You are assuming it's a rational expectation. Quite clearly it's not. It's coming from people that have or want an Apple TV, and clearly want Amazon on it regardless of whether it is possible or at all good for Amazon.
An expectation doesn't have to be rational, they can exist outside of those boundaries easily.
Let's call a spade a spade. If someone is entirely disregarding business realities and motivations, such demands aren't far removed from 'port whining' over on the gaming side. Or for that matter, really any sort of similar debate where people want things without any regard to its viability.
We don't know what those business realities are. We don't clearly have defined reasoning on what isn't viable. We don't know if Amazon has even entertained a discussion with Apple in regards to offering its service on Apple TV and current behaviour from Amazon indicates they aren't even interested in entertaining the notion.
I'm looking around on Google's sites trying to find any main listing of devices for their Google Play TV and Movies service, and to be honest I'm not finding much in general.
However
here is their main support area
When you click on the
Watch videos on your TV or computer you'll see Roku has a link right underneath Chromecast.
So while they may not be actively advertising it's on Roku, it doesn't appear they are actually enumerating devices anywhere in general. However in their literature on how to use the service they are by no means hiding the fact. They are quite clearly showing its availability and are giving support.
They don't have to. Roku is literally the first and only exception to the rule that Google Play exists on any device that runs Android. What's to enumerate when it's really that bloody simple and clearly communicated by Google upon its very first introduction?
Come on now. We don't know the negotiations, so we're supposed to inherently assume Amazon is at fault? That isn't an argument, that's bias.
The argument you were making is that people are vilifying Amazon unfairly by comparison to Apple and Google. That was the only point I have ever addressed, that there is a VERY clear difference between the parallel you were drawing between them that makes such an argument reckless and baseless.
Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of actions from Amazon that are skeevy, but the same can obviously be said about Apple.
Yes. But this isn't one of them. Apple clearly delineates where it offers things to its consumers. When Amazon can't decide if it wants to be an ecosystem or a service and tries to skirt its way into being both? Yeah, people are going to take issue with it, especially when the "ecosystem" Amazon is offering pales in comparison by its design and takes out its inability to build such an ecosystem on competitors that have. There is a reason people are tense about it.
The obvious issue with your line of reasoning though is that the specific point I've brought up is a very well publicized problem Apple has had with these kind of services. It's well known the reason Netflix was so late to the party on Apple TV was because of the fee structure - and that the reason they finally ended up here is because they got a special deal. That is due to their negotiating power, Apple was the one that 'needed' them. Similarly this problem is also why VOD services have in large part been 'view only' on iOS, which unfortunately is not a tenable move for most on a 10' UI.
That tells me that maybe Amazon hasn't been negotiating a similar deal as Netflix. Unless you have documented records of how hard Amazon has even bothered to try and make it work, it's making excuses without facts. Especially in light of the fact that Amazon's actions show they're less than interested in having a negotiation.
There are plenty of problems with the above statements. Some are simply untrue, while others only hold water when considering where they ended up due to Apple's reluctance to add features or release new hardware.
For example, slow and visually bland only really rings true when considering how it aged out. While clearly Apple hasn't gone out of their way to release cutting edge hardware, at launch they weren't considered all that slow versus the competition.
They didn't need to compete with other set-top boxes in this regard. I'm saying they were slow and bland compared to the rest of APPLE'S product offering, as I noted, which made the ATV less appealing to those in the Apple ecosystem and hindered adoption. And people expect an Apple product, from a visual and UX standpoint, to stand out. ATV didn't do that whatsoever. It was a "hobby" project and everyone knew it and thus the Apple buying public didn't take it seriously.
As far as not being marketed and not heavily discussed in tech media, that's simply untrue. While sure one could argue Apple didn't market it compared to iPhone and the like, that's in relative terms. In absolute terms, the Apple TV has been marketed FAR more than most of the competition. Roku has jack shit of an advertising budget, and Google never really put much behind Google TV nor Android TV. They got some token advertising early on, but that dried up quickly. Chromecast on the other hand has had a decent amount of ad eyes, and to some extent Fire TV.
The idea that the tech media didn't talk about each Apple TV launch though ... wow ... that's laughable. If anything they got way more press than the competitors. And most rational people would argue it got far more than it deserved versus the competitors. To pretend Apple TV didn't get massive levels of halo effect is ridiculous.
But all of that talk was usually one article that clearly showed tech media wasn't the least bit excited about it. Go read the articles that are written. The tone is always "so yeah, this is a thing that happened between ZOMG NEW IPHONE!!!" and harped on the "hobby project" aspect, constantly downplaying its value. Nearly every article had the same tone, there was no excitement around the product. Just talking about it isn't enough, it has to be positive discussion.
And in terms of marketing, I think you'll find that Roku positioning itself in retailers with prominence in the STB category the way it has, which is why it is the success that it is? That's more than Apple ever did, where it was "oh yeah, here's a thing for you to sell, do that how you want", which usually meant no displays, just tucked away in a glass case for people to buy when they ask for it. The fact it's sold as much as it has is a miracle in and of itself. The fact that Apple TV has an Apple Store demo section now? That's 100% more than Apple itself ever afforded to promoting the product.
Show me the receipts? I've already stated I like the categorization, but it's odd you say the competitors are severely lacking when several posters here have commented on bugs and issues with the voice search on Apple TV.
Cuz competitors are totally bug-free in their searches, right? What it's capable of appears to be more robust, even in spite of the flaws.
Based on the Echo, Alexa looks to likely be more flexible. But you may be correct that in terms of search options it may currently be lacking. However for several points you are giving a pass to Apple under the precept of it being a 1st gen offering and will improve with time. I don't see how one can hold that position on one hand, and then with the other hand assume the competitors will stand still. As for Roku, their search is certainly more limiting at this point in terms of natural language and categorization. However in terms of straightforward universal search it works great. It's actually the yardstick others are measured by, partly because they started it, but also because it works very well.
I don't expect competitors to stand still. But neither will Apple, so there will continue to be an escalation in how these devices operate and, simply put, Apple's got the personnel and the money to grow things out faster than all of them save for Google, if it takes the device as seriously as it seems to want to.
The salient point though is this isn't the end all be all. All the offerings have pluses and minuses. There are plenty of features the others have that Apple does not offer. Far more apps, 4K, expandable storage, support for playback of external content (networked or local), etc. So even if we are to pretend everyone stands still, it's not a simple case of the current Apple TV being inherently above the competition. It's a much more complicated equation.
Apple is going to close the app gap, that's not even a what-if scenario. It's bound to happen, and in a very short amount of time. Expandable storage isn't on the iPhone, doesn't seem to hurt it there. And external playback of content is basically there through Home Sharing, but I admitted that the interface for that to work is hugely broken right now and needs fixing.
In a vacuum sure. But that has principally been tied to the popularity of iOS.
How so? Last I checked, Macs are responsible for the majority of growth in the PC market, as well. So Apple has a history of being able to address the market for new and existing consumers in that space. But for Apple TV, they only have to address their existing customer base for other products effectively to take the lead from Roku.
In fact, some say it maybe have already, as Roku crossed the 10 million mark in 2014, while Apple crossed the 25 million mark the following year, so unless Roku sold 15 million devices in a year? It seems there's a new king of the market, contrary to belief. Both are losing YOY sales to Amazon and Google, though, with Roku hit the hardest.
So even with a subpar product, Apple sells these devices in decent numbers. One can only assume what will happen with this new device, but everyone seems to be predicting a greater rate of sales than they have experienced prior.
This is a very specific category where having the services people already use becomes key, and as my main point illustrates, their conventional handling of fees becomes the main question - certainly on the VOD side of things. At this time at least Apple is not in a position to bully all of the big players, and without some of them they are inherently restricted to users that are okay with utilizing Apple as their main provider for certain types of content.
And the addressable market of iOS device owners, which are more likely to gravitate to iTunes content, is still heavily untapped. So that's where their primary growth will be, and that's enough customers to put them at a substantial advantage.
While I suspect they will in fact have success luring new customers, as things stand right now they will have growth limitations. Just like Amazon has business reasons to avoid Apple TV, Apple has business reasons to require certain fee structures and place their own services above others. However not budging on those means certain providers will be absent, and with that, some customers will be as well.
Being limited in their growth to the iOS device owners, which can tally up to 40 million in a single quarter? Not as much of a limitation as others would face. The gravitational pull iOS device owners will have to another Apple product will put Apple in a distinct advantage, and in many ways already has.
While these comments aren't directed at me, I think many are salient to what we've been discussing.
Does Apple forfeit their ecosystem when they make apps on Android? Apple Music is a thing, and by the nature of Android is on a huge range of 3rd-party devices.
They clearly see services like Apple Music as being something they can move into other devices, and will treat services differently than the hardware/software ecosystem they've built. Apple knows that subscription services can't be bound to their own hardware and are proceeding accordingly, treating them as separate from the ecosystem. That is how you have it both ways, not trying to make a service into an ecosystem. I can't imagine Netflix would be as popular as it is if it played that sort of game.
No, though in no way have I stated any of this is clear cut ... much the opposite.
Android's ubiquity and how it's dealt with Amazon has no similarities to the console app stores. And as I've argued countless times, the console manufacturers are not demanding a 30% cut of purchases. So to pretend all of these situations are at all similar is not just an oversimplification, it's flat out wrong.
Except that the 30% cut doesn't exist on subscriptions with Google, just microtransactions. They treat them as separate things. So this evaporates.
I haven't and won't pretend Amazon's public rationale for stopping carrying the devices they did was great. However this is simply a bad example even if I were to make that case. The VUDU Spark is not a platform. It's a purpose-built device that specifically does one and only one thing. There is no reasonable argument for confusion with it. And if Amazon were to drop it, it would only hurt there (already questionable) argument.
I had forgotten that a standard STB isn't available from Vudu anymore, my bad.
These decisions are complicated. They need to consider fees, demographics, development ease, sales expectations, etc. That sort of information is used to determine not only if a platform will be supported, but also when. They need to schedule their development teams.
I think a lot of people are coming at this from a strictly users' perspective - an 'I want the services I like on the devices I like', without any knowledge or concern for the business realities. Be it cost, development time and complexity, ecosystems, higher level business concerns including existing company negotiations between companies, etc. Of course we all want nice things. And I think quite obviously Amazon would like to service its content to as many people as possible, but it's not that simple. They are a business and need to weigh said business interests with how to best serve users.
Without knowing how hard Amazon attempted to negotiate better terms, if they even bothered to at all? Especially after Amazon struck down their competitor hardware as they did? It sends a message that Amazon doesn't even want to ATTEMPT to negotiate a more favourable deal, so naturally, consumers are seeing this as Amazon getting in its own way of obtaining more consumers of its service. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, given the nature of the circumstances.
I'm sorry but that's simply unrealistic. I could point to practically enumerable services / apps that are on a large number of platforms, but not all.
Even if a providers' intent is to be on the most number of platforms it can, it has to demonstrated a proper 'business need' and factor in everything before signing on the dotted line. Amazon is a publicly traded company. It has to answer to its board and shareholders. If a deal is bad for them, they can't just 'do it for the users'. It's obviously not that simple.
They haven't exactly demonstrated that any attempt was made to get a better deal.
Can you point me to documentation of this fact?
https://www.macstories.net/stories/...ples-unsatisfactory-in-app-purchase-policies/
At the very least, Google allows external purchases within the app in lieu of payments being processed through Google Play, thereby completely circumventing the revenue cut. Others have said that Google waives this for subscription services like Spotify via contract negotiation.
Also, found something else that was interesting...
http://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/05/apple-changing-in-app-subscription-cut/
Apple TV apps with subscription services are only a 15% cut across the board now, apparently, and Apple is in the process of redefining their fee structure, so Amazon's excuse may evaporate into nothing, if it hasn't already.
Of course this is again straying from the main discussion. We are talking about Apple TV in this thread, which is where my specific arguments were targeted. Apple does in fact charge for in-app purchases, which inherently makes Amazon uncompetitive on the platform.
Seems to me that Apple's a shit-ton more flexible on this, so perhaps Amazon hasn't even bothered to negotiate better terms.
Let's say I grant you that they could be more specific in this case. What does that actually have to do with the main argument I'm making. The argument you continue to dance around and it now seems clear, are refusing to actually discuss?
Your main argument that started all of this is that somehow Amazon was getting unfairly criticized for its purely business decisions. Assuming that people don't rightfully do the same to Apple. I have long agreed that taking a 30% cut for subscription purchases was absurd, and I'm glad that Apple is looking to change it.
I'm trying to have a civil discussion about why as things stand, Amazon inherently cannot be on Apple TV due to Apple. At least that's the first hurdle and is not a complex one to cite.
It's a deteriorating one, and shows no evidence that Amazon bothered to change it, with their current tactics setting the tone that they aren't even interested in trying.
The crux of this particular argument is all based on a single sentence on one page. A summary that I can cite plenty of similar examples of.
Feel free to cite examples of Google and Apple promoting their services ambiguously as prolific, instead of noting specific examples that deviate from their norm of "only devices that operate our software". I double-dare you to show me one.
