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Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by jedberg on Friday November 22, 2019 @04:58PM (#21610553)
I noticed in the "recent deaths" section, YouTube for 3DS. This made me laugh, because at Netflix, supporting the 3DS was always a big pain. Regardless, Netflix still supports it to this day.

In fact, as far as I know, Netflix has only ever killed support for one platform -- The PS2. And that was only because there were only about 10 people left using it.

So we sent them all Rokus and told them we're discontinuing PS2 support.

Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by sct202 on Friday November 22, 2019 @05:06PM (#21610633)
Netflix is the last app that works on my Sony Google TV from 2011. The YouTube app shut off after like 2015, but 8 years later Netflix is still trucking.
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by nodja on Friday November 22, 2019 @05:20PM (#21610739)
Funny that it has google in the name of the OS and a third party app was supported for longer...
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by dmurray on Friday November 22, 2019 @05:58PM (#21611015)
Why don't these devices run Android? Pretty sure you can run YouTube on a 2011 Android release. That's not important to Sony, of course, but even for new hardware it seems easier to make it run Android and shovel your bloatware on it than to develop your own half-assed OS for each TV model.
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by clhodapp on Friday November 22, 2019 @06:27PM (#21611182)
Google TV is a super-mutated version of Android... Google turned their back on it in 2014 in favor of something that was closer to normal Android.
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by sorenjan on Friday November 22, 2019 @09:15PM (#21611977)
Youtube's required Android version is listed as varying depending on device on Google Play, but on apkmirror.com it says that the minimum version is Android 4.4+. That was released in 2013.

https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/youtube/youtube-14-...

Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by londons_explore on Saturday November 23, 2019 @03:51AM (#21613164)
That's for the latest version of YouTube, but I believe an old version of YouTube will still work fine with today's servers, at least for basic video watching (commenting etc. broke in the big Google plus debacle)
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by daolf on Friday November 22, 2019 @05:47PM (#21610936)
My mom still watch Netflix daily from my old Wii U I left home.

Every day with streaming still working is considered a win

Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by nontoxyc on Friday November 22, 2019 @08:03PM (#21611684)
Ahhh my 40" google TV was too big to haul across the country the most recent time I moved. Ended up in a dumpster. Really too bad.... That was a nice TV. Good picture quality.

On the bright side I bought a new TV and found, to my surprise, digital antenna works much much better now. I have two TVs, the flat screen from ~2010 gets 3 channels, the new one gets 30. They're connected to the same source.

Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by loco5niner on Monday November 25, 2019 @12:44PM (#21630655)
> Ended up in a dumpster

Bummer. Put it on the side of the road and someone would have LOVED to take it.

Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by ocdtrekkie on Friday November 22, 2019 @05:00PM (#21610572)
I love that you sent them Rokus. Most companies would just tell them they are out of luck and to go buy something.

My old Panasonic TV has a handful of apps left (it's got like three home screens for apps, and like four still even exist). Thankfully Vudu, my app of choice, still works. As does Netflix and I believe Amazon Prime.

Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by jedberg on Friday November 22, 2019 @05:03PM (#21610609)
> I love that you sent them Rokus. Most companies would just tell them they are out of luck and to go buy something.

Yeah, I liked that too. It made me feel good an employee to know we did the right thing. Given the cost of the rokus vs the super happy customers plus the morale boost to the employees, it seems like a no-brainer.

Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by tzs on Friday November 22, 2019 @06:40PM (#21611252)
> I love that you sent them Rokus. Most companies would just tell them they are out of luck and to go buy something.

Amazon did something in between those two when the Prime Video app on some Sony Blu-ray players lost support. I'm not sure if they lost support because Sony was no longer interested in pushing updates to those players, or Amazon was no longer interested in writing their app for them, but for whatever reason they were going to stop working.

What Amazon did was sent users a coupon, good for the next two months, for $25 off on a Fire TV Stick, Fire TV Stick 4K, or Fire TV Cube.

For quite a while during that two months, Fire TV Stick was on sale for 24.99, so with that coupon was essentially free if you didn't procrastinate too much.

Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by kylec on Friday November 22, 2019 @05:13PM (#21610678)
Netflix support for the Wii is also being discontinued:

https://www.polygon.com/wii/2018/11/11/18085282/wii-netflix-...

Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by jedberg on Friday November 22, 2019 @05:21PM (#21610741)
I didn't count that one because Netflix didn't actually discontinue it -- Nintendo did. They removed all support for streaming services.
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by bnjms on Friday November 22, 2019 @05:27PM (#21610781)
Why doesn't Netflix support Switch? If you can't answer I will accept Nintendo politics as the answer.
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by roblabla on Friday November 22, 2019 @05:51PM (#21610968)
Given hulu is supported, it’s pretty weird. Nintendo clearly doesn’t mind streaming apps. So I assume it’s netflix that’s uninterested in the platform, not Nintendo. But I’m an outsider, this is all speculation.
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by jedberg on Friday November 22, 2019 @06:15PM (#21611122)
No idea, that happened long after I left.
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by Skunkleton on Friday November 22, 2019 @05:14PM (#21610692)
So quick sign in on your Wii and get a free roku!
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by jbay808 on Friday November 22, 2019 @09:04PM (#21611932)
That's too bad. I liked Netflix's UI better on the Wii than on any other platform I've used it on.
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by plumeria on Friday November 22, 2019 @05:38PM (#21610852)
The counter example would be Google Maps. They really care about this product. I think they even support Palm OS.
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by ulfw on Sunday November 24, 2019 @12:26AM (#21618565)
They care about it because

a) it’s basically Google Search just with a visual representation

and

b) the closest the West has to a ‘Super App’ (book hotels/restaurants/movie tickets etc straight from Maps)

Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by ladberg on Friday November 22, 2019 @06:57PM (#21611365)
I mean, they purposefully kept features off Google Maps on iOS to make Android look better, then brought them in once Apple made Apple Maps.
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by alteria on Friday November 22, 2019 @08:08PM (#21611712)
Do you know any articles about this? Would like to learn more.
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by xref on Friday November 22, 2019 @09:09PM (#21611957)
Specifically turn-by-turn navigation, which Android had via Google Maps but you had to buy an expensive app on iOS like Garmin or TomTom. It was a real killer feature.

Apple and Google had been long time collaborators but the relationship was finally cooling off as iOS and Android competed more aggressively. Google continually pushed the rollout date for turn by turn on iOS so it was always “6 months away.”

Eventually Apple bought some mapping companies and when they were near complete Google finally added turn by turn to its iOS map app. Apple had a reaaalllll rough rollout the first ~3 years of Apple Maps I’d say, and for years after still nobody trusted Apple Maps. But they were no longer at the mercy of Google.

Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by macintux on Friday November 22, 2019 @10:08PM (#21612187)
I believe vector images were also a point of contention.
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by nfriedly on Friday November 22, 2019 @05:08PM (#21610646)
That is impressive. I've seen it have hiccups before, but I just tried again on my (old) 3DS XL and it did indeed still work.

Not being able to switch users is pretty aggravating, though. (Both for me and the family member who's account the 3DS forces me onto.) That issue alone prettymuch keeps me from using it :(

Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by jedberg on Friday November 22, 2019 @05:19PM (#21610732)
> Not being able to switch users is pretty aggravating, though.

It should be noted that the final version of the 3DS app predates multiple users, hence the limitation. The app can't be updated.

Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by nfriedly on Friday November 22, 2019 @05:29PM (#21610803)
Oh, does Nintendo not allow you to ship updates? That would make it a pain to support!
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by d0gbread on Friday November 22, 2019 @05:34PM (#21610831)
Can confirm. Found my Boxee a couple months ago and Netflix worked. I honestly couldn't believe it.
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by arvinaminpour on Friday November 22, 2019 @06:03PM (#21611042)
Love this a ton! How does Netflix ensure reliability for those platforms with an ever growing codebase and the evolving business? Was the platform built to be extensible from the start?
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by jedberg on Friday November 22, 2019 @06:17PM (#21611139)
Most of the old apps can't be updated, so they are sort of frozen in time. They all hit APIs on the backend, so as long as the APIs they hit remain backwards compatible it "just works". The old apps don't get any new features that require UI changes or can't be supported on the platform if that platform is updateable.

So the short answer is, everything is an API, so as long as the API stays backwards compatible it just works.

Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by arvinaminpour on Saturday November 23, 2019 @10:00AM (#21614431)
Gotcha I thought that it might have been server driven clients similar to the way Spotify does it. But that makes sense :)
Re:Average product lifespan of Google products before it kil... by scarface74 on Saturday November 23, 2019 @07:53AM (#21613859)
Last time I checked about a year ago. Netflix still works on my iPad 1