HBO Max Broke Its Apple TV App With Botched Update

• HBO Max had its Apple TV users without playback controls for almost a week.
• The streaming service rolled out a highly problematic update that should never have passed testing.
• The developers have now reversed the trouble caused by the update, but the community is still disappointed with the app.

The HBO Max app on Apple TV has received an amputating update from its development team, which caused all sorts of trouble for its users. The problem went on for days, despite the official promise to address it quickly. Eventually, today, the company decided to restore native tvOS video playback and at least ensure that its subscribers will be able to enjoy what they’re paying for. Unfortunately, as the official support commented on Twitter, the streaming company has missed the mark with the failed update, and it was an embarrassing moment.

The problems for those who received and applied the update mainly concern the controls being rendered inactive, so people couldn’t control the playback, fast-forward or rewind their streams, or even pause the video. On top of that, the app loads slowly, navigating on the content library is slow, and several errors are popping up at random when attempting to select a show. All in all, it appears that HBO’s development team isn’t doing any testing before pushing updates, which is absurd for a company of this size and a product of its cost.

This incident is the cherry topping, but it’s not why people have had complaints about HBO. The app has a rating of 2.8 on the App Store, and this score was solidified long before the problematic update was rolled out. It appears that HBO didn’t focus on the technical aspect of their streaming service at all, which is weird and indicative of a distorted perception of what matters and what requires diligent work. Even then, the fact that a total fail of an update was somehow approved for massive roll-out beggars belief.

In the meantime, the service is currently promoting a new ad-supported plan that costs $9.99 per month, offering amazing value for the money. HBO’s catalog is really impressive and high quality, so these technical hiccups are only adding to the frustration. Considering that many new users jumped aboard through the new plan, releasing a botched update couldn’t have come at a worse time.