By Joe Rosensteel

February 4, 2022 8:19 AM PT

When Apple TV’s ‘Universal Search’ is a black hole

I have to search for a lot of movies to watch on my Apple TV because I have a movie podcast. If a movie is located within a service that I’m already paying for, then I’d like to get that. I don’t want to browse all of the services, and I don’t use websites that claim to have a complete catalog of where movies are available because that’s not always true, and they also can’t take into account movies that I have already paid for in my library.

It’s not an easy problem to solve, but Apple at least seemed interested in solving it when they introduced Universal Search for Apple TV. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t seem so interested in this problem anymore—and Universal Search has become increasingly useless and frustrating.

Play me a movie, please?

Recently, I asked Siri to display “Fight Club,” and was presented with a button to start watching it right away in Prime Video. So easy!

Unfortunately, when it started playing, it was a very compressed, blocky stream, and I could immediately tell something was amiss. I pressed the back button and discovered that what I had clicked on was actually “Popular Movies and TV — Free with ads” within Prime Video. In other words, Amazon had embedded its ad-supported IMDb TV service inside of Prime Video, with very little to differentiate the two very different presentations.

Let’s try another example: David Lynch’s 1984 “Dune.” Universal Search said I could watch it on Hulu, but it’s not really available on Hulu.

Because of Apple’s infamous App Store rules, Hulu can’t actually tell me what I’m missing. Searching within the Hulu app on my iPhone will show “Dune,” which is why it’s being indexed for universal search… but tapping on it for more info only generates this error message: “Sorry, but your subscription doesn’t include that movie. You can manage your subscription from your account page.”

Next to Hulu in my “Dune” search results is the button to get the Starz app—allowing me to deduce that perhaps I need to add Starz to Hulu for an extra $9/month, or subscribe to Starz through Apple for $9/month. But what’s the point in Universal Search if it leaves room for this ambiguity?

This happens again and again. Services like Prime Video and Hulu include an array of films and TV shows in their search indexes, when they’re not really available on those services… but on extensions to those services that might offer degraded quality or an upsell to a product I’m not buying.

What a mess! But it turns out that Apple does provide third party developers with the ability to tag a tier identifier to the indexed content that Universal Search, and Siri, ingest. It’s just that these developers aren’t doing it, and Apple doesn’t seem to care. Instead, it’s up to me—the guy paying these mega-companies money every month—to individually verify whether or not a movie is available.

Something’s very wrong with that system.

The bait and switch

Of course, even if a developer correctly labels their video tiers, it wouldn’t address issues such as mixing low-quality ad-supported streams with paid streams, meaning there’s no way to distinguish what kind of viewing experience one can expect until you click on a tile in Universal Search and start playback.

And it’s hard to imagine that this inaccurate data is really just there by mistake. It’s far more likely that this is an attempt to drive unsuspecting users into viewing their video ads, or inducing them to sign up for their add-on services (that can’t actually even be referenced on Apple’s platforms). Why not degrade the user experience a little bit in exchange for bumping up the quarterly numbers a little bit?

But in fairness, it’s also possible that some of these cases are simply caused by underfunded tech staffs at billion-dollar companies where money is spent wildly on the next big swords-and-sorcery streaming series but not on the developer who has to maintain an AppleTV app and interact with a huge back-end media database. That poor developer at Amazon who decided to cram IMDb TV listings into Prime Video might have only had the best of intentions. (But probably not.)

Beyond ads, there are the issues of variable quality. Is a film in 4K, HDR, HD, or standard def? Is the streaming service buttery smooth, or chunky Paramount+? Is the film edited, or presented in an alternate cut? If a film exists on several services, it’s incumbent on Apple’s interface to give us more information so that we can pick the version of the film we actually want to see.

It’s like a special, pay-for-access library… where some of the books are missing, others chopped up, random pages might be glued together, some have water damage, and on a bunch, the interior pages have been replaced with a pop-up diorama indicating that the regular version of the book is also available—but the pop-up book is sadly not allowed to tell you where it’s located.

The librarian shouldn’t shrug and say it’s up to the book publishers to put properly printed books and place them on the right shelves, and not print empty books with coupons to buy the real book in a nearby bookstore. It’s the job of the librarian to curate their collection and make sure that their books are readable and available, and to direct their patrons to right where they want to go.

I appreciate Apple’s desire to present users with simple choices. Simplicity is good. But in this case, it has led to a bizarre guessing game about what will happen if I pick one app over another. It calls into question the accuracy of Apple’s search results.

In other words, it all comes back to Apple. Universal Search is Apple’s product. It’s up to Apple to verify that their search results are the best results for their users—and right now, Apple is failing.

[Joe Rosensteel is a VFX artist and writer based in Los Angeles.]

By Dan Moren

January 30, 2022 12:43 PM PT

The Back Page: Road Map to Perdition

Deep inside the gleaming white innards of Apple Park, protected by multiple factors of authentication and the most sophisticated technological security known to humanity, lies the most coveted of ancient artifacts. More powerful than the Ark of the Covenant, harder to locate than the Holy Grail, guarded more jealously than whatever the hell was on the back of the Declaration of Independence.

It is, yes, the Apple Road Map.

Yes, such an artifact actually exists! Tim Cook is no fool; he does not store Apple’s most vaunted possession merely as some PDF in iCloud, a file that can be copied and disseminated.

No, Tim Cook enshrines the Road Map upon the purest artisanal vellum, responsibly sourced from cows who have grazed only upon the fertile grass of Apple Park’s orchards, scraped clean by Apple interns who are surely regretting voicing any interest in “document security.”

While Cook is the only person with write permissions on the Road Map, a very select few may be permitted to enter the Sanctum Sanctorum buried deep beneath the center of Apple Park and gaze upon it.

And membership in the upper echelons of Apple’s executive team is no automatic guarantee that one will be bestowed read permissions on the holy document. First, one must prove their worthiness by passing three trials. Those who do not survive will not only be denied access, but will find themselves summarily dismissed from Apple’s ranks altogether. The path to the trials are littered with names of fallen comrades—Low, Browett, and Papermaster, just to name a few.

The trials are not for the faint of heart, as their Apple Watches will attest.

First, one must step into the Trial of the Void. Here, the candidate is placed within a featureless white room, bereft of doors or windows, and not allowed to leave for twenty-four hours. This trial has driven more than a few to the brink of madness, finding them a day later muttering about chamfered edges and aluminium. But those who have succeeded at the task are said to have emerged with the beatific smiles of the enlightened and surprisingly British accents.

With one success under their belt, candidates must then embark upon the second test: the Trial of the Dongle. Candidates will be presented with a random connector and a Rubbermaid bin full of dongles, and must figure out how to use the contents to connect the device to a modern Apple device. But be careful! Incorrect SCSI chain termination results in instant, well, termination.

Finally, they must confront the ultimate guardian of the Road Map and pass the Trial of the Cyberdog. Despite Steve Jobs’s claim that a bullet was put through Cyberdog’s head, this ferocious beast was instead put to work patrolling the lower levels of Apple’s Infinite Loop headquarters, and was later transplanted to Apple Park, lured with the last surviving population of Apple USB Mice. In order to pass the Cyberdog, one must offer up a sacrifice of a three-page OpenDoc file, along with all necessary RAM.

Once all three trials are passed, candidates are ushered into the vault where the Road Map is kept, but that is when the greatest secret is revealed—the Road Map’s arcane writing is unintelligible without the aid of special Apple augmented reality glasses, whose only prototype is the pair that rests on Tim’s face. The final, surprise test is then to best Cook himself, snatching the glasses from his face.

Only then will the Road Map be swiped to unlocked, the full glory shined upon the reader, and only the most faithful will survive its unfiltered gaze, for when you look upon the Road Map, the Road Map looks back upon you, wiping all memory of its existence from your mind so that the next time an analyst asks a question about the road map, you may reply with utter sincerity, “We’re not going to discuss that at this time.”

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]