2025-10-13 23:55:00
The madness just got madder. ‘Apple TV+’ is now just ‘Apple TV’.
I noticed something was off right away when I saw Apple’s streaming date announcement for F1: The Movie. They said the movie “will make its global streaming debut on Apple TV on Friday, December 12.”
I caught the lack of the “+” immediately, and, knowing Apple doesn’t often make those kind of copyrighting mistakes, I wondered what it meant. Were they going to license the movie out to other streaming services that can be watched on the Apple TV box or in the Apple TV app in addition to their own Apple TV+ service?
The answer is found at the bottom of the announcement (on their blog that’s still called ‘Apple TV+ Press’ at the moment):
Apple TV+ is now simply Apple TV, with a vibrant new identity. Ahead of its global streaming debut on Apple TV, the film continues to be available for purchase on participating digital platforms, including the Apple TV app, Amazon Prime Video, Fandango at Home and more.
It’s an app. A streaming service. An entertainment box. A storefront. Are you getting it? These are not four separate products. Oh, wait — yes, they are — but we’re still calling them all Apple TV.
You watch Apple TV shows in the Apple TV app on the Apple TV box. But you can also get Apple TV on Fire TV. And you can get Apple TV from the Apple Store. Or Apple Store app. Or the App Store.
It’s Apple TV all the way down.
Or, I guess, simply, it’s on Apple TV.
Putting my cynical hat aside for a moment, I kind of get it. It seems clear to me that a major part of reason to drop the “Plus” branding is that celebrities with titles on the service and normal folks alike simply didn’t remember it. I’ve heard more promotions for shows and movies that could be found “on Apple” or “on Apple TV” than I ever have for “Apple TV Plus”. I’ve done it myself when recommending shows to friends — it felt kind of nerdy to say, “There’s this great show I love called Trying. It’s on Apple TV Plus.” (It totally is a great show.) I, the Apple nerd and TV+ fanatic, would shorten it down to “it’s on Apple TV.” So, yeah, I get it even if I don’t love it.
I am curious, though, about that “vibrant new identity” they mentioned. I was just thinking the other day that while other streaming services has gone through change after change to their branding and visual/auditory design, I appreciate how Apple TV+ has stayed consistent since day one. Their network ident, that black and white fade in of the logo with the spotlight shining through the “+”, along with the deep thrum sound signature — a play on the beautiful Mac startup chime — it really felt timeless. Something that could last. I liked it.
And it worked so well alongside their (also great) Apple Original Films introduction reel.
I wonder how much of that identity will stick around.
Can’t wait to watch Apple TV on Apple TV in Apple TV
I too have a vibrant new identity
#AppleTV Genuinely excited to see what this means for the service in terms of growth and potential tiers, as well as the app, storefront and hardware.
Is there room for an Apple TV+ tier that includes rental access, lossy audio, and more? Is there room for an Apple TV Pro?
Unpopular reality check:
Most people in real life just call it Apple TV. They know what they mean. “The Apple one”.
Renaming the service to Apple TV is cleaner, and totally a non-issue. Only nerds obsess about naming these things. Nobody in real life will ever say the sentence “The TV app for Apple TV on Apple TV”. Only people here do.
Apple TV+
Apple TV
Apple TV GO
Apple TV Now
Apple TV Max
Max
Suggested name revisions:
Apple TV (hardware) ➡️ Apple HDMI box thingy
Apple TV (app) ➡️ iTunes
Apple TV (service) ➡️ Not Netflix, the Other One
If the new Apple TV 4K is somehow named “Apple Home Hub Max” I’ll flip a table
Imagine if the hardware was called iPhone
and it contained an app called iPhone, which was also available on Android, full of lots but not all of your content
and you could buy an optional subscription with extra content
…called iPhone
I have acquired a + from an undisclosed seller and am now known as Matt+
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
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2025-09-10 03:41:00
I enjoyed writing gut reactions to the product announcements live during the event, but here’s how things are shaping up for my apple.com shopping cart plans, given a little more time and consideration. Shocker, they’re fairly in line with my pre-event predictions.
While the iPhone Air certainly has the thin/light/new appeal, the more I compare, the more I’m leaning toward the Pro for a few reasons:
I’ll wait for reviews to come out next week to make my final decision, but that’s what I’m thinking at the moment. I could sway either way because damn that iPhone Air looks so good.
I already locked down the Apple Watch Ultra 3 with a pre-order this afternoon. Had to do some quick wrist measurements for the Titanium Milanese Loop (I’m right between a small and medium, so I went with the medium-sized band), but getting an Ultra 3 was an easy decision with how much I liked the original. I waffled a bit on doing a trade-in of my Ultra 1, but ultimately went for it. I’ll keep using an old Series 5 as a night watch/alarm clock, or maybe I can get back into the one-watch lifestyle with improved battery life and charging speed. I’m pretty excited for it to arrive on the 19th.
While the AirPods Pro 3 look really like quite an update, I’m not ready to pull the trigger on them — yet. The Pros have never fit my ears very well, and while I may give them a try at some point, I’m perfectly happy with my AirPods 4 with ANC. Touting the new Pros as the “best-fitting AirPods ever” has me curious, but consider me still skeptical that they’d stay in my ears. No AirPods purchase for me today.
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.
2025-09-10 01:12:00
Bold move…
Always good when the keynote stream starts with me doing a spit take.
“Design is how it works. That’s why we made half the interface illegible”
why does the apple keynote keep cutting to some old white trump stan
Apple loves to talk about how many ears they’ve looked at
An illegible new watch face is an appropriate way to “celebrate” Liquid Glass.
If your blood pressure spikes while listening to the US president speak, let Tim know
Can’t wait for my Apple Watch to tell me how shitty my sleep is.
I’ve never seen my timeline so negative during an #AppleEvent and honestly I’m so proud. Fuck Tim Cook for ruining what used to be such an exciting day for us Apple nerds
idk 42 hours of battery life definitely sounds bigger than the 10 hours my apple watch ultra 1 now lasts
It’s 90% faster at gaming but checking Slack is still slow.
looks the iphone started working with my trainer
Going to start referring to my forehead as an iconic plateau
“All-day battery life” proceeds to present a battery pack accessory #AppleEvent
THE BUMPER IS BACK BABY
What if Jony Ive voice but female
Joni Ive
Only British people can talk about materials.
ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE
We also drink every time they say “vapor chamber”. Cheers!
I’d be pretty thin too if you ignore the bulky bits that stick out of me
“Fuck it, we’re doing seven layers”.
Nothing says Pro like “We offer ProRes RAW video support, but you cannot adjust the gain level on an external mic.”
Is there really no black Pro phone?
Somebody check on @gruber
PROrange™
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.
2025-09-10 01:02:00
Can I publish this in the 4 minutes before the keynote starts??1
iPhone
Apple Watch
AirPods
Alright, here comes Tim Cook “on stage”. Let’s go.
It turns out no, I couldn’t. Published at 1:02pm.↩︎
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.
2025-09-10 00:54:00
In these, the minutes before the September 2025 Apple Event, in which I — and many others — will fawn over the company’s latest gadgets, I felt I had to get this one out.
Nick Heer wrote decisively and emphatically about how the transformation outlined in Apple in China that Tim Cook oversaw, led him straight toward kissing the ring in the White House. You should absolutely read the whole thing, but here’s an observation that I’ve been contemplating for a while now:
Cook has previously advocated for expressing social values as a corporate principle. In 2017, he said, perhaps paraphrasing his heroesMartin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, “if you see something going on that’s not right, the most powerful form of consent is to say nothing”. But how does Cook stand firmly for those values while depending on an authoritarian country for Apple’s hardware, and trying to appease a wanna-be dictator for the good standing of his business? In short, he does not.
Heer’s article followed shortly after this post in which John Gruber took a slightly longer and broader view of Cook’s actions in the Trump 2.0 administration, and gives him more benefit of the doubt regarding when he chooses to play ball with Trump:
Did Cook’s Oval Office display of fealty and his grotesque golden gift make you feel something? Did it engender an emotional response? Grossed out, perhaps? A little sick? Angry? Offended? Me too. But did you feel good — reassured? proud? — when Cook skipped that Middle East Trump tour in May? You know, the one that ranged from Trump singing the praises of the murderous Mohammed bin Salman (“I like you too much”) to accepting as a gift (that he claims will wind up in the possession of his post-presidential “library”) a 747 luxury jet from Qatar.
If you choose to believe that Tim Cook is weak, unethical, greedy, or even — despite his long-professed heroes — secretly a MAGA supporter, there’s likely nothing I can say to disabuse you of the notion. You can’t prove a negative. But I would argue that that line of cynicism is the easy way out. That you’re taking comfort in directing your ire at Cook, and the notion that if Cook had more backbone he’d refuse to play this game. It’s comforting to believe it’s him and his ilk, greedy selfish billionaires, not us as a collective whole.
If you didn’t read Gruber’s piece when it was published in August, I highly encourage you to do so now. It’s compelling and quite different from his usual writing, taking a timeline-of-events — dare I say investigative? — approach to understanding Cook’s actions. I’ll admit that I had completely forgotten that Cook had snubbed the Middle East trip, and that I was completely ignorant about the overall implications of that trip regarding the Saudi regime.
And yet, after reflecting on these two pieces for a while, I still come away disappointed and sickened by Cook’s compliance and reverence toward Trump’s agenda. Yes, as Gruber points out, the lion’s share of our collective ire should be pointed at Trump, his administration, and his voters. But we also look to those in leadership roles to, well, lead the way. To use their voice and actions, their stature and influence, and, yes, sometimes their money to usher us toward a better future. For if they throw their values to the wind when the going gets tough, what does that mean for the rest of us who lack the protections that their prominence affords them?
We’re taught not to judge people by what they say, but by what they do. I won’t go so far as to guess at what Cook feels in his heart toward this administration — only he knows — but his words and actions of late paint a cowardly story.
I can commend Cook for having the conviction not to participate in the Middle East trip. But I can also be supremely disappointed in his lack of leadership — sitting, as he does, in the seat as the most powerful man in one of the biggest and most successful American companies — in standing and speaking against the rot in the foundational Democracy of the country he claims to love.
And those pictures of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy — true leaders who used their voices and actions to advocate for the very civil rights that Trump now openly threatens — that he has on his desk? Well, I’d have lain them down in shame.
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.
2025-09-08 10:39:00
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
1️⃣ Jamie Thingelstad got a Messages-like style going on his website for chat-like blog posts and I love it. thingelstad.com
2️⃣ You don’t have to know anything about the Cortex Podcast to enjoy this hilarious animated short of their homescreen walkthrough. youtube.com
3️⃣ Passkeys are about to get even better with less lock-in when iOS 26 ships. They’re introducing a new way for credential managers to securely transfer the data for passkeys back and forth without the opportunity for man-in-the-middle attacks. Good stuff. hachyderm.io
4️⃣ Apple is milking Severance for all it’s worth and I love it. They’ve got Natalie in for a Fitness+ workout with Coach Kym P. and this promo video is spot on. instagram.com
5️⃣ Greg Morris has found enjoyment, success, and speed in running slow. gregmorris.co.uk
6️⃣ Manuel Moreale speaks emphatically about why blogs continue to matter in his marking of the 100th issue of his People & Blogs series. manuelmoreale.com
7️⃣ Seeing this tire roll down a sand dune for minutes is one of my favorite things I’ve watched in a while. It’s weirdly beautiful. youtube.com
Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.
