I watched some of Apple’s recent shows using…different methods than the official app and I believe they’re making some of the best content out there, currently. Shows like Severance and For All Mankind are masterpieces and they give me the SciFi fix I desperately needed.
So I’ve decided to bite the bullet and get a subscription - after all, you should support the creators you’re really invested in, right?
Watching content on their platform is so painful - it’s one of the worst experiences I ever had. If you want to watch the shows in a browser, you need to use Microsoft Edge on Windows because that’s the only browser which comes with Playwright DRM - and it only works if you have a HDCP 2.2-capable screen. If you don’t have that, the content gets served in 480p with a low bitrate. Might as well just put in a VHS at this point.
There’s another alternative: The official Windows 11 app you can get from the store. It is indeed capable of serving you UHD streams…if it wants to. All episodes that are age-rated to 16+ currently don’t work, because they forgot to implement an age verification mechanism and pressing play doesn’t do anything at all. According to their forums, that even seems to happen on MacOS in some cases, so they really messed up the most important thing of their own streaming platform: Pressing Play to watch an episode.
Even if you’re lucky and you’re watching a show that isn’t age-restricted, they serve the content in the language your Apple account has been set to when you’ve created it by default. So every time you open an episode, you have to start it and switch the audio to English. If you go to your account settings to change the language it tells you that your subscription needs to end before you can do that. So you have to wait four weeks or a whole year to change the default language, depending on the subscription model.
Adding to that, sometimes the video streams just freeze, the audio doesn’t play at all or the app straightup crashes in the middle of a stream.
I have rarely seen a platform messing up the user experience this badly. It’s as if Apple doesn’t even want you to watch their own content. I’ve decided to not renew my subscription and procure the episodes from other sources. I wanted to give you money, Apple. But you fucked up.
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Foundation is pretty excellent as well.
I go with the path of least resistance for top quality. I don’t think a subscription can give you this.
We’re going to see a lot more software going down the shitter as companies downsize, scale in, lay off with the plan to use AI to save money.
It used to be “move fast break things”. Now it’s more like “vibe code good enough”
Always been a thing
It’s pay for a foothold, recoup costs
Apple is incompetent at writing software for anything but their own devices. iCloud Web is also a disaster for example, and the old iTunes for Windows is infamous for being a buggy mess. Though I have to say they did a good job with the new web Apple Maps.
I always thought this was intentional. Apple TV doesn’t make them money, but it’s a gateway drug for you to completely move over to their ecosystem
They aren’t incompetent, they want people to think “wow this is horrible, it must be my windows PC - I need to buy a MacBook!”
Too bad, it makes me think “wow this is horrible, if they are this bad at developing a simple app I don’t want to find out how bad they would be at developing and maintaining a whole OS…”
Which is funny. I get MLS season pass with my season ticket. I had to jump through so many hoops just to ACTIVATE this free thing. You can’t just visit a website. You need an account with a credit card. You either use an Apple device or iTunes. You can’t use their app on any platform (even the one youre going to use to watch it) to activate. Big thing is you cant even get iTunes on Linux without a huge hassle and wine. This isn’t even getting into that the android mobile app wasn’t even released till this year, like three years in.
The whole experience convinced me to NEVER buy anything Apple.
It is definitely a stupid strategy. I have a large iTunes library, and when they released the apple music app for windows a few years ago I tried switching over. Somehow the new app was even worse than iTunes, so I had to figure out how to switch everything back. At the same time I tried installing the iCloud app for PC - that may be literally the worst piece of software I have had the displeasure of using. It installed a bunch of services on my PC, added itself to the file explorer, and then failed to let me log into my account. That was also fun to figure out how to completely remove.
Maybe it is working again now… I have no real desire to test it again. Clearly they released these applications (after years of complaints) knowing that they weren’t functional, or possibly without any testing whatsoever. Overall it is a laughable effort from a company with a budget as large as Apple’s.
It literally wouldn’t even let me sign up. I tried on desktop and mobile. Got some different type of error every time, even with attempts several months apart. I decided to just hit the high seas.
As someone in the ecosystem and who has no interest in watching on Windows, works for me.
- smart tv app just works
- iOS/iPadOS devices just work
- subscription is trivial to manage on iOS
My objections were
- do not like using smart tv apps
- FireStick does not have an AppleTV app
- I was set to try an Apple TV device but the current version was released 3 years ago so I have been hoping for an updated one
- shows were outstanding but it had less content than other streaming services
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As per usual, Apple heavily prefers its own hardware and software. Using the TV app on my Mac the image quality of Apple TV+ blows all the other streaming services out of the water, but in the browser it’s a blurry, buffering mess 🤷♂️
My guess is they throw these Windows projects at summer interns.
Most likely the people using a windows browser to watch ATV+ is a minuscule percentage and doesn’t warrant the cost of implementing and maintaining a proper solution
I am not sure “mildly infuriating” is accurate in this case.
I don’t have an apple TV. Or an iPhone.
I had Apple TV for a while, during the ForAllMankind days and especially Ted Lasso. Some of their TV is great.
But killing my subscription took me three tries. Holy hopping shit, Hannah, was it a bag-drive just to find the page and make it happen. Their entire website is one big incestuous circle asking you why you don’t have an iProduct and why not buy one here.
I’m 30 years in Linux, I should mention, and I worked at a distro building and securing Linux and AT&T Unix, and I’m somewhat nerdy. Still. It was such a mortal trial.
Never going back.
Remember when the US successfully sued and dismantled companies using their market presence to unfair advantage?
Thank you. I’ve been debating if I should go through Prime and subscribe to AppleTV+ or go to Apple directly. I’m going to through Prime just so I can get rid of ATV+ later.
I have AppleTV boxes because they aren’t a pain to use like AndroidTV boxes.
But I don’t have iCult phones or tablets. There is no AppleTV app for Android phones or tablets.
Silo is an amazing show too.
I always get so hyped up when the intro music plays, it’s amazing!
I know this isnt what you want to hear, but it’s actually one of the better apps on my smart tv. It works pretty smoothly, and video seeking (fast forward/rewind) actually works well, which is a main criteria for me. The Max app, on the other hand, is dog shit.
It used to be the worst app because Netflix was so damn good. Then Netflix took a shit all over their user experience and jacked prices to the tits so we cancelled them. And HBO got bought by Time Warner who is actively antagonistic towards streaming because the CEO just looks at their entire catalog as a tax writeoff - so the max app is fucking dreadful.
Then Apple decided to make things suck less and they succeeded. The one thing they screwed up is there is no way to disable that obnoxious auto-play bullshit at the end of each episode. All of the other apps are now so bad that we exclusively subscribe through the appletv app. My wife likes giving money to paramount for some reason - but at least if we do it through the apple app there are no ads.
I didn’t even know they had a Smart TV app. What TV are you using?
Any TV made in the last few years, all Google TVs at least and LG WebOS
I have a big 2012 Samsung screen which is still surprisingly good, with a Roku stick in it. Works just fine. I hope it never dies.
I have a roku TCL which works.
An LG OLED.
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Yarr !, my experience has been stellar ;) (Gaben: It’s a service problem…)
Using firefox on windows 10 and I have none of these issues. Maybe windows 11 is what breaks it?
Maybe you’re not noticing the drop in resolution? They’re definitely not delivering their content in UHD, but they might be streaming proper 1080p if you have an HDCP-capable monitor, I don’t know.
For me, it’s a really bad experience. They’re just giving me 480p in Firefox, regardless of the operating system used.
Have you tried a user-agent switcher? Trick their website into thinking you’re using Safari on MacOS?
Didn’t think of that, thank you! But nope, that doesn’t make a difference. In Firefox, I get a stream like this and the drop in resolution and bitrate is definitely noticeable.
I took that screenshot on my 4K monitor.
Nah, if it was 480p, I would notice. I’m not 98 years old with cataracts.
Some people just don’t notice low resolution, don’t take this as a personal offence. :D
This is funny. I live in an area that’s pretty remote, and my internet speed is sometimes very shit, so I never realized I’m getting fucked on my picture quality by using firefox.
I think it’s positive that you had the thought of contributing and trying to watch the series through their platforms. I’m not sure it has been mentioned here but I’d suggest to hit their support channels as well, probably opening a request per individual issue you had (which are plenty).
I believe what others have said: Apple made it frustrating to use outside of their ecosystem to lure you in. Perhaps you’re lucky enough to draw the attention of some devs of the platform and they take pity.
I always hate that explanation. I am sure you’re right as well, but really, how many people will cross over after having a horrible experience. What’s the thought process on that? ok, I had a shitty experience, and they didn’t even bother to care about basic compatability, so let’s go buy their stuff so it actually runs well. Sorry, I hate Apple so much, lol.
Watching it on Apple TV hardware was always simplicity. Very high quality on my OLED.
The only thing Apple ever got right was the iPhone. All their other software and services are shit.
The Xcode + developer network + App Store publishing is complete garbage. MacOS isn’t all that great either, at least if you come from a Linux background.
Mac OS is better than windows IMO. I use it for work but use Linux for my personal computers.
Well yeah, but being better than windows isn’t saying much.
