Amazon Prime Video Finally Available for Apple TV
As announced in the Amazon Prime Video iOS app release notes, the Apple TV Amazon Prime Video app is now rolling out. The release notes say users have to download a separate tvOS app, which apparently will work on the third-generation Apple TV as well.
The Apple TV 3 doesn’t run tvOS or have downloadable apps, however the Amazon icon automatically showed up on my Apple TV 3. It seems that Amazon wrote a separate app using the legacy Apple TV SDK—much appreciated—and Apple auto-installed it for everyone. This is despite the Apple TV itself not getting any software updates in years.
I’ve heard there is indeed a good story behind this delay.
TL;DR it’s no wonder Amazon took so long in porting their app to tvOS; it’s a giant, [presumably] in-house web-based multi-headed hydra designed for a hundred different devices and consoles that probably needed a new UI glue layer for tvOS (but probably doesn’t use webviews)
Like Netflix before it, Amazon Prime Video has a “Settings” section in the app that doesn’t actually have any settings. Have to go to web site to turn off auto-playing the next episode. I don’t understand this. So hostile.
One huge advantage of Amazon Prime Video over Netflix on Apple TV is that you can actually rest on a video for a moment without a trailer starting up and blaring at you.
See also: Ryan Christoffel, Dave Mark, Juli Clover.
Previously: Amazon Prime Video Coming to Apple TV, Movies Anywhere.
