Colorful Rebranding: Apple TV+ Drops the Plus
In the future, there will be two products called Apple TV. Meanwhile, a blockbuster movie is landing on the streaming service.
New Apple TV logo from iOS 26.1 Beta: More colorful and without the Plus.
(Image: Apple)
It's just a small sentence, but it entails a cascade of changes: “Apple TV+ is now simply Apple TV, with a vibrant new identity,” Apple writes in a press release about the streaming debut of its hit film “F1 The Movie.” This means the iPhone maker's streaming service is losing its Plus and will henceforth be confusingly named the same as the company's multimedia box, which has been called Apple TV for many years (possibly supplemented with a “4K”). Whether there will be a renaming as a result of the video service rebranding—which would be fitting—is completely unclear, and Apple has not yet communicated this.
Apple TV with and without 4K
What “vibrant new identity” means, Apple then demonstrated in the third developer beta of iOS 27.1, which was released on Monday: Instead of the cinema-like logo with a spotlight effect, there is now a glassy Apple logo with the “tv” lettering, which is transparent in the Liquid-Glass-Look and shows some blurred rainbow colors. Apple's press page has also already received the new look, but not the portal to the streaming service.
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Here too, Apple faces one or two branding problems: the end-customer website for the video service can be reached at “apple.com/apple-tv-plus,” while the page for the Apple TV hardware is found at “apple.com/apple-tv.” At “apple.com/tv,” you will find a completely different page: Here, all TV-related entertainment offerings—including hardware and HomePod as well as services—are summarized on one page. “tv.apple.com,” on the other hand, leads directly to the web version of Apple TV+, but that has always been the case. Observers are currently waiting for a new Apple TV model soon to appear. Perhaps Apple will choose a new name here—or write the “4K” a bit larger.
Apple has long had brand peculiarities
Apple has not shied away from pursuing rather inconsistent branding in the past either. For example, “Pro” on the Mac means the middle model of the Apple Silicon chips, “Max” the largest (supplemented by “Ultra” on the Mac Studio and Mac Pro). On the iPhone, however, “Pro” stands for the highest SoC configuration (e.g., A19 Pro), with an additional variant called “Pro Max,” where “Max” denotes the screen size.
Confusing combinations are also possible. For example, you can buy a MacBook Pro M4 Pro (in addition to the MacBook Pro M4 and the MacBook Pro M4 Max). The designation “Air” does not always stand for the thinnest model. For example, the iPad Pro M4 is thinner than the iPad Air M3. On the iPhone, the Air is again the thinnest model.
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