Is Apple TV+ a joke?

ruouttaurmind went on a bit of a rant said
8

Trick question. It is.

Thursday night I signed up for a 7-day free trial of Apple TV+. I just wanted to check in and see what it’s about.

In typical Apple modus operandi, big plans, huge investment, lack of execution.

The app on iOS is… well, I’d call it a joke if it wasn’t so pitiful.

The Roku app is pretty much identical to the iOS app.

No watch list, no filters to weed out paid content, heck, no filters to search by genres for that matter. The Apple TV+ app is the absolute bare minimum effort required to grant consumers access to Apple TV+ content.

Content? LMAO! Original programming? Also laughable. The most limited content library I’ve ever seen in a streaming service. My own personal library has more titles.

Reliability is also a major issue. Frequent interruptions in the middle of my streams. “Sorry, this content is unavailable. Please try again later.” This happens with TV+ content, as well as my owned titles when viewing via TV+. The functionality which should allow me to resume a episode or film where I let off is intermittent. Initially it wouldn’t work at all, but after resetting the apps, then deleting and reinstalling and reactivating, I’m seeing around 65% reliability. Once already it just stopped working at all, and I had to do the whole reset, delete, reinstall bit again. Mind you, I only signed up for the free trial on Thursday night. Less than 48 hours ago.

So… maybe there’s a super secret access code I need to enter somewhere so I can gain access to the real apps and content all the cool kids watching? If you know that code, please send it over!

PS: Disney+ is marginally better, but still starving for original content. One advantage there: no additional paid content constantly being shoved down your neck. I actually managed to entertain myself for a full month in Disney+. The Disney vault is pretty huge, and can be fun if you’re into animation films. Then there’s the Star Wars library of course. I can’t foresee maintaining a sub to Disney+, but hopping in for a month a few times a year is conceivable.

PPS: Loving the new UX in Hulu for Roku. Much needed and very welcome update there. Still quite a bit of room for improvement, but every bit helps.