57 app icons and nothing good on

Every year I start my annual ritual of installing the tvOS beta on the secondary Apple TV. Not the one in the living room—I’m not crazy—but the one in my office.

This year brings on the biggest, boldest change in tvOS since the release of dark mode in 2017… and that change is scaling down the Home Screen icons so there’s one more app icon per row.

They said it couldn’t be done, but they did it. They increased information density in an Apple product.

The other big changes in tvOS 17 feel like they’ll have more limited appeal. VPN support will help people “visiting” other countries to watch their “local” TV. Adding FaceTime support through continuity camera is something that benefits parent-grandparent conversations on comfortable sofas and people in the one conference room connecting to the people in the other conference room. That kind of stuff.

The high-traffic navigation areas of the Apple TV interface are the Home Screen and the TV app.…