Netflix says its brief Apple TV app integration was a mistake

My Netflix subscription ends today after 15y.

I watched it plenty in the late 00s when it had awesome content, and I was afraid to cancel even if I wasn't actively using it because it had the best recommendations.

Since then, they've constantly hiked the price and have lost their content edge. My parents watched my account though, so I kept it around as a gift to them + a way to have something to do on overnight flights. They finally locked my parents out (after talking it up in the press for months), so they've lost any reason to stay on my credit card.

Feels like there's been generational churn in leadership among the places that were great in the 00s - Netflix and Google both come to mind. The people who did cool, novel stuff have retired, and the traditional execs who will squeeze every dime they can out of customers (and employee perks) have shown up.

I don't like it.

Netflix is by far one of the worst streaming services in terms of what they have, although they're still running a very slick interface, who cares if what it leads to is garbage? Even when you find something good, especially a series, you can't expect that it'll go anywhere: Netflix loves to cancel.

> Netflix wants to get those views and autoplays. It's all about the stats boosts.

I'm confused why this would be the case. Can you explain further?

It seems to me that what Netflix actually wants is paying subscribers that don't watch anything. Bandwidth and CDNs aren't free after all.

I’ve really been enjoying just buying classic movies and shows on Apple TV to binge watch instead of having a ton of subscriptions. The quality is always the best available and I have a collection of awesome content to watch that I have never seen in 4k with awesome sound from an awesome device. I feel its money better spent than a subscription.

>It became a made-for-tv content sausage factory with the occasional gem.

So just like Apple TV TV then?

Yeah, Apple doesn't want Netflix recommending their own shows for free, when Apple could be recommending their own shows, are charging Netflix to recommend theirs.

Of course Netflix doesn't want Apple to have control of the interface to the Netflix streaming service, just as much as Apple doesn't want Netflix to have control of the interface to Apple's streaming service.

>> but they don't put it first because it hurts product metrics.

It's so depressing that instead of making products be the best product they can be for users, we inconvenience users at the expense of 'metrics'. It's a pervasive attitude at tech companies. Apple used to be _mostly_ an exception but even they are doing it now.

They might want me in their app but I swear the content Netflix actually encourages me to watch is maybe a hundred titles or so and maybe they rotate in and out a few, but what they want to sell me on always feels the same regardless of my preferences.

They also suffer from "Oh you liked that high quality classic western? how about some garbage westerns?" No man....

I feel like I have to hunt for content on Netflix and I'm boxing with Netflix's suggestions.

> where they can promote their own content

Sounds to me like Apple should allow them to pick a handful of shows to promote as an incentive to integrate into their app.

> Same reason when you open Netflix it shows new recommendations first

This seriously annoyed me to the point where I actually just use plex now.

Imagine you are born and raised in brasil. You have a netflix subscription there and you can watch the things you want with brasilian audio and/or subs. Now, you move to another continent. You can watch the same content, but not with the audio/subtitles in a language you understand. When this person torrents this content, each and every language audio and/or subtitle is simply available and thus this person can watch the content, they were willing to pay for, without problems.

Once this problem is solved, we get to the 'problem' of having content available scattered over 584778964 apps or available in one.

While this may sound exaggerated, I’ve actually on occasion torrented a show because I thought I had to if I wanted to see it, only to later turn out I could have watched on one of the streaming services I’m already paying for.

And that’s just crazy really.

Netflix is an organization that coordinates numerous other businesses and people such that it results in the creation of video files in the cloud that people sufficiently desire to watch such that they are willing to pay Netflix.

And while video files in the cloud sounds not so exemplary, simultaneously delivering video files to hundreds of millions of devices is not trivial.

RUMINT indicates native features that Apple offers can be enabled/disabled in NFLX apps via a feature flag.

Maybe devops engineer fat fingered it and enabled it by accident. Doesn’t break anything besides make the C-suite cry. So would make sense as to why there were no red flags, press releases or anything like that.

As a consumer, I hate using NFLX or Paramount, or even Amazon Prime UI. As much as I hate Apple, I do admit the aggregated view is nice. I can search for whatever show and presents me with options. If I am subscribed to the service it’s locked behind, then it opens the right app, and content starts playing.

I don't think there's any 'algorithm' at play with this integration that would concern them. When using Apple TV the search bar will search all the integrated services. So if you search for a movie it'll try and find it on one of the streaming apps you have installed before falling back on iTunes for rental/purchase. The Home Screen also shows the media you are currently watching or have queued to watch at some point. I think from Netflix perspective they want you to go into their app so they can try and keep you there. If they enable this integration suddenly you're launching Netflix content from the Home Screen and you may instead choose in your watchlist that's on another service. As a user, I basically stopped using Netflix because of it. The Apple TV app and integration with services is killer.