If you follow similar accounts to me on social media, odds are you saw approximately 432 people post some variant of the title of this post. This comes 6 years after the launch of Apple TV+ and just as many people making the same “watching Apple TV+ in Apple TV on the Apple TV” joke. And you know what, I get it, it’s a fun joke you can make about a company that’s best known for being a leader in good UX.

But you know what? In the 6 years we’ve been making these TV+-on-TV-on-TV jokes, I haven’t seen any evidence that this has caused any actual pain for users. Maybe it's out there and I'm just blind to it, but I just haven't seen it myself. "There's a new Apple show I want to watch, where do I watch it? Oh, the Apple TV app, that makes sense." I think people have it in their heads that this is some sort of "who's on first?" situation when it just isn't.

I would suspect this is even more of a non-issue in the general public because the vast majority of people don't have an Apple TV box, which removes 100% of the context of this joke. For those with literally anything else as their smart TV platform, they watch their Apple TV shows in the Apple TV app, just like they watch Netflix in Netflix and Disney+ in Disney+.

Long story short, yes it's humorous, but I think it's one of those UX things that's academically bad, but actually isn't something real people are bothered by. In fact, I think it's just good social media content and that the people making these jokes aren't actually ever confused by this either.