Before Apple releases a television, it needs to fix its TV app, and more

Earlier this month, the tech sphere was buzzing following a report that Apple was “evaluating” the idea of releasing a television. Many Apple diehards have longed for an Apple TV set, and I believe that such a device from Apple makes more sense today than nearly 15 years ago, when similar rumors were in full force. However, before any Apple television set can launch—or be a success—Apple needs to fix its existing, messy TV ecosystem of hardware and software that is both confusing to general users and frustrating to film buffs.

A confusing Apple “TV” ecosystem

I can’t count the number of times people have told me they are confused by Apple’s current “TV”-branded products.

“Is there a difference between Apple TV and Apple TV+?” they ask. Yes. There is a massive difference—but I don’t blame them for being confused. Apple’s “TV” branding is all over the map. So, here’s a glossary:

• Apple TV: This is the hardware device Apple sells that you connect to a television. The product’s official name is the Apple TV 4K, and you can liken it to a Roku (but instead of a USB-stick form, it’s more like a square hockey puck). The Apple TV 4K includes the box you connect to your existing television and the Siri Remote control.
• tvOS: This is the operating system that powers the Apple TV hardware. It is to Apple TV what iOS is to the iPhone.
• Apple TV+: This is Apple’s streaming service, aka: Apple’s Netflix. But unlike Netflix, it’s not an individual app for tvOS. Instead you need to access the service through another app that you also access any purchased content through. That app is called . . .
• TV: This is an app for Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and smart TVs that allows you to access the movies and television shows you purchase through iTunes or the integrated TV app content store. Inside this app, you will also be able to gain access to the Apple TV+ streaming service, rent movies, and even browse content available on other streaming services.

I don’t even want to consider how much more confusing this branding will become for the average consumer if Apple adds a dedicated branded television set to the mix. Godspeed to the company’s marketing people if that happens.

The TV app is Apple’s most disappointing app

Apple’s confusing jumble of TV-related products is best represented by the TV app. Apple sees it as the app-based hub for your digital video content. This app hub is your access point for the Apple TV+ service, all the movies and TV shows you’ve purchased via the iTunes or TV app content stores, movies you choose to rent, and even content from select other streaming services.

However, as a hub—a central point where you can access, manage, and curate all the content you’ve purchased through Apple—the TV app, which debuted in 2016, still lacks basic content organization features, or any that work well. I’ve detailed many of these disappointments before, particularly because they infuriate film buffs who have chosen to build their digital collections by purchasing their movies from Apple’s content stores.

Take, for example, the illogical restrictions that the TV app places on creating playlists, which allow you to organize your movie into collections. You can group your purchased movies into various playlists of your choosing (such as a playlist for “My favorite films” or “Best Sci-fi movies”), but the TV app only lets you add movies to these playlists if you download them to your device first. Given that a single 4K movie could be more than 5GB, most Apple devices won’t have the storage space needed to download extensive collections of movies, so you can get so far as to sort them into playlists. It is baffling that Apple requires you to download movies to your device in order to add them to a playlist. This space-hogging requirement is why so few users take advantage of the feature.

This bizarre playlist requirement is all the more infuriating because custom playlists could help fix another significant problem with the TV app: Its built-in Genre categorization is abhorrent. I honestly can’t figure out if this is Apple’s fault or merely due to the way content owners classify their films and shows when they list them for sale on the TV content store. Still, the TV app’s built-in categories that ostensibly should allow you to browse your purchased content by genre seem broken. They’ve not worked efficiently in the eight years since the TV app launched. For instance, the “Japanese Cinema” category shows that I have one Japanese film in my library—yet I have more than a dozen, including classics like Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru and Seven Samurai.

When I randomly select another genre category—Holiday movies—I find only five films from my library of hundreds of purchased films. The TV app does not display Christmas Vacation, Christmas in Connecticut, or even the classic A Christmas Carol.

An Apple television set could have many good qualities, but the drawbacks above make me question whether it could be the best TV for managing your digital content.

Will Apple release a television set?

For years, I’ve doubted that Apple would ever release a television set. The market is packed with dozens of competitors, and consumers have plenty of options, whether they’re looking for cost-effective sets or those with the latest and greatest display tech built in. Apple would need to choose which televisions to compete against in this crowded market.

I assume that the company would choose to go after the higher-end models, but I’m not sure Apple would have any display tech to offer that other high-end manufacturers don’t already. And I don’t think Apple is up for competing on price. Television set margins have historically been thin, and Apple likes healthy margins of at least 30%. That means any Apple television would likely be considerably more expensive than a similar one from a competitor, turning consumers off. Finally, people keep television sets for a long time, between five and ten years. That’s a much lengthier upgrade cycle than most products Apple offers—one the company may find too long.

Still, a recent Bloomberg report said that Apple was again “evaluating” whether to make a branded TV set. Steve Jobs was reportedly pondering an Apple-branded TV before his death more than 13 years ago, and it was one of the most frequent Apple product rumors circulating in the late ’00s. Yet it never materialized, likely for many of the reasons above.

So, what’s different now? Bloomberg didn’t say, but one thing I can think of is artifical intelligence. If Apple decides to release a television in the years ahead, it will do so for one reason: the company believes its integrated Apple Intelligence offerings can set it apart from the hundreds of different television sets offered by existing TV manufacturers. Any future Apple television wouldn’t just be a TV but an AI-powered hub serving as your smart home’s communal communications, control, and entertainment core. It would be your house’s brain.

The possibility of integrating Apple Intelligence so significantly into someone’s home may be too enticing for Apple to pass up. The company would have a strong foothold in our rapidly approaching AI-infused lives. If an Apple brain is powering someone’s home, chances are high that when that person needs to buy gadgets, they’ll want them to play nice with that hub—so they might as well buy Apple ones, further lining the company’s pockets.

However, if Apple goes after the television set market, its offering must be the best, especially considering the device would likely be much pricier than competitors’. Yet some of these basic software problems I’ve mentioned have been around in Apple’s TV software for years, which makes me question whether Apple could offer the best television experience out there.

I would like to believe it can. After all, I’m a huge fan of tvOS, the operating system that powers the Apple TV. No other smart TV OS I’ve tried is as intuitive or easy to use. It proves that Apple can do aspects of television well. It’s just a matter of whether the company wants to invest the time and resources to do all aspects well—and the TV app’s continuing problems make me believe that it just isn’t that interested.