I often like to follow a game in different sports even when I can’t watch or listen to the game. Apple’s Live Activities on the always on iPhone screen is perfect for this. I lay the phone on a table where I can see it as I work on something else. Then I can glance over and get quick updates.
Even though Apple does a good job with the existing sports it implements (MLB and NBA), it still doesn’t cover all sports. NHL is a big omission and it has now been 2 years since this feature was released and they still haven’t added it. I was hoping with the addition of the new Sports app, that this situation would be improved, but for some bizarre reason, you still have to setup live activities from the TV app. Tapping on the live activity on your how screen opens the TV app, instead of Sports. Huh?
I was hoping more apps would tap into this system, but the NHL app doesn’t have this feature at all. MLB does, but it doesn’t do a good a job as Apple. Here is a comparison of the two live activities on my home screen, the top from Apple, the bottom from MLB. They’re both showing the same Yankees game.
You can see in the Apple widget at the top that it tells you more about what is going on, “Juan Soto takes strike looking from Brad Keller”. The mlb widget has no text, just showing Keller as pitcher and Soto as batter.
The next photo shows the point at the At Bat where Soto gets a hit, scoring Jon Berti. MLB just shows that the next batter is up (Judge), but no indication what actually happened with the Soto at bat. You can just infer it from the score going from 3 to 4.
So good job Apple, but they can still do better. Cover more sports and have the widget go to the Sports app (which has box scores and more details of the game) and not the TV app which is not very useful to see what is happening in the game.
I get the feeling this is one of the features that Apple introduced with great fanfare 2 years ago, but has lost interest in improving upon any further.
