The “truth” about Amazon Prime Video on Apple TV

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Reddit post from an account named AmazonVideoEngineer:

Wanted to make this throwaway account after yesterday’s debacle. I saw many people get upset so I wanted to issue this warning: do not expect Amazon to launch before October 26th. The app is done, and has been done for months already. However there are a lot of politics going on beyond my pay grade that are pushing the launch back. And just to clarify, October 26 is the earliest I would expect it. Launch could be pushed well into November.

No way to know if this is fake or not, but it is definitely interesting. Read the whole page for back and forth questions with the alleged engineer. Fascinating. Take with a grain of salt.

UPDATE: I’ve been asked about the reference to “yesterday’s debacle”. I am still looking for a response, but I believe the reference is to last week when Amazon dropped the Apple TV from Amazon.com. As of this post, the Apple TV is still MIA on Amazon’s site.



11 thoughts on “The “truth” about Amazon Prime Video on Apple TV”

  1. I can’t imagine it’s that much engineering work to take their iOS app and build an Apple TV variant.

    I mean, it’s certainly not zero, but Amazon has high-quality engineers that have gotten their platform on literally almost every other device on the planet. And they already target iOS.

    So, at this point, I can’t imagine it’s anything but competition.

  4. Calm down.

    It was briefly re-listed late last week. That you don’t know this does not make everyone else an idiot.

  5. I believe the “debacle” he’s referencing is the rumor that Amazon was to release the Prime Video app last Friday, and the resulting mass disappointment.

  7. Everyone knew Amazon was lying. Apple came out and said “we’re not blocking them from the Apple TV in any way they can submit whenever they want” after Amazon implied Apple was somehow preventing their access.

  8. Amazon is desperate to get people to buy their crap hardware. If you cancel Prime their hardware would be worthless. The money is in subscriptions so they’re simply hoping to use the “fixed asset” to tie you into their ecosystem and ensure eternal subscription… then they’ll spy on you and report you to the police with their fantastic helpful tech…

  10. I was talking to the author of the piece, not “everyone else.” But if you want to group yourself in there by defending this ludicrous claim, so be it. It wasn’t briefly re-listed late last week. It popped up briefly as an item for sale by one of their third-party sellers. It was not listed as Apple. That is why it came down so quickly. Amazon removed it two years ago, and a third-party person was able to sneak by their existing ban of the product because they were listing a new model. Amazon very quickly spotted it and removed it from the site. So there was no adding it and then removing it. There was third-party seller hanky panky and Amazon catching them.

  11. OK, if you really want to double down on being wrong, and a jerk about it…

    1) It was not re-listed late last week. The listing occurred September 26th. That’s two weeks ago.

    2) The listing everyone is talking about was not by a third party seller. Here is the story from Mac Rumors, complete with a screen cap of the listing. You will note the listing explicitly reads, “Ships from and sold by Amazon.com”.

    https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/26/apple-tv-4k-appears-on-amazon/

    The lame thing here is not that you are wrong. People are all the time. But usually humble or magnanimous enough to own up to it. Or even that you seem to be working yourself up into a lather over it. But really, the lamest thing of all is that it took about 1 minute of Google searching to see that, yes indeed, everyone else’s memory serves just fine, and you are totally wrong.

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