad, product-destroying decision here. I know I have stopped using my Fire TV Stick almost entirely, despite being a Prime subscriber, and won't rent something on Amazon if it is available on iTunes even if that costs me a little more (the streaming experience on the broken-networking-stack FireTV Stick isn't worth hassling with even if it means saving a buck or two on a rental).
I was under the impression they make most of their money off the media sales (and prime) why wouldn't they want their (already written iOS) video app on the AppleTV? (after modifications).
Gary
Exactly. My Sony 4K TV remote has a big 'Netflix' button on the remote.
Amazon? Missed the boat methinks.
On the TV you are moving a selection, not moving content. "Natural" scrolling which focuses on the content would only work if the selection was trapped dead center and the whole interface moved around left-right-up-down to place stuff underneath it.
Note that while OS X has natural direction scrolling for the mouse wheel / trackpad, positioning the cursor is still the same way it always has been. There is no "scroll wheel" on the AppleTV, just a "pointer" selection. So, it is completely consistent with OS X.
I mean, when you swipe up or down, the list you are scrolling moves the opposite direction that the same list would move if you swipe up on your iOS device or with your track pad or mouse scroll wheel on OS X.
Everyone said the same when they switched OS X to what Apple calls 'natural' scrolling. At first it didn't make sense until I began to stop thinking about scroll bars on the side and think about pushing the list up or down like you do naturally on an iOS device.
On the be Appletv, the swipe of the track pad on the remote is acting like arrow keys and not a track pad. I don't like this.
And, clearly, they will only sell TVs with Amazon access built in, right? And they will only sell products in their store that offer Prime shipping, because people get really confused when the thing they buy that doesn't say "Prime Shipping" on it doesn't arrive in two days, right?
No, that reasoning is all pure post-fact-rationalizing BS. The move to remove Chromecast and AppleTV from their stores (including partners who don't offer any of the Prime benefits to begin with) is pure protectionism. It is a last-gasp type of move, which is odd because I'd previously thought of the FireTV as a reasonably attractive and profitable line. Apparently they are not selling as well as Amazon needs them to, which is not a good sign for anyone thinking of buying them (if Amazon is flailing this hard, they are apt to cancel the hardware and support at a moment's notice too).
15% of what? Amazon doesn't sell anything in their iOS Amazon Video app, only prime/free/ones you've already paid for.
The app does support AirPlay, but if I'm going to flip to that I might as flip over to the Amazon app in my TiVo or the one built into my TV...
Gary
Does Apple claim that it sells everything from "A to Z", even incorporating that slogan into their logo with an arrow running from an "a" to a "z"?
No, but I feel we all can understand quite plainly that it's a direct competing device as opposed to a general device.
As in Apple could decide to sell other brands of products for many other items, but they would never sell a iPhone competitor.
Aside from no TV app discovery, the real problem here is the Apple Remote app does not work with the new Apple TV.
I don't have an ATV4, but my ATV3 shows movie covers/posters rather than a random frame from the movie, unless I skip passing them through Subler or Ivi to put that poster/cover on. I think Plex looks covers up on the fly, but iTunes and AppleTV rely on the ID3 (or whatever) tags in the file itself for this information.
FWIW, ripping a bluray with makemkv, then passing through Ivi for one-step reencoding/tagging is a pretty good setup. If I have more time I'll use a different app to encode down then use Subler for tagging. Of course, the local library browsing on our AppleTV has ben failing more and more often the past couple of years (and relies on a specific account being logged on a computer and iTunes being up, neither of which are super reliable), so I've moved away from ripping blurays and dads before them and now tend to just buy stuff digital first (or buy bluray with digital download codes and put the disk on the shelf). Hoping that when Plex comes out on the ATV4 that will work better than the iTunes "family sharing" contraption.
First impression (from The Netherlands): iOS Remote not working, snappy interface, very limited App store, 4 x entering my account user name + password, gaming is nice, slow loading of apple music songs, etc etc
Fuller App Store and snappier loading and i am sold.
Great packing (always admire apple for it) and great product, just need more functionality.
PS didnt get siri to work even after changing my account region to USA....
Fuller App Store and snappier loading and i am sold.
Great packing (always admire apple for it) and great product, just need more functionality.
PS didnt get siri to work even after changing my account region to USA....
That rep was completely uninformed unfortunately.
The Apple TV was pulled from the stores and any Amazon Marketplace sellers. This is not an issue of Amazon and Apple needing to come to reseller terms. It is a policy issue.
As, in fact, Amazon said in its original letter telling marketplace vendors it will no longer accept AppleTV and Chromecast listings because they thing they will confuse their customers who are apparently under the impression that Amazon Prime Videos are available on every video device. They aren't biased? BS. They announced that they are specifically biased.
This does make me leery of buying anything else that Amazon has a store brand for like cables, batteries, etc. Amazon has crossed a pretty serious trust line here.
I always found the quality of Amazon Instant Video played via Airplay to be far inferior to the quality available on computer screens, etc. I had attributed it to the video content having to come down wirelessly to my phone then wirelessly back up to the Airport then over the Ethernet to the AppleTV, then found that the AirPlay spec actually doesn't do that (unless Amazon was doing things horribly wrong, they would just send a URL over to the ATV which it would stream from, similar to what Chromecast does). When I switched to the FireTV stick for Amazon content the quality improved dramatically (but the FireTV stick will randomly cut out and complain that the network has been disconnected in the middle of movies, a clear instance of Amazon Quality, so I don't use it much either). So, if we do anything on Amazon Video it is generally something we don't care if it gets interrupted (so no movies or tense shows) or something we can watch on a computer screen (where the Silverlight player replaced the older Flash player and lost several key features, so even that is less likely to happen).
I like the Amazon Prime service. But, expecting me to buy a new Fire TV box after the lemon they call the FireTV Stick is just not realistic. They are letting their other mechanisms of access wither on the vine. At this point, when we decide if we want to pay for Prime shipping again next year, it will just be Prime Shipping that falls into that decision (and as others have noted, it seems less and less reliable and so less valuable, even as they have raised the yearly price).
This is odd behaviour from Amazon. My theory is Roku have done a deal with Amazon to keep Prime off the other devices for the time being. They're the ones with the most to lose if ATV is a hit, and Amazon features them quite proudly alongside the Fire Stick.
Thinking Amazon doesn't mind not ever showing a profit.
It seems it's their business model.
I'm from the UK and it has categories on the iPhone so should do here, maybe it's just not up and running properly yet
As long as I can still stream from my iPad to aTV, I am fine with prime that way. Besides, Amazon really needs to redo their app. It kind of stinks.