Apple abandons iTunes Movie Trailers site and iOS app

Left: the old iTunes Movie Trailers app. Right: Apple's TV app, now the home for trailers

As AppleInsider noted when the first signs of the app disappearing became obvious, iTunes Movie Trailers on iOS has had 16 minor updates in 11 years. It's just had its 17th — and despite Apple saying it adds "a number of minor performance and stability improvements," it does not.

To be fair, the app's functionality is indeed now stable and it does perform quickly — but everything it's ever done before is gone. All the app does now is tell you that "Apple TV app is the new home of iTunes Movie Trailers," and has an Open button that takes you there.

At the same time, the online iTunes Movie Trailers site has also been gutted. Going to trailers.apple.com now simply bounces straight through to tv.apple.com.

It's not a surprising end, given how trailers are now prevalent on YouTube, and given how the iTunes Movie Trailers app and site have been neglected.

Yet it is a sad moment because this app and site hark back to a time when Apple was still in trouble — and movie trailers were surprisingly helpful. Movie trailers demonstrated how enormously superior Apple's QuickTime video player was to Microsoft's Windows.

It became the place to go to see all the new trailers, and all the film companies wanted to be on it.

That was back in the late 1990s, though, so despite the neglect, despite its unheralded demise, iTunes Movie Trailers had a good run.