My main complaint is that there isn’t a consistent experience between apps. Things are in different places, actions do different things in different apps, no gesture support, subpar players with horrible scrubbing, etc.
I think all apps should be held to a few basic UI/UX standards so going from one app to another isn’t a completely different experience.
The attached photo is just one example. Within the Apple TV app itself, long pressing an icon brings up this great menu allowing you to go straight to the show or the episode page. Long pressing in most other apps removes the show from your now playing list! All of these conflicting actions need to be rectified.
u/Real-Apartment-1130
As far as UI design guidelines in general, no, I think variety is a good thing.
But the use of Apple native audio and video player should be absolutely mandatory, obligatory, a pre requisite when developing a tvOS app if only for one thing (besides fluid scrubbing and fast forward of a video using the Siri Remote).
You see, the native player of tvOS, starting with tvOS 16, automatically enables of all the audio and video core features of the Apple TV without the developer having to do anything else or implement them “manually” using the API´s. This was a huge and great change.
Critical things like frame rate and dynamic range matching, and additional ecosystem related features like spatial audio support for the Airpods, spatial audio aupport for the Homepods, all of that gets properly set up just by virtue of using the native player.
Therefore, it should be absolutely mandatory, in my book.