3 ms·

I see why he's saying this, but I hope he's wrong. Apps as channels / shows have many of the drawbacks of magazines/weblogs as apps rather than web sites or RSS

I see why he's saying this, but I hope he's wrong. Apps as channels / shows have many of the drawbacks of magazines/weblogs as apps rather than web sites or RSS feeds: lack of standardization and feature lists driven by publisher goals rather than user needs. If some new way of sharing / discussing shows comes out, and we have to wait for each channel to add it to their app, it won't happen. Similarly, there will be less incentive to build innovative solutions for watching video if the content stream are trapped within a million different apps. Imagine if you had to download a different app for each web site you wanted to view a video on. Bleah.

dave1619 15y ago
Apple could gather all the content streams from all the TV apps into the main iTV app. You can go their for all your listings and channels. But when you play an individual show, it would launch the show on your TV and then launch the app on your iOS device so you can interact and participate within the app. If you don't have a TV hooked up, you watch it within the launched app and interact there as well.
brianpan 15y ago
Standardization comes from the framework. Just like apps (mostly) have similar button elements, tab views, etc. "Channel apps" can also have similar UI elements, the same way to go back to "home", there can be a unified way to switch channels, etc.
- tomkarlo 15y ago
  Reuse of widgets doesn't constitute useful standardization. And content producers don't tend to want to standardize their interfaces - they want to differentiate from their competitors, not resemble them. Will these apps publish their metadata in a way that third party apps can access and manage the content? Imagine if we had "reader apps" instead of web sites that you could scrape or grab RSS feeds from... it would be like the old AOL / CDROM days.
  - brianpan 15y ago
    Um, yeah, I don't think we're going from broadcast/cable we have now to something like the web sites with RSS feeds. If by standardization, you mean open standard, that's not happening.
    - tomkarlo 15y ago
      There's already options that are at least closer: iTunes, Amazon VOD, Youtube, etc.

dave1619 15y ago

Apple could gather all the content streams from all the TV apps into the main iTV app. You can go their for all your listings and channels. But when you play an individual show, it would launch the show on your TV and then launch the app on your iOS device so you can interact and participate within the app. If you don't have a TV hooked up, you watch it within the launched app and interact there as well.

brianpan 15y ago

Standardization comes from the framework. Just like apps (mostly) have similar button elements, tab views, etc. "Channel apps" can also have similar UI elements, the same way to go back to "home", there can be a unified way to switch channels, etc.

tomkarlo 15y ago
Reuse of widgets doesn't constitute useful standardization. And content producers don't tend to want to standardize their interfaces - they want to differentiate from their competitors, not resemble them. Will these apps publish their metadata in a way that third party apps can access and manage the content? Imagine if we had "reader apps" instead of web sites that you could scrape or grab RSS feeds from... it would be like the old AOL / CDROM days.
- brianpan 15y ago
  Um, yeah, I don't think we're going from broadcast/cable we have now to something like the web sites with RSS feeds. If by standardization, you mean open standard, that's not happening.
  - tomkarlo 15y ago
    There's already options that are at least closer: iTunes, Amazon VOD, Youtube, etc.