@Anonymous User wrote:
They've made a few tweaks but nothing noticeable. Added All4 to it, but that's only got about 6 shows, what's that all about? Added the other sports passes finally, then added the kids section. It's just been money making changes to boost profits. So disappointed they won't improve the user experience. It's probably due to having to hand a chuck of the subscription to Apple if people subscribe through iTunes. Less profit for them so they do the least development on that platform. In other words, back of the queue for development as we don't give them as much money. Might change given apples relaxation on how big of a slice they take from subscriptions (reduced from 30% to 10%).
If they put a lot of work into the UI they would save money in the end as new pay TV customers would avoid costly Sky and opt for NowTV. No costly set top boxes, no satellite dish, no engineer to fit it, no call outs for hardware faults. It's a win win. Customers will get the same benefits to. Had to take a day off work and wait 2weeks for Sky instillation. Where as with NowTV, download the app, subscribe, 2mins v 2weeks and a days leave. No brainer really, but they don't advertise this or use it to there advantage against BT or Virgin. Buggers belief really.
None of those changes require changes to the app, as the app isn't really an app at all in the traditional sense. The old Apple TV 2 and 3 couldn't handle apps as you would find on a PC or phone. Instead, they run scripts hosted on an Apple server somewhere using predefined templates. They can't do much, little more than display text on a black background with some microscopic thumbnails. This is why all Apple TV 2 and 3 apps looked the same.
The Apple TV 4 has no such limitations, as it's bascially an iPhone 6 with an HDMI port and no screen. Its apps can be native iOS code with a few minor tweaks for the tvOS platform (which is 99.9% iOS). Apps can be as complex as developers like, so we have the likes of Netflix and MUBI, which are fully native iOS/tvOS code.
Sadly Apple left the old script based "apps" from the Apple TV 3 as an option for the Apple TV 4, which whilst allowing the platform to launch with a passable selection of legacy apps, also meant that the most bone idle of developers need never write a native Apple TV 4 app.
The downsides to these legacy apps are obvious, - they're graphically like something from a 1980s PC, they can't do much beyond playing video and displaying lists of text, and as they're hosted on a server and not on the local hardware they're sluggish and clunky. They also have no access to any of the new features on the ATV 4, such as Siri, top shelf, or visual scrubbing.
Sky are lazy and arogant. It's sadly as simple as that.
