Malcolm Owen
A small number of Apple TV owners are unable to use the Apple TV app on their set-top devices, a potentially embarrassing issue just ahead of the launch of the Apple TV+ service which relies heavily on the app functioning properly.
Apple is preparing to launch Apple TV+ on November 1, which heavily relies upon the Apple TV app for users to select and view content from the service. The Apple TV app is also a central element of Apple's newest Apple TV experience, including channel subscription options, making it an extremely important part of the Apple TV and Apple TV 4K.
However, reports from users suggest that, barely over a week before its launch, there are issues with the Apple TV app where it crashes, an inconvenience which prevents users from watching content at all. First reported by 9to5Mac, the app is crashing following the first swipe down in the Watch Now tab.
While the Apple Support Forums are relatively quiet, users are turning to Twitter to air their grievances on the issue, including a video in one instance of the crash happening repeatedly.
— Nick Bradshaw (@NB_2612) October 20, 2019
It is unclear what exactly is causing the problem, but it is evidently extremely limited to a very small number of people using tvOS 13, which introduced the new Apple TV experience, or tvOS 13.1. Versions of the app on other platforms do not have the same issue, and the number of reports are low, indicating it to be a minor problem.
While a likely cause of crashes could be streaming video files that are corrupted during transmission to the device, it doesn't seem to match in this case. It is also odd that it affects only a few, whereas an app bug usually would be more evident in a larger number of complaints.
Given the issue with the app, Apple is likely to release an update for tvOS that fixes the bug in the future, possibly in conjunction with another update around the time of Apple TV+'s launch. Apple is currently beta-testing tvOS 13.2, but it is unclear if anyone enduring the crashes is using that release.
Apple TV+ will go live on November 1, priced at $4.99 per month, but customers buying select Apple hardware can get a year's access to the content at no charge.
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7 Comments
This update has effectively bricked both my Apple HD and Apple 4K.
The AppleTV app is definitely buggy in the current version. I'm not having the issue that's specifically described in the article, but crashes during streams are an issue right now.
If there’s one device that is consistent across an entire platform it’s the Apple TV. There are only two models supported for Apple TV+, you can only download apps from the app store, most people don’t hack or jailbreak the device. So we’re all using the same hardware, the same software. There is little customization possible so unless these reports turn out to be related to some setting or configuration setting I don’t understand why a “few” users are experiencing this issue. It sound to me like either a corrupted update or a hardware problem. For the record I am not experiencing the reported crashes.
AppleTV has always been buggy requiring frequent reboots. Just reboot and you’ll be fine.