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Netflix refers to a company, an app, a third-party app on some Smart TVs, and a subscription service, but people don’t generally get confused. Consistent brandi

Netflix refers to a company, an app, a third-party app on some Smart TVs, and a subscription service, but people don’t generally get confused. Consistent branding isn’t necessarily a bad thing. That said, Apple’s support for third-party Smart TV apps is actually quite unusual IMHO; this really reduces their usual control over quality and experience.

sigwinch28 7y ago
Is it really inconsistent branding, though? To me, every one of these Netflixes is the same: the Netflix on my phone, tablet, TV, games console, and the website are all the same product. For Apple TV, however, the exact same name is used to refer to multiple different products and experiences: the device, the app on the device, the app on different devices, and many of these experiences differ significantly.
- pwinnski 7y ago
  Ultimately, it seems like there are two different Apple TV products, but not more than that. There's the device, and there's the app/service. The difference from Netflix is that Netflix doesn't sell hardware also called Netflix.
  - sigwinch28 7y ago
    The author seems to be getting at that point: these two "Apple TV"s are more than two products. Assuming for a moment that the hardware devices can be a single product, the apps just cannot be: each of them has wildly different behaviour on different apple devices, with different features, and different functionality depending on the presence of 3rd party apps. As an end user I found this confusing at first, frustrating when I understood what was going on, and now I just don't use the Apple TV apps, even on my Apple TV.
    - pwinnski 7y ago
      I guess this is subjective, but I don't see the behaviors as "wildly" different. In all cases, the Apple TV app is where you go to access the Apple TV+ service and as much other available content and video services as can possibly be presented to you on the given platform. The fact that this is different depending on your device and subscriptions is a little bit weird, but it doesn't change that much, at least for me.

sigwinch28 7y ago

Is it really inconsistent branding, though? To me, every one of these Netflixes is the same: the Netflix on my phone, tablet, TV, games console, and the website are all the same product. For Apple TV, however, the exact same name is used to refer to multiple different products and experiences: the device, the app on the device, the app on different devices, and many of these experiences differ significantly.

pwinnski 7y ago
Ultimately, it seems like there are two different Apple TV products, but not more than that. There's the device, and there's the app/service. The difference from Netflix is that Netflix doesn't sell hardware also called Netflix.
- sigwinch28 7y ago
  The author seems to be getting at that point: these two "Apple TV"s are more than two products. Assuming for a moment that the hardware devices can be a single product, the apps just cannot be: each of them has wildly different behaviour on different apple devices, with different features, and different functionality depending on the presence of 3rd party apps. As an end user I found this confusing at first, frustrating when I understood what was going on, and now I just don't use the Apple TV apps, even on my Apple TV.
  - pwinnski 7y ago
    I guess this is subjective, but I don't see the behaviors as "wildly" different. In all cases, the Apple TV app is where you go to access the Apple TV+ service and as much other available content and video services as can possibly be presented to you on the given platform. The fact that this is different depending on your device and subscriptions is a little bit weird, but it doesn't change that much, at least for me.