Netflix Deeply Regrets Accidentally Making Netflix a Better Product for Its Customers

Joe Rosensteel:

Netflix deeply regrets accidentally making Netflix a better product for its customers. It temporarily pushed out a change that let people see Netflix shows in the Apple TV app, a change people have been asking for since the debut of the Apple TV app in 2016 with its Up Next queue and content aggregation features. Fortunately, Netflix swiftly corrected the error before too many of its users could experience anything approaching joy, or satisfaction with Netflix. Customers should definitely drop the issue and not press Netflix to turn the feature that certainly exists back on.

I see why Netflix is sticking to its guns on this one, but they’re on the wrong side. Apple TV users were overjoyed yesterday when the Netflix app briefly started integrating with the TV app for “what next”, etc. Steven Aquino described it as “jubilance”.

Only a small subset — perhaps, by Netflix’s grand global scale, downright minuscule — of Netflix users use Apple TV hardware. But those of us who do, do so because we love it. Most people think “Why pay extra for yet another box to connect, yet another remote control, yet another thing to learn, when Netflix and most other popular streaming services are just built right into my TV?” Apple TV users go the extra mile to buy the extra box — which isn’t cheap — because they have good taste and want an experience that is superior in all regards: technically, UI-wise, and privacy-wise.

So it’s not just a random small subset of its users that Netflix is disappointing by refusing to adopt the idiomatic conventions of good tvOS citizenship, it’s the subset of users who care the most, for good reasons. It’s a lot like making a Mac-like Mac app rather than serving Mac users warmed-over cross-platform slop. Or, as MG Siegler put it when he updated his post after it turned out this was a rug pull, “Fucking fuck, fuck, fuck. Do these fucking idiots know how stupid this looks and is?”

★ Saturday, 15 February 2025