Apple’s Cowardly Apple TV

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“If there’s one Apple product that would truly benefit from some courage, it’s the new Apple TV,” Jared Newman writes for TechHive. “Apple’s $150 streaming box isn’t a bad product, but it faces the same fundamental challenge as other streaming boxes: With so many apps competing for users’ attention, managing and sorting through them all can be a chore.”

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“Last week, Apple provided a glimpse at its solution, a new app called ‘TV’ that acts like a universal viewing guide. Instead of bouncing between a dozen apps to find something to watch, TV pulls lots of content into one place,” Newman writes. “Apple will also offer a ‘single sign-in’ feature for cable-authenticated apps, so you don’t need to keep re-entering the same login credentials. Both features are due out in December.”

“There’s just one problem: Some of the biggest streaming services and TV operators aren’t on board with what Apple is doing. Netflix, for instance, won’t feed its content into the new TV app, and so far only Dish Network and DirecTV have confirmed support for single sign-in. It’s unclear whether major cable providers such as Comcast or Charter will participate,” Newman writes. “But rather than call these companies out for holding back the user experience, Apple is pretending as if nothing’s wrong. That seems uncharacteristic of a company that’s been congratulating itself on its own courage lately.”

“Comparing present-day Apple to the Steve Jobs era can be tiresome, but Apple itself hasn’t shied from doing so lately. When the company omitted a headphone jack from the iPhone 7, Apple’s Phil Schiller defended the move as courageous—seemingly a nod to an old Jobs quote about not supporting Flash on iOS devices,” Newman writes. “It takes courage to publicly tell powerful media companies that they’re wrong, but Jobs wasn’t afraid to do so…

Read more in the full article here.