Apple TV + is being held back by its terrible app -. – EzAnime.net

If you hadn’t seen all nine episodes of Calls, a star-studded new drama series that Apple TV + debuts on Friday and which the company screened early for the press, you were already intrigued enough by the trailer it would have. I checked it out on my own anyway.

It’s hard to say too much about the show on the front end for anyone who wants to watch it, because this is a series best experienced by stepping into it cold. However, as you can see in the trailer below, the show’s title makes the format you can expect pretty clear – it all plays out like a series of, well, phone calls. In nine episodes lasting no more than 20 minutes each, you will hear both ends of a phone conversation. And that is. There aren’t really any visuals to speak of, other than some cool ambient graphics.

Apple will launch the entire season in one go on Friday, and this is one you will definitely want to dock in one go (with the episodes so short, the entire season is only about 2.5 hours long). Some kind of live transcript of both ends of the phone conversation will appear on the screen in each episode, making you feel like you’re watching one of those police shows where someone calls 9-1-1 and you see the transcript. calls for help appear on the screen. All that being said, Calls is definitely one of the most ambitious things any major streaming service has ever tried, and if you can get past some of those quirks we mentioned, an exciting series awaits you that, at least for me, opened up thematic ground. similar to another TV show that I loved: Lost.

I admit it, when I saw the Calls cast list (it includes high profile names like Rosario Dawson, Aubrey Plaza, Pedro Pascal, and Lily Collins, to name a few), it was easy to be a little cynical and I feel like this was all a gimmick for give those actors something easy to do during the pandemic. Just record a few phone calls, great! But no: if you like shows that play with concepts like the multiverse and the grandfather paradox vis a vis time travel, I suspect that you will be adequately entertained here, at the very least.

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Watch the trailer below for the calls, which will be available to stream as part of your Apple TV + subscription starting Friday:

It is at this point that I want to say a few words about the Apple TV + application itself. It is often read in the press that Apple’s streaming service is, if not a failure so far, then it is supposedly far behind its rivals, usually on the basis of the size of its library and the lack of a success so far. Tiger King style of the cache that Netflix constantly generates. However, I’d have to object to that and point to an example like Ted Lasso, the Jason Sudeikis-directed comedy that’s probably the closest thing to an Apple hit series so far. Ted Lasso definitely got mainstream TV audiences talking about Apple TV +, in a way that early streamer offerings like The Morning Show couldn’t necessarily do. That’s partly because Ted Lasso is comfort television at its finest. He made everyone feel good last year, at a time when we desperately needed him.

Beyond that, there is a ton of great content to watch on the service. Fans of the prestigious drama will enjoy series like The Morning Show, For All Mankind and my personal favorite: the Israeli spy series Tehran. If you’re into comedies, there’s Mythic Quest and lively Central Park. The Apple TV + Original movies include content for music fans, such as exclusive documentaries by Bruce Springsteen and Billie Eilish, as well as a World War II movie I thoroughly enjoyed, The Greyhound directed by Tom Hanks. For someone like me, who is quite overwhelmed by the never-ending supply of content that Netflix offers, to the point where it is sometimes a bit difficult to discover new shows and movies, Apple’s most careful selection is a breath of fresh air.

But then we come to the Apple TV + app.

For me, the application is the main thing of the service that I would have to criticize at the moment. Of course, all streaming apps have their flaws from a user experience point of view, but Apple, to me, looks a bit like what bookstores do (or did, when I visited them in the days before to the pandemic). Hardcore readers like me probably know this sentiment: You go into a store, looking for a specific title, and there are about seven different places within the store where it could be. Maybe up front, on a new launch table. Or in the bestsellers section. Or maybe it’s here in the fiction section, but in an ending with other special titles, or, heck, in another special place dedicated to highlighting staff favorites. Eventually, I have to do the worst in the world. Locate someone and ask for help.

I have a similar feeling when I open the Apple TV + app. It may take several taps to find the program I want, depending on. When I open the app, for example, it presents me with a “Watch Now” screen, which includes a “Up Next” panel that allows me to keep seeing what I was last looking at, and then there are tons of suggestions on this page. . There is a “Watch to Watch” row that lists various shows and movies, only some of which are exclusive to Apple. Keep scrolling and you will see a “Now on Apple TV +” row – bingo! Only this row shows me 10 Apple TV deals, none of which are new. And I still haven’t seen a list of Calls, which will debut this week.

However, keep scrolling and you will see a list of “Channels” that includes the Showtime and Paramount + icons; no thanks, I’m here to watch Apple shows so you have to scroll a bit more. At this point, it’s … you know what, I give up and go see where else the app takes me. Let your gaze drift to the bottom of the application and you will see “Originals”. Yes, it probably is.

Okay, here we go. This is the Apple TV + page, which is what I prefer to open when I tap the Apple TV + icon on my phone. Here again, however, we still run into the library issue I mentioned earlier. I don’t necessarily want to have to replay multiple times from this page, which presents me with categories like comedy series and feature films that you can dig even deeper into, to find the show I want. I have to make three or four taps, in total, to get to Calls. This may seem like a trivial complaint, but for the fact that a service like Netflix would put something like this right at the top of the first screen you see after opening the app. It takes too many taps, unfortunately, and I think the average consumer is going to, well, tap.

However, don’t get me wrong. Apple TV +, overall, is a fantastic service with solid content for the price ($ 4.99 / month, although buyers of Apple devices can get the service for free). No doubt Apple will continue to improve these things over time. If you’re looking for something new to check out this weekend, don’t let the app’s quirks put you off, there’s definitely some great stuff here.

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Andy is a reporter from Memphis who also contributes to outlets like Fast Company and The Guardian. When he’s not writing about tech, he can be found hunched over protectively over his burgeoning vinyl collection, as well as minding his Whovianism and bingeing on a variety of TV shows he probably doesn’t like.

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