I watched some of Apple’s recent shows using…different methods than the official app and I believe they’re making some of the best content out there, currently. Shows like Severance and For All Mankind are masterpieces and they give me the SciFi fix I desperately needed.

So I’ve decided to bite the bullet and get a subscription - after all, you should support the creators you’re really invested in, right?

Watching content on their platform is so painful - it’s one of the worst experiences I ever had. If you want to watch the shows in a browser, you need to use Microsoft Edge on Windows because that’s the only browser which comes with Playwright DRM - and it only works if you have a HDCP 2.2-capable screen. If you don’t have that, the content gets served in 480p with a low bitrate. Might as well just put in a VHS at this point.

There’s another alternative: The official Windows 11 app you can get from the store. It is indeed capable of serving you UHD streams…if it wants to. All episodes that are age-rated to 16+ currently don’t work, because they forgot to implement an age verification mechanism and pressing play doesn’t do anything at all. According to their forums, that even seems to happen on MacOS in some cases, so they really messed up the most important thing of their own streaming platform: Pressing Play to watch an episode.

Even if you’re lucky and you’re watching a show that isn’t age-restricted, they serve the content in the language your Apple account has been set to when you’ve created it by default. So every time you open an episode, you have to start it and switch the audio to English. If you go to your account settings to change the language it tells you that your subscription needs to end before you can do that. So you have to wait four weeks or a whole year to change the default language, depending on the subscription model.

Adding to that, sometimes the video streams just freeze, the audio doesn’t play at all or the app straightup crashes in the middle of a stream.

I have rarely seen a platform messing up the user experience this badly. It’s as if Apple doesn’t even want you to watch their own content. I’ve decided to not renew my subscription and procure the episodes from other sources. I wanted to give you money, Apple. But you fucked up.

  • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    As someone in the ecosystem and who has no interest in watching on Windows, works for me.

    • smart tv app just works
    • iOS/iPadOS devices just work
    • subscription is trivial to manage on iOS

    My objections were

    • do not like using smart tv apps
    • FireStick does not have an AppleTV app
    • I was set to try an Apple TV device but the current version was released 3 years ago so I have been hoping for an updated one
    • shows were outstanding but it had less content than other streaming services
  • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    5 days ago

    You can pay for the subscription while getting the content onto your computer through other means, this is sadly the best compromise and it also gives you long term access and ownership of things you want to hold onto, with no DRM bullshit and the creators still get paid.

    P.S - whatever content you want to support, make sure to let it play on mute in the background, just so the streaming service knows it’s actually popular and worth supporting

    • Genius@lemmy.zipEnglish
      01·
      4 days ago

      You can pay for the subscription

      Thanks for giving OP the opportunity to give money to a corporation with more money than Hades.

      • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        4 days ago

        TV shows and movies don’t get made for free mate. The people making and producing them need to get paid one way or another, if nobody paid for anything, nothing would get made. I got everything for free when I was a kid but as an adult if I can afford to pay for something and I like it I will pay for it as it’s not only the right thing to do but the only way to guarantee good stuff still gets made.

      • thequickben@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        4 days ago

        I don’t get what’s so wrong with paying for a service he finds useful. If everybody sailed the high seas, there would be zero content for you to watch.

        • Genius@lemmy.zipEnglish
          01·
          4 days ago

          If everyone sailed the high seas, we’d be a lot closer to a communist revolution, and then artists wouldn’t need a profit motive to survive. They could just make art.

  • supernicepojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    5 days ago

    My interest waned with the apple tv and its pos remote. Every update, on every app needed to have a password prompt.

    • Fecundpossum@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      Been running an AppleTV HD for two years, and I’ve never had to reinput my password, nor have I had any other issues with it. I charge the remote battery maybe twice a year, and everything just works, faster and smoother than any onboard smart tv os I’ve ever used.

        • Fecundpossum@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          5 days ago

          I’ve ran into the apple hate crowd plenty of times. I don’t think they’re any kind of tech paragon, but my household includes the Apple TV, three HomePods, two iPhones and MacBook Air and all of them work together seamlessly.

          My main PC is running EndeavourOS and hyprland, so at least there’s no windows in the house.

          • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            5 days ago

            I used to be part of the anti Apple club.

            I have tux tattooed on my chest, literally.

            Tech tribalism (the Apple hate club) is dumb generally.