The flurry of articles about WatchESPN that we published on Wednesday resulted in Twitter and Facebook conversations with a bunch of readers. The question that kept coming up; Basically, “Where are the ‘Tactical Cam’ videos in the iOS app?” was articulated by Ashi Sagati in this tweet:
@daveaiello yah it wasnt available on my ipad. but its a first gen so i assumed my watchespn app isn’t updated. it was available on a pc tho
— Arshi Sagati (@aSagati) June 18, 2014
I said I was going to find the Tactical Cam videos in the iOS app and report where they are, or confirm that they are in fact missing.
I went through the WatchESPN app with a fine-toothed comb, and discovered that the the “Live Now,” “Upcoming,” and “Replay” tabs on iOS are found under each sport. So, you must choose the “Soccer” section, which is accessed from the “Sport” drop-down menu before you see any of these tabs.
See the screengrab at the top of this article. It shows the content of the Soccer page on the WatchESPN app on my iPad.
This is a real head-scratcher, because the Apple TV implementation has a “World Cup 2014” section, which is totally missing on the iOS app. If World Cup 2014 didn’t exist in WatchESPN on Apple TV, I would have chosen Soccer from the Sport tab.
I think this is a usability and consistency issue between WatchESPN app implementations on different Apple platforms.
I’d love to see screenshots of what WatchESPN looks like on Android / Google ChromeCast, on Roku, and other platforms, to see if there’s variability in the UI between the Apple apps and those apps as well.
In any case, now we know where the cool hidden features like Highlight Reel, Tactical Cam, and Portuguese Audio are hiding on iOS. They’re just in a different place from where they are on Apple TV.