6 ms·

Netflix says its brief Apple TV app integration was a mistake

56 points by croes 2y ago

lol768 2y ago
I mean, somebody must have implemented this .. right? I'd be curious as to what had happened internally here.
- xyst 2y ago
  RUMINT indicates native features that Apple offers can be enabled/disabled in NFLX apps via a feature flag. Maybe devops engineer fat fingered it and enabled it by accident. Doesn’t break anything besides make the C-suite cry. So would make sense as to why there were no red flags, press releases or anything like that. As a consumer, I hate using NFLX or Paramount, or even Amazon Prime UI. As much as I hate Apple, I do admit the aggregated view is nice. I can search for whatever show and presents me with options. If I am subscribed to the service it’s locked behind, then it opens the right app, and content starts playing.
  - mvanbaak 2y ago
    My dream is that all them offer catalogus and/or video via API. You have one global app, and you add the services you have (oauth link) and the moment you add a service their api will be added and you will get updates etc. When you click 'play' it will simply grab the video from one of the services you have and there you go. If this was a thing, I would start to think about some subscriptions again. Till then, watching content in a legit way is simply so much more complicated then alternatives ;P
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      Sadly that goes against competition's mentality to try and crush all others. They don't want to share the limelight, even if they may in fact be the most profitable move. That's a small part of why everyone started pulling out of Netflix; It was pretty close to a monopoly and other companies didn't want to pay in. Alternative methods rely on sacrificing convinience for time setting up and maintaining your own pipeline. So (perhaps luckily), it will always be a niche solution
8bitben 2y ago
I sense Netflix worries about the algorithms used by aggregators like Apple TV. It seems like their strategy is mostly quantity over quality, way too much low-value one-season-and-done series to try to keep people hooked.
- basisword 2y ago
  I don't think there's any 'algorithm' at play with this integration that would concern them. When using Apple TV the search bar will search all the integrated services. So if you search for a movie it'll try and find it on one of the streaming apps you have installed before falling back on iTunes for rental/purchase. The Home Screen also shows the media you are currently watching or have queued to watch at some point. I think from Netflix perspective they want you to go into their app so they can try and keep you there. If they enable this integration suddenly you're launching Netflix content from the Home Screen and you may instead choose in your watchlist that's on another service. As a user, I basically stopped using Netflix because of it. The Apple TV app and integration with services is killer.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    >As a user, I basically stopped using Netflix because of it. The Apple TV app and integration with services is killer. I won’t pay for Netflix solely because of this issue. Netflix has probably bet correctly that customers like me are negligible, though.
    - init2null 2y ago
      But it sure makes it easier to forget about. If someone never watches Netflix, will they keep paying for it? They're missing out on an opportunity to prove value.
  - conductr 2y ago
    I’ve found opposite to be true. Several instances where I was shown only paid rentals via Apple search result but then found I had it available for free on one of my existing subscriptions. I basically lost trust in Apple search results and stopped using it.
jglamine 2y ago
Makes sense. They want customers to browse using the Netflix app where they can promote their own content. If customers get in the habit of browsing in Apple TV, Apple can promote their own shows and eventually cut Netflix out. Same reason when you open Netflix it shows new recommendations first, with the option to continue in-progress shows below. Most users will choose the latter, but they don't put it first because it hurts product metrics.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- amazingamazing 2y ago
  > Same reason when you open Netflix it shows new recommendations first This seriously annoyed me to the point where I actually just use plex now.
- basisword 2y ago
  >> but they don't put it first because it hurts product metrics. It's so depressing that instead of making products be the best product they can be for users, we inconvenience users at the expense of 'metrics'. It's a pervasive attitude at tech companies. Apple used to be _mostly_ an exception but even they are doing it now.
  - scyzoryk_xyz 2y ago
    Considering how much producing the content costs, it’s baked into all showbiz to try and get as much of the audience hooked on the same thing at the same time by design. How the UI gets everyone watching shows A, B, and C but not the hundreds of others is a real thing I believe. Part of the “product” if you think about it. (I’m not a fan of their product and it’s all TPB for me so I’m a cynic)
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      >it’s baked into all showbiz to try and get as much of the audience hooked on the same thing at the same time by design. Yes, and that's why a la carte streaming of pretty much any media was a mistake. It's an open secret that none of them are profitable. But everyone was chasing that 2010's ZIRP with no plan whatsoever on how to actually recoup those costs. crashed the market before it really began. So the only answer was to enshittify the service once they had the numbers but not the money. That's why I really hope games resist this model. It's the exact same honeytrap.
imagetic 2y ago
The implementation of services on Apple TV has been a awesome. We open one app when we sit down to watch our shows. It works with little-to-no technical understanding or effort. But we don't browse for stuff to watch very often. Netflix wants to get those views and autoplays. It's all about the stats boosts. We dropped Netflix a long time ago. It became a made-for-tv content sausage factory with the occasional gem. Once a year we fire it up to binge the stuff our friends talk about all the time. Each time we are consistently reminded it's not worth the higher subscription price.
- EA-3167 2y ago
  Netflix is by far one of the worst streaming services in terms of what they have, although they're still running a very slick interface, who cares if what it leads to is garbage? Even when you find something good, especially a series, you can't expect that it'll go anywhere: Netflix loves to cancel.
  - beezlewax 2y ago
    Os the interface slick though? It's maybe visually slick over actually being good ux. It loudly autoplays it's slow and the expanding animations are nauseating
    - 0x457 2y ago
      Netflix UI in my opinion has two issues: - "Continue Watching" is always in a different place - Autoplaying trailers Everything else is alright. Every other service besides Apple TV has much worse issues with UI and UX.
  - coliveira 2y ago
    They figured out that additional seasons of successful series also command high costs and actor salaries. So they prefer to spin just another cheap TV series that will keep people binge watching.
    - 2y ago
callumjones 2y ago
Another theory is this was meant to launch with the Apple announcement on Tuesday.
WesolyKubeczek 2y ago
That feeling when an Apple engineer just wants to fix a typo in a source file and accidentally implements a Netflix integration. An honest mistake, could happen to anyone.
giancarlostoro 2y ago
Apple TV aggregating everything is what I want. Shame on Netflix.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
giancarlostoro 2y ago
I hate this because their app is garbage for finding anything for me. I can't even look through categories to find meaningful things. They just auto suggest categories, and none of them ever match what I'm in the mood for. You can't algorithm someone's watch mood.
vinni2 2y ago
I turned off auto update let’s see how long it lasts.
CuriousRose 2y ago
Somebody I know has gone back to torrenting. They state it’s far easier to do that than find content among their combined $100 monthly subscriptions, most of which has modern movie slop catalogues, while great classic films you need to pay for separately anyway. The execs will never learn.
- josteink 2y ago
  While this may sound exaggerated, I’ve actually on occasion torrented a show because I thought I had to if I wanted to see it, only to later turn out I could have watched on one of the streaming services I’m already paying for. And that’s just crazy really.
- mvanbaak 2y ago
  Imagine you are born and raised in brasil. You have a netflix subscription there and you can watch the things you want with brasilian audio and/or subs. Now, you move to another continent. You can watch the same content, but not with the audio/subtitles in a language you understand. When this person torrents this content, each and every language audio and/or subtitle is simply available and thus this person can watch the content, they were willing to pay for, without problems. Once this problem is solved, we get to the 'problem' of having content available scattered over 584778964 apps or available in one.
  - WhyNotHugo 2y ago
    The language restrictions are absurd. When I visited friends in Germany, there’s lots of content on Netflix that we can’t watch together because subs are only available in German. I really don’t get what they intend to gain by geo-restricting languages, but it seems to have slipped their minds that people travel or migrate.
    - CuriousRose 2y ago
      I would assume it's to prevent buying accounts in locations with cheaper pricing due to local affordability and using them internationally. A Turkish or African continent country would be a significantly cheaper subscription price than say Singapore or Switzerland.
russellbeattie 2y ago
You can't blame Netflix for not wanting to be disintermediated. Take away their UI, and Netflix is just a bunch of video files in the cloud.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Netflix is an organization that coordinates numerous other businesses and people such that it results in the creation of video files in the cloud that people sufficiently desire to watch such that they are willing to pay Netflix. And while video files in the cloud sounds not so exemplary, simultaneously delivering video files to hundreds of millions of devices is not trivial.
moribvndvs 2y ago
One of the worst streaming experiences of all the services (although Prime is giving it a run for the money by overriding the scrub feature and a few other things), abysmal exclusives, and they constantly hike rates while shrinking the catalog. My partner is the holdout but they are close to breaking, can’t wait to kill that sub.

56 points by croes 2y ago

lol768 2y ago

I mean, somebody must have implemented this .. right? I'd be curious as to what had happened internally here.

xyst 2y ago
RUMINT indicates native features that Apple offers can be enabled/disabled in NFLX apps via a feature flag. Maybe devops engineer fat fingered it and enabled it by accident. Doesn’t break anything besides make the C-suite cry. So would make sense as to why there were no red flags, press releases or anything like that. As a consumer, I hate using NFLX or Paramount, or even Amazon Prime UI. As much as I hate Apple, I do admit the aggregated view is nice. I can search for whatever show and presents me with options. If I am subscribed to the service it’s locked behind, then it opens the right app, and content starts playing.
- mvanbaak 2y ago
  My dream is that all them offer catalogus and/or video via API. You have one global app, and you add the services you have (oauth link) and the moment you add a service their api will be added and you will get updates etc. When you click 'play' it will simply grab the video from one of the services you have and there you go. If this was a thing, I would start to think about some subscriptions again. Till then, watching content in a legit way is simply so much more complicated then alternatives ;P
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Sadly that goes against competition's mentality to try and crush all others. They don't want to share the limelight, even if they may in fact be the most profitable move. That's a small part of why everyone started pulling out of Netflix; It was pretty close to a monopoly and other companies didn't want to pay in. Alternative methods rely on sacrificing convinience for time setting up and maintaining your own pipeline. So (perhaps luckily), it will always be a niche solution

8bitben 2y ago

I sense Netflix worries about the algorithms used by aggregators like Apple TV. It seems like their strategy is mostly quantity over quality, way too much low-value one-season-and-done series to try to keep people hooked.

basisword 2y ago
I don't think there's any 'algorithm' at play with this integration that would concern them. When using Apple TV the search bar will search all the integrated services. So if you search for a movie it'll try and find it on one of the streaming apps you have installed before falling back on iTunes for rental/purchase. The Home Screen also shows the media you are currently watching or have queued to watch at some point. I think from Netflix perspective they want you to go into their app so they can try and keep you there. If they enable this integration suddenly you're launching Netflix content from the Home Screen and you may instead choose in your watchlist that's on another service. As a user, I basically stopped using Netflix because of it. The Apple TV app and integration with services is killer.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  >As a user, I basically stopped using Netflix because of it. The Apple TV app and integration with services is killer. I won’t pay for Netflix solely because of this issue. Netflix has probably bet correctly that customers like me are negligible, though.
  - init2null 2y ago
    But it sure makes it easier to forget about. If someone never watches Netflix, will they keep paying for it? They're missing out on an opportunity to prove value.
- conductr 2y ago
  I’ve found opposite to be true. Several instances where I was shown only paid rentals via Apple search result but then found I had it available for free on one of my existing subscriptions. I basically lost trust in Apple search results and stopped using it.

jglamine 2y ago

Makes sense. They want customers to browse using the Netflix app where they can promote their own content. If customers get in the habit of browsing in Apple TV, Apple can promote their own shows and eventually cut Netflix out. Same reason when you open Netflix it shows new recommendations first, with the option to continue in-progress shows below. Most users will choose the latter, but they don't put it first because it hurts product metrics.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
amazingamazing 2y ago
> Same reason when you open Netflix it shows new recommendations first This seriously annoyed me to the point where I actually just use plex now.
basisword 2y ago
>> but they don't put it first because it hurts product metrics. It's so depressing that instead of making products be the best product they can be for users, we inconvenience users at the expense of 'metrics'. It's a pervasive attitude at tech companies. Apple used to be _mostly_ an exception but even they are doing it now.
- scyzoryk_xyz 2y ago
  Considering how much producing the content costs, it’s baked into all showbiz to try and get as much of the audience hooked on the same thing at the same time by design. How the UI gets everyone watching shows A, B, and C but not the hundreds of others is a real thing I believe. Part of the “product” if you think about it. (I’m not a fan of their product and it’s all TPB for me so I’m a cynic)
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >it’s baked into all showbiz to try and get as much of the audience hooked on the same thing at the same time by design. Yes, and that's why a la carte streaming of pretty much any media was a mistake. It's an open secret that none of them are profitable. But everyone was chasing that 2010's ZIRP with no plan whatsoever on how to actually recoup those costs. crashed the market before it really began. So the only answer was to enshittify the service once they had the numbers but not the money. That's why I really hope games resist this model. It's the exact same honeytrap.

imagetic 2y ago

The implementation of services on Apple TV has been a awesome. We open one app when we sit down to watch our shows. It works with little-to-no technical understanding or effort. But we don't browse for stuff to watch very often. Netflix wants to get those views and autoplays. It's all about the stats boosts. We dropped Netflix a long time ago. It became a made-for-tv content sausage factory with the occasional gem. Once a year we fire it up to binge the stuff our friends talk about all the time. Each time we are consistently reminded it's not worth the higher subscription price.

EA-3167 2y ago
Netflix is by far one of the worst streaming services in terms of what they have, although they're still running a very slick interface, who cares if what it leads to is garbage? Even when you find something good, especially a series, you can't expect that it'll go anywhere: Netflix loves to cancel.
- beezlewax 2y ago
  Os the interface slick though? It's maybe visually slick over actually being good ux. It loudly autoplays it's slow and the expanding animations are nauseating
  - 0x457 2y ago
    Netflix UI in my opinion has two issues: - "Continue Watching" is always in a different place - Autoplaying trailers Everything else is alright. Every other service besides Apple TV has much worse issues with UI and UX.
- coliveira 2y ago
  They figured out that additional seasons of successful series also command high costs and actor salaries. So they prefer to spin just another cheap TV series that will keep people binge watching.
  - 2y ago

callumjones 2y ago

Another theory is this was meant to launch with the Apple announcement on Tuesday.

WesolyKubeczek 2y ago

That feeling when an Apple engineer just wants to fix a typo in a source file and accidentally implements a Netflix integration. An honest mistake, could happen to anyone.

giancarlostoro 2y ago

Apple TV aggregating everything is what I want. Shame on Netflix.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

giancarlostoro 2y ago

I hate this because their app is garbage for finding anything for me. I can't even look through categories to find meaningful things. They just auto suggest categories, and none of them ever match what I'm in the mood for. You can't algorithm someone's watch mood.

vinni2 2y ago

I turned off auto update let’s see how long it lasts.

CuriousRose 2y ago

Somebody I know has gone back to torrenting. They state it’s far easier to do that than find content among their combined $100 monthly subscriptions, most of which has modern movie slop catalogues, while great classic films you need to pay for separately anyway. The execs will never learn.

josteink 2y ago
While this may sound exaggerated, I’ve actually on occasion torrented a show because I thought I had to if I wanted to see it, only to later turn out I could have watched on one of the streaming services I’m already paying for. And that’s just crazy really.
mvanbaak 2y ago
Imagine you are born and raised in brasil. You have a netflix subscription there and you can watch the things you want with brasilian audio and/or subs. Now, you move to another continent. You can watch the same content, but not with the audio/subtitles in a language you understand. When this person torrents this content, each and every language audio and/or subtitle is simply available and thus this person can watch the content, they were willing to pay for, without problems. Once this problem is solved, we get to the 'problem' of having content available scattered over 584778964 apps or available in one.
- WhyNotHugo 2y ago
  The language restrictions are absurd. When I visited friends in Germany, there’s lots of content on Netflix that we can’t watch together because subs are only available in German. I really don’t get what they intend to gain by geo-restricting languages, but it seems to have slipped their minds that people travel or migrate.
  - CuriousRose 2y ago
    I would assume it's to prevent buying accounts in locations with cheaper pricing due to local affordability and using them internationally. A Turkish or African continent country would be a significantly cheaper subscription price than say Singapore or Switzerland.

russellbeattie 2y ago

You can't blame Netflix for not wanting to be disintermediated. Take away their UI, and Netflix is just a bunch of video files in the cloud.

lotsofpulp 2y ago
Netflix is an organization that coordinates numerous other businesses and people such that it results in the creation of video files in the cloud that people sufficiently desire to watch such that they are willing to pay Netflix. And while video files in the cloud sounds not so exemplary, simultaneously delivering video files to hundreds of millions of devices is not trivial.

moribvndvs 2y ago

One of the worst streaming experiences of all the services (although Prime is giving it a run for the money by overriding the scrub feature and a few other things), abysmal exclusives, and they constantly hike rates while shrinking the catalog. My partner is the holdout but they are close to breaking, can’t wait to kill that sub.