this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
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I could imagine that Amazon is making the Prime app on other devices bad by intention. Because they want that people use their services on their own Fire TV devices. But neither Netflix nor Spotify have their own hardware. And both have already stopped offering their subscriptions over Apple's AppStore. So if they provide an app for Apple TV, why should they have an interest in making the experience less good than on other devices? Instead of just ignoring Apple TV completely?
So personally I still think that those apps would be in a better shape if the developers could just use the same cross-platform code on ATV. Nowadays many apps are basically just dynamic webpages. But as far as I know Apple doesn't allow WebView on ATV. So developers would have to write workarounds or use wrappers to do things on ATV. So to me it seems that tvOS is just not a very developer friendly platform in this regard. But maybe a developer following this might want to comment on this.
Google and Netflix have had multiple deals over the years.
Same with Spotify and Google. Both apps have integration on google video devices
I dont own Amazon products, how does fireos work with them? Amazon is running away frkm android soon, so I imagine itll break if it works now
As FireOS is based on Android, the apps (Netflix and Spotify) look and feel almost identical to the Android TV versions. I would think the same about the BBC iPlayer app, but I don’t use it myself.
But Amazon‘s new OS (Vega OS) is said to also be Linux based (like Android) and rely even more on web technologies. Maybe similar to LG‘s WebOS they use on their Smart TVs. So I don’t think app developers will have problems porting those apps over.
And that’s my point here: Apple doesn’t allow WebKit on tvOS. So developers can’t rely on those web technologies and use the same shared code base on Apple TV. But as a hardware device, Apple TV is just not important enough, so they will spend much time and money with developing a native tvOS app. So I think that’s why we end up with those apps that feel very basic compared to other devices.
But I agree that it doesn’t help that especially Netflix and Spotify aren’t really big friends of Apple. Of course both can’t afford to ignore Apple‘s phones and tablets. But I guess it doesn’t hurt them much to kind of ignore Apple TV.
Arent there certain browsers that Netflix refuses to allow to work properly as well? I feel like Prime Video and Netflix are assholes toward specific browsers too.
I don’t use those services in a web browser. But of course they want to have a working copy protection / DRM. Chromium based browsers should work without issues (Chrome, Opera, Edge). But again: On Apple devices, all web browsers are forced to use Apple’s own WebKit engine. Even Google’s own Chrome browser. And on Apple TV, WebKit and web browsers aren’t supported at all.
But again, Chromium is a Google product and these companies have deals with Alphabet/Google
On the flipside, Apple’s TV app works on pretty much everything.