Apple Shouldn’t Cancel the Apple TV

And why I’m an idiot

Exactly a year ago to the day, I suggested that Apple should cancel the Apple TV.

This went down like a chicken vindaloo-induced fart in a crowded lift.

It also propelled my brand into the spotlight for a brief amount of time, and as any content creator will tell you, that’s a very nice thing indeed — particularly when you’ve simply offered an honest opinion on a very subjective topic.

Since that article, I’ve backtracked more comprehensively than a British politician. I am now a full Apple TV convert. In fact, I’m so enamoured by it that I’m tempted to revisit my previous article and call myself an idiot in the comments section.

This is what happened and why I’ve had such a total change of heart about Apple’s tiny set-top box.

What I said originally

“I want to want an Apple TV — I really do,” I said in March 2021.

I then rambled on for several paragraphs about how crap the Apple TV is, recounting and berating the famous “I finally cracked it” quote from Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. I claimed that Apple had never managed to redefine the television experience, and suggested that they’d “barely made a dent in most people’s subconscious, let alone the universe”.

As delighted as I am with that last sentence, my analysis of the Apple TV was incredibly shortsighted and unfair, because I hadn’t used one in anger for years, prior to that article.

I subsequently apologised to everyone I’d offended (seriously, you should see the comments thread of that original article), and promised to dive wholeheartedly into the Apple TV ecosystem and report back.

Well, I’ve done that — big time. But to do it properly, I needed to wave goodbye to something I’d been using for decades.

Goodbye, Sky

If you live in the UK, you’ll know what Sky is. You’ve probably got it yourself.

For the benefit of everyone else, it is our biggest (only?!) satellite TV provider. Once part-owned and controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, Sky was acquired by Comcast in 2018.

Sky is equal parts brilliant and rubbish. Its brilliance lies in some genuinely awesome tech, which includes mesh networking, multi-room and device viewing, and an impressive new range of all-in-one TV sets.

Unfortunately, Sky has been forever let down by extortionate pricing and the most scattergun approach to customer contracts I’ve ever seen. I don’t know anyone who pays the same tariff for the exact same bunch of channels. Come contract renewal time, the price you get will depend on your personality, the prevailing wind conditions, and whether or not the Sky salesperson had a decent night’s sleep.

Worse still, their contracts sneakily tie you into price rises which come into effect after your contractual period. That would be fine — if they reminded you. Which, of course, they don’t. I’ve lost count of how many 18-month Sky contracts I’ve had lapse without realising, only to discover several months later that I’ve been paying £40 extra since going out of contract.

It’s horrid. But, thankfully, I had no choice but to cancel Sky in order to fully immerse myself in the world of Apple TV.

My new Apple TV setup

With Sky out of the picture, I had to find an alternative solution for terrestrial TV.

As luck would have it, all five UK terrestrial channels (BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5) are represented rather nicely on the Apple TV App Store. A free account is all that’s needed to access most of them, and they all feature nicely considered user interfaces, decent discoverability, and great picture quality.

There were a few Sky channels I wanted to retain, and that has been made possible via NOW, which is actually a Sky product. What sets NOW apart from its big brother is the low-priced predictable rolling monthly contract and the fact that it can be accessed via an Apple TV.

It’s not all roses, though. The NOW app is rather underwhelming when compared to the aforementioned terrestrial offerings and, indeed, the Sky Q operating system. Program scheduling extends as far as ‘now’ and ‘next’, you can’t pause live TV, and precisely no effort whatsoever has been put into discoverability.

Regardless, I am now free of Sky and entirely dependent on the Apple TV. The upsides are numerous; it’s a damn fast little box, and the picture quality is second to none. As mentioned previously, it really has brought my ageing 4K curved TV to life.

Then, there’s Apple TV+. Last year, I described Apple’s streaming service as “largely uninteresting”. However, I countered that with a prediction that we’d see “some very high-quality shows arrive on the platform” in the future.

Boy was I right. The list of much-watch TV shows on Apple TV+ is getting longer each month. In our house, we’ve loved The Morning Show, Severance, and The Shrink Next Door, to name but three. Currently, we’re making our way through the brilliant depiction of WeWork’s rise and fall, WeCrashed. Apple is putting some serious funding and talent behind these productions, and the results are clear to see.

Apart from, ironically, See, which is terrible.

I also feel I should remind everyone who has spent the last few days debating Will Smith’s slapping antics that it was in fact an Apple TV+ movie, CODA, that won three awards at the Oscars, including best picture.

I’ve changed; I love absolutely everything about the Apple TV. So, please stop shouting at me.

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Originally published at https://markellisreviews.com on March 31, 2022.