That’s very good to know! Thanks for clearing that up. We’ll have a look at alternatives.

Ah. I get you now. To answer your question—there are two categories of apps on AppleTV: “Core” apps, maintained by Apple (Movies, Trailers, TV Shows, Music, Radio, iTunes Radio, Podcasts, iMovie Theater, iCloud Photos, Computers, and Settings), and “Partner” apps (YouTube, Netflix, HBO Go, and everything else).

While Partners must follow certain restrictions set by Apple (and unlike with other Apple devices, not just anyone can develop an app), it is the Partners themselves that are ultimately responsible for their apps. Within the set of standard restrictions, and absent any other contractual obligations, they can do what they want.

In this case, the decision to universally drop support for v2 of their API, and hence, a whole subset of devices including the older AppleTVs, was made by the partner, Google.

One could look back with 20/20 hindsight and say that Apple should have included a clause in the partnership contract stating that Google must provide legacy application support for all AppleTV devices in perpetuity but, since they didn’t, there wasn’t a damn thing Apple could do about it.

But I’ll reiterate what I said in my first post: there is ABSOLUTELY NO TECHNICAL REASON that Google couldn’t keep supporting both versions of the API if they wanted to.

Companies, including Google, run multiple versions of APIs all the time to support legacy platforms and applications. In this case, they simply chose not to, likely because they believe that most people will simply upgrade to devices that support the newer API, which, of course, supports even more data collection and serves even more ads, which makes Google even more money.

So, yeah, your parents have a right to be annoyed or angry, but not with Apple.

In fact, as I’ve pointed out, if they own other products in the Apple ecosystem (iPhone 4 or later, iPad 2 or later, or any Mac made after roughly 2011), Apple’s AirPlay technology makes this whole thing a non-issue.

No, i mean who actually developed that app and does the updates for it? You’re saying we should be ‘throwing rocks’ at google for changing their API, when the developer of that app is probably more to blame for the lack of support and app updates on the first two generations of AppleTV.
Whether the “whole thing is overblown” or not is rather irrelevant. My parents used this device to watch youtube videos, now it might as well be a brick to them. Losing that functionality is bad regardless. It’s their right to be annoyed or even angry about it.

I don’t know that anyone was “managing” the YouTube app on their AppleTV (you mean like searching for videos and editing playlists, right? I can’t imagine a much worse platform for that), but I for one liked to occasionally us my AppleTV to view something that was already on my “Watch Later” list.

Still, the whole thing is overblown in my opinion. I can’t imagine working up the energy to be angry about it. Since the app disappeared from my AppleTV, I now just push the video up using AirPlay from my iPad, iPhone, or laptop.

I can understand how non-Apple-device-owning folks who lost access to the app on their pricey, and still relatively new, “Smart” TVs are upset, but as an Apple consumer, this whole thing barely affects me.

I’m sorry, but who exactly is managing the youtube app on Apple TVs?