Just posted on Six Colors: Apple Sports: A free iPhone app to get you the score, fast

https://sixcolors.com/post/2024/02/apple-sports-a-free-iphone-app-to-get-you-the-score-fast/

Apple Sports: A free iPhone app to get you the score, fast

The Apple Sports app wants to get you scores, fast. If you know one thing about Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services, it’s probably this: Eddy Cue loves sports. He’s frequent…

Six Colors
My first observation upon loading the app is that while it supports many European leagues, it doesn't support the Champions League, so it's telling me Arsenal is idle until Saturday when it actually plays today. Hmm.

If you ever wanted to know what kind of stranglehold the NFL has over American sports, I've already received four comments from people about how a scores app doesn't show NFL scores, less than two weeks after the NFL season finished and six months before it begins.

As my story says: NFL and NCAAF will be there, they're just not there now because their seasons just ended. There are no scores.

Still, if I were Eddy Cue I'd have told my team to let people add their NFL teams now so those fans could happily stare at the black void for six months…
@jsnell Notifications is the one thing it appears to be missing over the app I currently use to do this. But then I wonder whether if reliable Live Activities might make those redundant
@jsnell just sitting on their couches, waiting patiently

@jsnell A bit of a niche of course but a bit disappointing to not see any rugby tournaments there. The rugby six nations is happening at the moment and it's a pity they're not there.

I realise this could be replaced with any other [sport that does not have a certain threshold of international market share]...

@quirogaart Exactly my disappointed and rugby-shaped thoughts!
@jsnell And here I thought it was the EU demanding that there is only one Football.
@jsnell I couldn’t care less about the NFL but I think that would be the better choice anyway. I don’t want to go through multiple setup rounds on stuff that doesn’t change often. Let me put in all my sports interests and let the damned computer worry about what is and isn’t timely.
@jsnell that’s kind of the point. I’ve never seen a sports app that wouldn’t let you sign up for notifications of a team in the off season. Apple has a high bar to climb here because people expect features to be there and this isn’t the only one. Clearly readers aren’t reading, which is par for the course for the internet, but we shouldn’t have to read an article to find that out.
@deviladv okay but that's not my problem as the writer of the article, that's Apple's problem
@jsnell I get your point, but even if I don’t get scores NOW, I’m setting up the app NOW. I don’t want to continually have to check to see if they have added my league/team/sport.
@jsnell I honestly don’t get the point of this if you can’t follow leagues/sports that are not in the mainstream, which already have great coverage. There’s no WPHL (huge hype here in Canada) or minor league hockey. Can’t follow EFL teams (Wrexham!). Big fat Meh from this sports fan. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@petergarner the point is that they're starting with the mainstream where the largest group of fans are
@jsnell I’m awaiting people wondering why they can’t follow Wrexham AFC in the app! :D
@craiggrannell @jsnell to be fair there is no good reason that that couldn’t be there. Depth of leagues is a huge part of European sports.

@d0mth0ma5 @jsnell Indeed. Most people I know into footie who’ve looked at the app aren’t terribly impressed. And making the betting odds so prominent feels weird.

I assume Apple can build on this fairly rapidly, but who knows where it’s headed, and who it’s for? Right now, this feels like an app primarily for folks in the US. Well, apart from Wrexham fans, obvs.

@craiggrannell or more likely Richmond FC!
@jsnell that is some next level hubris, expecting people to read the article before commenting.
(I’m not sure how to properly indicate irony, but if I did I would so indicate)
@jsnell Was going to say the same thing about CFL, which I have set up in Apple News already, but then I realized NFL isn’t even listed, so I put two and two together. Still would be nice to see it to verify syncing is working, but I guess it doesn’t work that way. Oh well, gotta wait til June then. Thanks for posting about it!
@jsnell Well, it’s June 6. CFL season has officially started, and it’s still not in the Apple Sports app. Maybe next year. 🤷‍♂️
@wqoq I'm the wrong person to check in with about this since I don't control the app in any way 😉
@jsnell Full disclosure — I also didn’t really read the article, but my assumption was the app would be more like the Stocks app, where you’d follow a team and get news. I followed a few of my baseball favorites — on seeing the void, I quickly figured out it’s just scores. Which is fine, but sort of seems like a missed opportunity. Perhaps they’re reserving the sporting news for the News+ app (which is its own little dumpster fire, but that’s another thread).
@drgardner that feature is already in the News app, actually. And syncs. This stuff is spread across News, TV, and Sports. Yeah it's a lot.
@jsnell I would've been complaint number 5 then (directed at Apple, not you), until I got to your 2nd last paragraph, which was written just for me (and at least 4 others, it seems). :)