Greg PierceRE: https://mastodon.social/@daringfireball/116309404063715397
This is a bad take. Apple exerting control over what UI conventions are allowed, or even required, would be disastrous. I dont think you can carve out a special case for video players.
John Gruber@agiletortoise I don't think these are UI conventions. It’s properly supporting the hardware of the remote control. And basic accessibility. Apple has long enforced things like trying to use the volume buttons on iPhones for purposes other than adjusting audio volume. Same should be true for the buttons on the Apple TV remote.
@gruber A little ironic when the Siri Remote hardware is not a shining beacon of accessibility…but point taken. I also think it was a bad and stubborn decision for Apple not to allow use of the phone volume button in camera apps as long as they did.
Mike Sax@agiletortoise @gruber Id love it if Apple would enforce full accessibility for iOS apps in the same way that the ADA requires businesses to be accessible. That incidentally would yield huge AI dividends, too.
Steven Aquino (he/him)@mikesax @agiletortoise @gruber I’ve interviewed the retired congressman who helped pioneer the ADA a couple times (Tony Coelho, D-CA). The ADA was never conceived to address digital accessibility, and it’s a problem now.
App Store review kinda, sorta looks out for accessibility, but it’s not formal policy. (@marcoarment advocated for this years ago, FWIW.)
Franklin Delano Stallone@agiletortoise @daringfireball There is a point to that but I'm not sure I’ve seen a custom UI that served the user better.
Imo the web is worse in that you might not even get controls so if you miss something 2/3 of the way through you're watching the whole video again.
On Apple TV a local streaming app used to try and force the sound on if you muted during ads.
Ideally the user would have a choice. On Apple TV it might be harder but it's doable on the web.
Jimmy@agiletortoise As a person who works on a pretty popular non-standard streaming app for AppleTV, I can confidently say there are dozens of reasons to not support Apple's native video player. Top of the list:
- Ads. Streaming services live and die by ads (like it or not), and the built-in player has very rudimentary ad-insertion options, and no options for interactive ads, pause-screen ads, or overlay banner ads (i know, they all suck - but they pay the bills)
- playback enhancements like custom scrubber thumbnails and chapter marks
- personalized "next episode” and autoplay logic
- enhanced closed caption rendering (fonts, styling, placement- CEA 708 is fine, but an old standard)
- proprietary accessibility audio description triggers
- Non FairPlay DRM
- Dynamic forensic watermarking
- Device concurrency limits (i.e. "only 2 screens on Netflix”)
- Playback telemetry
- Custom dynamic bit rate logic (ours is frankly better than Apple’s, and I bet Netflix's is even more tuned)
- Cross platform consistency (we have the exact same video player on iOS, Android, Web, AppleTV, GoogleTV, and most smart tvs)
- Branding - AppleTV already has people skip the app mostly from the “Next Up" row in the TV App or home screen. The player is the branding these days.
- Eliminates dependency on Apple, and waiting for the yearly update cycle to add any new features (if any) to the player.