Launching an Apple TV App: What We’ve Learned So Far
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blog.serverdensity.com
It wasn't until the app got approved that I started to realize just how terrible app discovery is on the platform. There's no "new apps" list at all. There are no Top 100 lists in the individual categories. I can't even link you guys to the app. The only way anybody can find my app is if I personally tell them to go to the app store, find the search feature, and use the hilariously bad text input feature to search for "Slingshot Superhero".
I probably won't be making any more Apple TV apps.
I really wish Apple would do something like Google Play does, where I can go onto the store in my browser and buy an app right there to be sent to my AppleTV.
Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make voice recognition universal to all text input fields. Why isn't this the case already?
I am really liking my AppleTV and hoping that Apple puts the effort in to make it fantastic.
I'll be glad to answer questions regarding development, audience and similar aspects, but I'll do that tomorrow as it's just past midnight in Europe/UK (where we are based). Also feel free to ask about our monitoring service, I'm sure my colleagues will chime in where my knowledge ends.
Overall it's nice to have the same tools and codebase for both platforms, just adapting the app for notably different use cases.
This decision was made easier due to the fact that both platforms can run the same code, so most of the API interaction and view rendering code will be reused. It was mostly a greenfield project, because even though we leveraged the knowledge from our alerts iOS app, we took the opportunity of writing everything in Swift, which functional expressiveness makes it slightly more useful when it comes to dealing with APIs.
For apps not tied to an existing web property (I'm planning to do some games on my own, for example), you need an effective marketing channel, even if it's just word of mouth. No one is going to just come up with some search terms and find your app.
I know this thing is optimized for the TV experience, and great if your in the Apple Ecosystem. I have the original Apple TV (received as a gift) and besides for some Netflix and youtube, I barely use it. And when I do, my iPhone is the remote. Does this new one really push TV forward?
Edit: I agree the optimization for experience is the focus, but what I am getting at is with the TV getting smarter, it is moving towards the realm of being a full out computer attached to your TV, and the user interaction methods designed for it really diminish the quality of the interaction.
Here is an example. The current Apple TV has a remote that makes typing in login information extremely annoying. To address this issue they integrated voice, which works sometimes, which is a hit of miss in its current implementation and useless for passwords. To remedy this issue, you can attach a BT keyboard or iPhone to your ATV, and thus have gone backwards in terms of what the designer intended, but in doing so have actually achieve a better interaction.
Apple and the other companies need to move towards discovering whole new interface technologies to make this really effective. Kind of like what the touch screen was for the smart phone.
Lots of users want simplicity on their TVs, not power. The Apple TV is easier to set up and use than a PC. (When I looked a number of years ago, it was also quieter and drew less power, but PCs have probably caught up.) The experience of using a keyboard and mouse is also awful from a couch without weird trays or additional furniture. A $150 Apple TV is also cheaper than a $200 PC + keyboard + mouse.
For an appliance that plays YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, streaming music, media from an iTunes library, and can stream audio and video from your phone and computer, the Apple TV works pretty dang well.
That said, I have a fourth generation Apple TV after previously having owned a third gen. The fourth gen has a lot of potential, but has not yet pushed TV forward. I've used the App Store mostly to get new sources of audio and video to stream. I haven't yet found any killer app interactive experiences that are more compelling than they would be on other screens. Maybe that will end up being games, but it will probably be something nobody's thought of. (Personally, I really hope, maybe Apple, figures out a great web browsing UX for the TV, but I'm not counting on it.)
Also, it's really nice (now that Hulu+ has finally allowed us to "cut the cord") that everything is on one (simple) remote now, with no input switching. The only thing we use the Harmony Hub remote for anymore is turning the whole system on/off (my Receiver doesn't seem to do the HDMI control pass-through), or switching to the PS4 or WiiU.
The "stick" devices are nice in their own way. But having a physical remote and a single "all you can eat" device really adds to the simplicity IMO.
It's not so much that it uses the phone as a "remote", since you're browsing the content you want to play directly on the phone. It basically moves all browsing to the device, which they're pretty good at, and leaves just display to the chromecast. I usually prefer it to clicking around on-screen with a hardware remote now.
It's the same reason the WiiU app navigation is a big minus for me. I don't ever want to see that Mii lobby thing. Don't know what the hell it's for. Just put the apps on the TV like every other console. Mirror on the gamepad if you want. That's fine. But don't try to force it as the default option to the exclusion of the rest of the party. (Yes I realize you can "cast" it up to the TV, but is it sticky? I don't know, because it still seems to routinely annoy by going back to the gamepad.)
Anyways, yes, the Chromecast has it's place. And it's a nice fall-back when the AppleTV in the conference room is unreliable because you've got a dozen of them around the office, 3 different WiFi networks nobody knows which to be on, and the AppleTV disconnects every five minutes while your laptop doesn't realize and getting reconnected takes a minute or two and ugh it's just so frustrating... Never have that problem at home.
And I am very confused what desktop setup you are getting for $149 that is going to be as polished, seamless and easy to use as the AppleTV. Remember the market here isn't geeks it's parents, children and people who don't want a huge, ugly black box sitting next to their shiny new 80inch TV. They don't want another computer to backup, update, check for viruses, install drivers for etc.
The consoles obviously cost more than $150, but provide the same services.
I got a Amazon FireTV Stick for my MiL. It seems like a nice device. The interface is really decent, though it pushes Amazon Videos harder than the AppleTV pushes iTunes I feel like. Netflix and Hulu on the latest AppleTV feel "first class" for example. Same number of steps as getting to iTunes content (or one extra if you have multiple Netflix profiles). And the search is universal. Whereas on FireTV the Netflix App is kinda off in a corner and most of the content you're presented on startup is inaccessible if you don't have a Prime account.
Anyways, hardware wise, the latest AppleTV feels more powerful/capable than most devices on that list. Not sure about the PS3 or 360 or original Wii since I didn't really use them as media devices, but it's definitely much more powerful than the WiiU (I've tried Netflix and Hulu on it for the kids and it's nowhere near as snappy or responsive).
Anyways, yes, the PS4 (I don't have an XBone yet) does most of what the latest AppleTV does. But it's less focused and more cumbersome. No voice search for example. The apps seem a bit slower. (Except for Youtube, which is far better than the crippled version made for TvOS.)
Not sure where I'm going with all this except to say the latest AppleTV has it's own strengths/weaknesses and is more of a media-device++ than a Console--.
My own pro/cons would be:
Pro: Boots way faster than the previous version. Just a few seconds. Con: Needs to be rebooted every other day or so when apps can no longer play video for unknown reasons.
Pro: Board games on the AppleTV with a young family are awesome. Con: Not enough of them.
Pro: Plenty of age-appropriate games for children. Crossy Road is one of the few games my 3yo and 7yo can really play well together, and the TV experience is great. Con: Not enough more in-depth games. Where's Kingdom Rush?!?
Con: The on-screen Keyboard is the worst ever designed in the history of on-screen keyboards. W.T.F. Apple. Seriously. Especially painful in Youtube since you can't voice-search there.
Pro: The optional Controller is great. Con: It's not used to it's fullest since most buttons map to things that'll kick you out of the current app.
I totally get not making the 3rd party controller required. But it's a rough compromise to be limited to NES level controls.
1: WTF, Netflix, why would you remove proper Kinect support from the Xbox One app?
I actually quite like the youtube.com/tv page as a good demonstration of a HTML5 app, though it has some navigation quirks. Before the Apple TV I had a NUC set up with Kodi and Chrome Launcher for when I wanted to use YouTube and I'd use the TV page exclusively.
I swear the Netflix app on Xbox is somehow being released in reverse order. Every single time it updates, features are ripped out.
Try looking for genres and separating tv shows from movies in Netflix on any of those platforms if you don't know what we are talking about.
I haven't followed the AppleTV at all but this seems interesting... do you have time to go into more detail regarding the game(s) you have found best?
That's really it that I've found for board games, but it seems like a great platform for it.
I mentioned the two-player mode of Crossy Road. My son (7yo) also enjoys "Goat". Which is like a modern Qbert? My daughter (3yo) digs the Thomas The Train "Express" game.
Then there's "Starwalk Kids" and "Solar Walk". Those manage to hold their interest a bit as well while I talk about the solar system with them.
It really does seem like a great platform for family time. The biggest issue is handing the very sensitive controller around and inadvertent rolls of dice or spins of a wheel.
I'm fairly excited to see how this develops... Hopefully the awful app discoverability doesn't crush otherwise worthy apps we'd be interested in.
Here's the Geekbench benchmark: http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/4955785?ba...
Basically the A8 uses less power and is much faster in almost every case. It has a ton more fill-rate as well, which means short of a console, it's probably the most powerful setup graphically by a good margin currently.
They have the same amount of RAM.
I'm a fan of Amazon Video. I think in most ways their app interfaces generally beat Apple's. They appear to incrementally improve routinely where you're probably lucky to get a significant AppleTV interface improvement once a year (I don't hold out much hope for Apple fixing the keyboard, and I don't consider the recent Bluetooth keyboard support addition much improvement).
Anyways, the Qualcomm/nVidia vs Apple Ax series seems very much like AMD vs Intel to me. For a casual observer like myself, the Apple processors seem to pretty much always be the most energy efficient, and provide significantly more performance at the same time. So if cores and clock speed are the most important thing to you, you buy the Qualcomm or AMD (well, not cores so much, but work with me) CPU. But if you want the best performance with the most efficiency, you buy the Apple or Intel solution.
That's just my theory anyways.
Most people don't want to plug a desktop into their TV and use a keyboard and mouse to watch Netflix/Hulu/Amazon Video. It's a TV, you want to use a remote, and a user interface that has been designed for a remote.
The Apple TV isn't competing with low-end HTPCs, it's competing with the Roku, Fire TV, Chromecast, and other plug-and-play media devices.
An example is a DVR I encountered. The "smart" part of the interface takes ~30 seconds to activate, loads icons from a remote server somewhere (how long will that stay up?) and appears to run on some unholy mashup of HTML and an old version of Flash. Don't even get me started on the UX.
Apple's coming in with previous experience of TV interfaces, a slick design team and a software team who actually prioritise performance. And I'm no Apple fan.
I've worked for a number of consumer electronics hardware manufacturing companies. For all of them, software was an integral part of the product, but at the end of the day, what they're making money from is selling hardware, not software. Their business is turning raw physical materials into physical widgets, stuffing those widgets into plastic packaging, putting them on trucks, and shipping them off somewhere. Almost universally, the software produced by these companies is crap.
For whatever reason, most hardware companies just don't grok software. They see it as just another cost of manufacturing--a line item on the BOM just like screws and sheet metal. In order to move these widgets onto store shelves, we need to source these parts, assemble them with these steps, test the electronics like so, environmental, stress, UL testing and, oh, by the way, we need to spoon in some of this software stuff or nothing shows up on the screen, but keep it cheap! It's almost seen as a nuisance, a necessary evil: Just slap something together so we can get on with our real business of shipping widgets. Go to leadership in one of these companies and start talking about software best practices. User experience, A/B testing, unit testing, re-usable code, refactoring, hell--source control! They'll look at you like you're wearing a horse head mask. Software is just not a priority--it is seen as an unfortunate cost, not as a differentiator.
So, yea, when a software company (not just Apple, anyone who fundamentally gets software) enters their market with their own product, expect it to be light years ahead.
The funny thing is that this perfectly describes Apple.
This is how software is seen in all sectors whose main line of business isn't shipping software.
The Apple TV is imho far superior. I don't have worry about the machine being turned off. I don't have to use a clunky mouse and keyboard to get to the right app to watch a show. The Apple TV "just works" for watching movies, shows, trailers, youtube etc.
Could it be better yes. Having a keyboard occasionally for searching would be great, the UI is sometimes a bit confusing, and I hit frustrating bugs. Overall though a dedicated device plugged into the TV beats a generic computer, it even beats my PS4.
hopefully some password managers will port their apps over. My passwords aren't easy to type with the remote.
Every time I try any Apple TV or competitor it's never has useful and something is always missing. Kind of like mobile apps/web vs desktop web. Something is always missing.
But at the end of the day for 90% of what I want to watch, movies and tv from iTunes, netflix, and hbo the Apple TV does it in a much less klunky way. There is almost no maintenance, no patching, no installing drivers, it works.
1. Plex (for local streaming of .. eh.. videos from my desktop computer)
2. Netflix.
3. Youtube.
Pretty much the rest of the apps are quite weak.
I really love the way it uses HDMI-CEC to wake up the tv from sleep, and also includes an IR volume control for my receiver. I think this alone caused me to not watch any regular cable tv for like two months, because I would have to use more than one remote control to do so. :)
Different devices for different markets.
That said, $150 for an AppleTV is a bit more dear than the old $99 pricepoint. It's a harder sell than it used to be.
I like my AppleTV4, but it doesn't really do much that my 3 didn't do. I tried using the Plex app, hoping it would replace the HTPC that I finally junked and replaced with a TiVo. Sadly, my NAS is not powerful enough to transcode, so I'm back at square one.. except, with the TiVo, now I have 6 devices and only 5 HDMI ports on my receiver.. back to square one.
Instead of running something on the computer or NAS to transcode, you could try using the free VLC app on the Apple TV to access your NAS (although it currently doesn't support AC3 audio and will in a later release). You could also buy the Infuse Pro app on the store, which plays all video and audio formats (including licensed ones) from any available network share. In both these cases, the decoding/transcoding happens on the Apple TV.
Its by far the best media streamer experience I've had so far.
Just a little bit. The fluid UI, iOS foundation, app store and federated search means it's automatically a superior product to competitors such as Roku or Fire TV.
And it is a very nice package. It's very smooth. Apps like Plex and Netflix are a bit rough, but now they have a good foundation to build on, and the app store will change the amount of competition in this space - already there are three competing Plex clients, for example.
I was in the same boat, by the way: I bought the 2nd gen AppleTV, tried to like the 3rd gen, but it was slow and generally terrible. Same with competing products. I bought them and ended up not using them. The new AppleTV I'm actually using. It helps that I have it hooked up to Plex. Unlike the old Plex client you could install into a jailbroken 2nd/3rd-gen AppleTV, is actually very usable.
2. "Besides Netflix and YouTube I barely use it." What fraction of video minutes do those two represent?
3. The tvOS ecosystem is new, give it time. Apple has the clout to build it out (vs Amazon, Samsung, etc.).
For instance on setup I entered the same apple account password more than 4 times despite having synced from my phone... I then had to enter it every time I wanted to purchase something despite checking the setting that did not require a password for purchases. Entering my long-ass password on that tiny apple remote is really frustrating. It doesn't have Amazon prime video -- voice search for apps, or really anything that makes it better than my xbox one. I can't upload my own videos to it to play or play from a network stream.
I can say "xbox watch HBO" and suddenly it switches from my game to my cable box and tunes to the correct channel. "xbox open netflix" and suddenly I'm on netflix.
Of course microsoft just redesigned the entire interface for the xbox and now that sucks too...
Xbox One was supposed to be the culmination of the vision. Too bad Microsoft alienated their audience (gamers), by mixing messages and designing their whole interface around a hardware fad, the Kinnect. Didn't help that they also alienated so many independent developers and which left them with a dearth of software as well.
For all it's flaws (and there are many) that kind of integration is really really neat.
[1]: http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/01/12/amlogic-s905x-process...
Betcha a nickel that shenanigans from the HDMI Consortium have something to do with it. The world would be a much better place if everyone would have a flag day and adopt DisplayPort everywhere.
I received one of the first round developer units myself and started on a number of ideas, both to test the capabilities of it as well as the market. Because of my workload at the time, I missed the deadline to have something out on launch day. Sadly, that seems to have been a good thing -- I have read nothing positive about the reality of marketing for and producing on the tvOS App Store. Everything indicates it's even worse off for revenue prospects than the iPad app market, which, aside from games, is on a steady decline.
While I'm sure we'll never know, I'd love to know what Apple actually expected to happen with the opening of this new App Store given the state of its other ones.
FWIW, we've had a lot of success with our IAP driven app @ Craftsy. Apple TV revenues are definitely not the size of iPad or iPhone yet, but are promising.
Until this problem is solved (and I am trying hard not to learn the ins and outs) Remote TV apps are going to stay niche.
Each time i think about how I can't play the iTunes movies I paid for on the SkyTV and vice versa I feel ripped off - and don't remind me of the DVDs
When I can move a tv show from th set to th set as easily as Tom Cruise doing his Minoroty Report thing this is never going to fly.
Apps are the future of television. Think about it. On your mobile devices and computers, you already use apps such as Netflix, Hulu, WatchESPN, and iTunes to watch TV shows. And that’s exactly where TV in the living room is headed. Apps have liberated television. They allow you to make individual choices about what you want to watch. And when and where you want to watch it. With the new Apple TV and its powerful new tvOS, developers are creating experiences that will change what you expect from your big screen, making your TV feel as personal as your iPhone or iPad.
Has Apple copy always been written like an eager tech blog post? Doesn't fit with the sleek, modern, sophisticated, enigmatic brand. Or at least, what used to be my perception the brand.
As for the actual device itself: why would I buy it with the remote, subscriptions, dongles, etc. when I could buy an HDMI cable and use my laptop's "apps" instead? Is Apple trying to create an app ecosystem with the TV/Siri Remote as the form factor instead of the iPhone/finger Macbook/trackpad/mouse? That makes absolutely no sense to me.
b) The remote/dongles come with the AppleTV.
c) I don't know if you are this sheltered but most people aren't connecting their computer to their TV. Even if they wanted to, which they don't, most would struggle to get it working. AppleTV, Chromecast, Amazon TV and similar devices fill this gap and are pretty popular.
d) Yes Apple is trying to create an app ecosystem with the TV/Siri Remote.
You wouldn't, and that's just fine. But for the cost of an afternoon at my parents' house, I can have them set up with a handful of services that I know they like (Hulu, Netflix) and add a few things I want them to use (Plex, namely), give them a super simple remote and a tutorial, and off they go. And since they already have iPhones, they understand the concept of an App Store that lets them install new stuff, and I don't have to worry. So, yeah, the Apple TV isn't for you, but it's for plenty of other people.
tvOS needs an update? How do I do that? This version of tvOS breaks my favorite app? How do I downgrade? Do I really have to type in my password with this little remote to authorize a purchase? Oh, I'm supposed to buy a bluetooth keyboard to enter passwords/text?
My 70 year old father had no problem getting chromecast to work with his computer and TV. He saw the thing advertised on TV, bought it, set it up, and uses it to watch youtube on the big screen.
I find this whole coddling the older generation mentality a bit strange honestly. Sure, I'll show my dad how to backup his computer with time machine and how to install an adblocker in Chrome...but I'm betting he's had a computer and a TV for long enough that he can figure out how to stream shows to his TV without Apple TV if he wants to.
I think you missed my bigger point, which was that because you don't see the need for the device doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I also have my own AppleTV, which I love very much. Yeah, I could hook any of my multiple computers to it, or buy one that I dedicate to it full time, or anything, but I don't want to. I want to grab a remote, which is basically a glorified d-pad with some extra buttons, and see content. I don't want to have to bring down my computer, or keep a spare power brick by the entertainment center, or navigate to Netflix.com before getting on the couch, or having a 50 foot cable strewn across my room. I'm happy to experiment with my computers, but when I decide that it's time to zone out and watch TV, I don't want to be doing my day job of running a computer.
As for updates and stuff, you've clearly not used an AppleTV in a while, since they can auto update now and you wouldn't notice. You can't, but could never downgrade, and that's not important to me to be able to do. And with their iPhones, they can type on their iPhone's keyboard instead of the tiny remote that you really have a distaste for.
I'm not coddling my parents, but I also don't think that having a dedicated box that really does "just work" is coddling. Plenty of people keep cable around solely because there's no thought to you - you turn on a box, and pictures come out.
But you keep doing you, and I'll keep doing me. Plenty of room for both of us.
I guess I'm just frustrated because it seems like another sort of useless thing that is going to draw a lot of money and developer time and effort for what I view as not terribly important, especially for the amount it costs.
Didn't mean to project my frustrations onto you or attack you/your parents personally. Just trying to get to the bottom of why people purchase and use Apple TV, and I see why now. It's easy and requires no thought, which is exactly what you need when you're getting in the mood to relax and watch some shows.
I spend all day with computers, most of the time fighting to make them work the way I want them to (bug fixes, learning new stuff, etc). When it's TV time, it's TV time, not "oh man, Plex was running fine last night, what happened..." time.
That's essentially what I did, when it was just me that wanted to use the TV, and I only had one in the apartment. My wife appreciates being able to stream her shows even when I want to use the laptop, and I like being able to watch something on the second TV. The Roku and game systems that I use as streaming devices make that pretty easy, and they don't require hooking and unhooking a computer to the TV.
It's preferable to a laptop because you don't have to go into the control panel and switch audio and make sure the screen sizes match, and tuck the laptop somewhere that the screen doesn't light up the room, and walk back and forth to the laptop to change media sources.
You pay for the subscriptions to get content. Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. Things you would not get for free using your laptop solution, either.
Constantly plugging/unplugging your laptop is annoying. Especially if there are other people in the household watching TV or using the laptop.
Apple TV has no mandatory subscription beyond what you already have (Netflix, Hulu, etc).
The remote is easy to use (4 buttons, a touchpad, and a "mouse button"). With HDMI-CEC, you don't have to worry about TV or AV modes - they switch themselves on and to the correct settings every time. And it's over Bluetooth, so no holding the Harmony at just the right angle to get everything switched.
There is no dongle - just a power cord and an HDMI cord. Same as you have with your laptop or other device.
The Siri remote is just like the trackpad on your laptop. It's not a "new" interface - it's just new to the TV.
Its getting cheap enough now where the 'ideal' software platform is a small, cheap, fully-operational linux box that costs $US25, or thereabouts. Customer wants your app, they get the hardware in the mail the next day.
True Plug and Play, AT LAST!