tvOS 17.2 Removes Wishlists
Unfortunately, Apple’s move to consolidate purchasing and viewing in the Apple TV app has done away with wishlists, and customers who used the feature got no warning about their elimination.
On Reddit, Twitter, the MacRumors forums, and the Apple Support Community, customers are complaining about the change.
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The wishlists did not transfer over to the Apple TV app with these updates, so some customers who had compiled long watch lists are unable to access those curated lists or copy them over to a new location. Some users are able to open up the iTunes Store app on iOS devices and tap on the hamburger button in the upper right corner to see their wishlists, but this does not appear to be working for everyone. Those who compiled lists on the Apple TV appear to have no way to access them.
The Apple TV auto-updates, and customers lose their data without even being warned. We were not using the wishlists because there was no export feature, and I don’t trust Apple to preserve this sort of data. But we did run into other signs of lack of care.
We were in the middle of watching a movie, purchased from the iTunes Store, when the Apple TV updated overnight. When we went to resume, we clicked the thumbnail at the top of the screen, and it showed an alert saying not to use the Movies app—a strange message if you don’t know the backstory because we had not tried to open the app. Even being aware of the transition, I had assumed that the thumbnail was like a bookmark to open the movie; I didn’t realize that it was tied to a particular app. In any case, why couldn’t Apple redirect the link to the new app? They control both apps as well as the purchased content. If this had been a Web video and I changed my default browser the link would have still worked.
After manually opening the TV app, it was easy to find the movie, but the thumbnail was blank. When we came back the next night to finish the movie the thumbnail was still blank.
I’ve also noticed that there is no option to view a preview of TV show episodes in the TV app either, which was available in the dedicated iTunes TV Shows app.
A warning on this would have been nice, but I hate that they’re doing it regardless. If I want to browse TV shows or movies to purchase on my Apple TV, all the iTunes Store content is commingled with media that’s only available on streaming.
With Movies and TV Shows now purged, what is the solution for the Music tab in terms of retiring the iTunes Store app altogether? Are they planning to add the store to Music app soon?
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