Amazon Launches a Terrible Apple TV App ⇥ mjtsai.com

I don’t have an Amazon Prime subscription, so I don’t really have a reason to download this app; but, by all accounts, it is shockingly bad.

Netflix’s is also pretty awful — it now autoplays a preview of the selected show or movie at the top of the screen, with sound, and I can’t find any way to disable this. It also doesn’t behave like a typical tvOS app: the app navigation is displayed as tiles, shows and movies are also displayed as tiles, and they’re mixed together in an infinitely-scrolling grid.

Hulu isn’t available in Canada, but its tvOS app is apparently poor as well.

Why is it that three of the biggest players in streaming video can’t seem to find the time and resources to build proper tvOS apps? Is it not worth the effort because the Apple TV isn’t popular enough? Is it because these companies simply don’t care?

I don’t think it’s right to stymie experimentation amongst app developers, but tvOS has a very particular set of platform characteristics. If Apple isn’t going to encourage developers’ compliance to those characteristics, it’s up to users to provide feedback and encourage developers like these to do better.