My main complaint is that there isn’t a consistent experience between apps. Things are in different places, actions do different things in different apps, no gesture support, subpar players with horrible scrubbing, etc.
I think all apps should be held to a few basic UI/UX standards so going from one app to another isn’t a completely different experience.
The attached photo is just one example. Within the Apple TV app itself, long pressing an icon brings up this great menu allowing you to go straight to the show or the episode page. Long pressing in most other apps removes the show from your now playing list! All of these conflicting actions need to be rectified.
As a streaming device, the Apple TV has a relatively low market share. Even Apple is bringing its TV app to more and more other devices / platforms. Weakening their own position by making their own streaming device kind of redundant. And I think if they would enforce those things, some apps would just vanish from Apple TV.
On the other hand many available apps somtimes even feel kind of "left behind" compared to other platforms. And I've heard several times now that developers can't just use the same cross-platform code base on ATV as on other devices. And I think that might be the reason for the state of apps like Spotify or Netflix. So if Apple can't enforce a unified look & feel, maybe it would be even better if they would put some effort in making tvOS more developer friendly. In a way that developers can more easily use the same code base on ATV than on other devices.
They’re only around 4% of the market. But that’s still plenty enough given the entire market’s size I’d seriously doubt content providers would ignore that four percent. It takes a lot to gain and keep subscribers. Putting those at risk due to some additional development costs would be business lunacy.