page 3 of 3
If the developer was at fault, this wouldn’t happen on the Home screen. I have had this problem occur before I launched any third-party app. Furthermore, anyone who has developed software knows that developers aren’t responsible for the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Core features, such as video playback, are services provided by tvOS. App developers don’t write their own video playback runtime. They’re part of tvOS, and not the app. Even if developers could override the API and do something that could cause system-wide video problems, that would be Apple’s fault. Apple needs to ensure that video playback is robust and handles all exceptions. I have looked at the tvOS APIs and developers don’t create their own video playback runtime. This is entirely Apple’s fault — it’s a defect within tvOS.
I like my Apple TV 4. I use it almost every day. I don’t have cable. It’s how I watch TV. That said, it could be a better product. It simply isn’t the quality that one would expect from Apple. They’re not putting their best and brightest engineers to work on Apple TV. I can understand that. Apple needs to focus on the iPhone, as it accounts for 2/3’s of the company’s profits. Apple TV isn’t a priority.
As with all Apple products, Apple TV comes at a premium price. Apple customers gladly pay this price and expect a quality product. That’s simply not the case with Apple TV 4. Although this video flickering defect has only happened five times in less than a year, that’s five times too many. This is a “showstopper” bug. Apple’s engineers should be working on this with the highest priority. Instead, I have seen this bug persist across several updates.
Apple needs to take a serious look at their engineering process. Are their quality assurance tests adequate? Do they find these bugs, but decide not to fix them? I know for a fact that other users have reported this bug to Apple. They know about it. It’s possible that they can’t reproduce it. They may have chosen to log it but not fix it. Perhaps the bug reports from users are a needle in the haystack.
This quality problem extends beyond Apple TV 4. Try selecting text on a web page with your iPhone or iPad. It’s quite buggy. That problem has persisted for years. Instead of fixing it, Apple has decided to market iOS as a professional operating system, in order to sell a new, expensive iPad Pro. What’s professional about buggy copy/cut/paste functionality? Even the 1984 Macintosh did that FLAWLESSLY.
Apple needs to start making quality a priority. Tim Cook is a marketing guy. He seems to believe that marketing is the “deus ex machina” miracle that can sell any product. That belief will eventually erode Apple’s brand loyalty. Slick marketing can’t make up for defective products. Read reviews of Apple TV 4. People have returned their units shortly after purchase. The dissatisfied customer feels that they bought a bleeding edge product.
Come on, this is Apple not Motorola. At least a Motorola TV would have been inexpensive! Apple can’t charge a premium price and deliver mediocrity without losing customers. Apple needs to invest in engineering and take a good, hard look at their engineering process. Using clever marketing to sell defective products is short-term thinking. Maybe a few rabid fanboys will be delusional enough to believe it. Other people will just return the defective item and buy something else.