Hmmm, the notifications started after I installed Apple Sports, but yes, they open the Apple TV app. It’s all intertwined, I suppose. Thanks for pointing that out.
But you’re right, I’m definitely not getting notifications of the minutiae that you listed. (Thank heavens.)
Do you have the Dynamic Text size bumped up? That might account for it.
Thanks, for the tip, Adam. While my Dynamic Text size is mid-range, I do run my iPhone with my Display Zoom set to Larger Text.
The example game I showed above displays legibly when I set the Display Zoom setting to Default:
I run numerous sports data applications on my phone that seemingly know how to behave when they encounter my settings.
I get the feeling Apple just doesn’t test stuff that might affect 1 in 10 users and relies on their customers to send feedback. Another example of this: through iOS 16, the eight Siri Suggestions apps would display neatly on two lines, as of iOS 17, it’s three:
This does seem pretty dumb that it wasn’t tested.
FWIW, you can set custom text sizes by app. Settings / Control Center and make sure that you add the text size widget. Then with Sports running, open control center, tap the “Aa” icon, set it for Sports only (at the bottom, rather than All Apps). 85% seems to work for NBA scores.
Do some searches for fitness apps and workout apps in the App Store. The number and variety exercise apps currently there is quite amazing. I’ll bet the farm that there will be a great variety and a lot of workout apps that will be written specifically for Vision Pro available in the App Store very soon. And it’s no secret that Apple had recently begun working with current developers to ramp up their fitness, training and health apps asap.
At the moment Apple is emphasizing professional league sports apps for Vision Pro, probably because they can bring in bigger bucks at the moment. I’ll bet the farm Apple is working with developers to build and/or update their apps, and will be featuring upgraded fitness, training, health and relaxation, etc. in the App Store for Vision Pro very soon.
“ Apple announces more than 600 new apps built for Apple Vision Pro - Apple
I appreciate the USA is a decent sized market for Apple (35% of sales) but sometimes they forget the other 65% aren’t that interested in their sports. As an Aussie I couldn’t name a US hockey or baseball team and I only know the football Chiefs because Taylor Swift was just here. The only basketball teams I know are the Lakers (Magic Johnson + Kareem) and the team Luc Longley played for (Chicago?). Even as a motorsport tragic I’d never watch a Nascar or Indy race.
It bothers me a little when Apple One subs rise just after they announce big new deals for US sports. I can’t see the new Sports App ever residing on my devices.
BTW I don’t mean any of this as a sledge on US sports but it’s akin to the interest Americans have in cricket, Australian Rules or Rugby.
I am nothing resembling a sports fan; I can barely tell the difference between a baseball or football. But I am very interested in how Apple continues to grow in the extremely popular broadcast major league sports market, and how they are slowly but surely growing in popularity in a very demanding marketplace.
And I think that live sports fans will be a good market for Vision Pro.
Betting odds aren’t just useful for betting, they’re an easy indication of who’s likely to win, which is probably why they’re there.
Most gambling sites/venues use parimutuel betting. That is, after the house takes a cut, all of the money collected by the bettors is divided among all the winners. The effect is that the payout odds (that are announced and constantly updated until they stop taking bets) are a measure of who the majority is betting on and is in no way related to the actual event that is being bet on.
Those that don’t use parimutuel betting instead choose odds based on some kind of expert analysis. So the odds will reflect what those experts expect the result to be.
In other words, the odds don’t indicate who is likely to win. They indicate who the bettors (or the odds-makers) think is likely to win - which is not always the same thing.
I will say this: Jason Snell’s sixcolors.com interview with Eddie Cue said:
It turns out that those scores, fed from Apple to the TV app and the Apple TV and a few select other places, are from a data source that Eddy Cue also cares about a lot. He’s been pushing it to be as close to real time as is technologically possible, right down to watching his phone and comparing it to the scoreboard at a Warriors game. And now that data source is driving Apple’s latest app, a free iPhone app called Apple Sports, which is debuting today.
“I just want to get the damn score of the game,” Cue says. “And it’s really hard to do, because it seems like it’s nobody’s core [feature].” In a sports data world increasingly driven by fantasy and betting, Apple’s not trying to build an adjunct to some other app business model. (There are some betting lines displayed in the app, but there’s also a setting down in the Settings app to turn them off if you don’t want to see them.)
I did some testing today while games were being played and compared them with the iPhone app TheScore, which is my go-to app for sports scores, and Apple’s app really does do a better job staying absolutely current, down to the actual time of the game. (Well, it was hard to test on one game that was streaming on Peacock, as the stream was behind the display in both apps.) For soccer/football the Apple app is better, as they show the time past with seconds as well as minutes - TheScore just does 87’ when the game is in the 87th minute.
This is probably most critical of all for what seems to be Eddie Cue’s favorite sport, basketball, which has score changes far more frequently than soccer/football, hockey, and baseball, when that starts up in the app.
TheScore is very good but it seems to update far less frequently for the hockey and basketball games I was checking.
They indicate who the bettors (or the odds-makers) think is likely to win - which is not always the same thing.
I mean, of course not. But betting markets are probably the best mechanism humans have invented for predicting the future.
I’m a soccer fan and I’ve been following the sport since the mid-1990s. I noticed that in Apple’s MLS broadcasts this season they’ve been periodically posting an “odds” chart during the game. It shows the odds for each team to win and the chances of a draw. Naturally this changes throughout the game, depending on what’s happening. For example, if the home team scores, their chances of a win go way up.
I have no idea how they’re calculating these odds (or if they are betting odds). I have never seen a graphic like this in 25+ years of watching soccer. Seems like something Apple has added.
I cannot for the life of me figure out the purpose of this “statistic.” It’s not like it’s useful. It is in no way related to reality. (Spoiler alert) Yesterday my hometown Timbers were winning 2-0 and their odds of a win were almost 95%. The game finished 2-2. So much for those odds.
It has me wondering, along with Apple’s release of their Sport app, if Apple is catering to sports gambling like ESPN.
I loathe online betting, its ads and the absolute misery it brings many families. I don’t gamble (on anything) and I simply hate seeing constant references to it. It robs me of the enjoyment of watching a game for the pure entertainment value.
As a shareholder, I’d be pretty disgusted if Apple were getting into gambling of any description.
I agree that I haven’t seen it during a broadcast, but it’s been a thing for a while. Here is a graphic from the ESPN app for a game summary yesterday:
FWIW when Apple began broadcasting Friday night baseball a couple of years ago they would show advanced stats and probabilities as the game progressed as well. See the details to the bottom right here:
If you’re interested, I found an article that details where these stats come from.
I would say that they’re the best mechanism for determining consensus about the future.
How well that correlates with the real future is going to depend a lot on what is being bet on and the level of expertise of the people doing the betting. Probably a high correlation for major sports. Significantly less for other kinds of events.
What better mechanism exists for predicting the future?
Any wisdom of the crowd model that doesn’t introduce the skewing of betting?
So people are more likely to be honest and accurate in their predictions when it’s costless to be wrong?
So people don’t do dumb things when money’s concerned?
