Unauthoritative Pronouncements

Stephen Robles has a good run through of all the new features in tvOS 26 on YouTube. I don’t have the energy, or enthusiasm to detail these features, so please refer to his fine work.

I will never, ever, ever have as much to say about the Apple TV Sing app as Stephen Robles. That’s a promise. It’s a specific piece of nerdy corporate synergy (singergy?) I’m not even sure people will remember the app exists in a few years.

However, astute Apple TV owners will notice this screen when they start up their newly-updated tvOS 26 boxes:

These features are not about improving the TV and movie viewing experience. The “Liquid Glass” updates to design were initially awful, but have been pulled back to the point where you wouldn’t really even register anything beyond some drawn-on highlight edges to things. Strangely, this “did they change anything?” is actually a good thing compared to the first stab Apple took.

The “New” Apple TV App Design doesn’t do anything to fix any of the problems with the “old” TV app design. They made the thumbnails into “cinematic” movie posters, which have lower information density and clarity when compared to the thumbnails that had separate text.

The Profiles don’t do anything useful because how can they? No apps tie into them, and as Dan Moren pointed out they don’t even do anything for siloing off parental controls.

For me, Apple TV is first and foremost a platform for viewing TV and movies. We just passed the 10th anniversary of tvOS, which I will probably write about in another post if I feel motivated enough. A lot of stuff has changed with tvOS, but not the mechanics of how you watch TV.

This is particularly irritating when how we view TV isn’t even the same as it was 10 years ago. There are a lot of FAST channels, and other linear and live TV streams, but tvOS has no awareness of them beyond sporting events.

The strengths of the Apple TV, and tvOS, are that there isn’t generic advertising in the interface. Apple does a ton of irritating self promotion, but it’s very different from what Amazon and Roku do.

It’s still the box I recomend for anyone that wants to stream TV (which is almost everyone) but it’s hard to sell people on the virtues of the Apple TV, especially when it seems like such a listless product.

None of the changes that Apple actually shipped with tvOS 26 (with the exception of the posters) worsened tvOS over the previous version, but they were also a lot of work expended on things that are not the primary focus of the device.

Of course major changes to tvOS seem to align with new models shipping, and if the Apple rumor sites are to be believed a new Apple TV model is right around the corner (or at least they post about it being right around the corner every month so they’ll inevitably get it right). Perhaps the “good” TV app will ship with new hardware, or we’ll get a more integrated live TV experience then?

I’m not going to hold my breath. I’m too busy singing.