Apple’s streaming service gets harder to tell apart from its streaming app, box

Apple has lightly rebranded its video-on-demand streaming service. The Netflix rival that has brought us critically acclaimed shows and movies like Slow Horses and The Lost Bus has gone from Apple TV+ to Apple TV.

Apple announced the name change today in a press release that was primarily about the film F1: The Movie coming to its streaming service on December 12. Unlike previous announcements, however, today’s release referred to the streaming service as Apple TV, instead of Apple TV+. The announcement reads:

Apple TV+ is now simply Apple TV, with a vibrant new identity.

Apple didn’t specify how its streaming service’s “identity” has changed at all. As of this writing, accessing Apple’s streaming service via a browser or smart TV app still shows the original Apple TV+ branding.

Similar to rival streaming service HBO Max’s recent re-rebrand, or ESPN+ becoming ESPN, this rebrand is rather mild. Still, the change makes Apple’s streaming service slightly harder to differentiate from Apple’s streaming app, which is also named Apple TV, and its streaming boxes, which Apple officially called Apple TVs until 2015, when their official names started including the max resolution that they support (such as: Apple TV 4K). You can have one or two of those offerings without needing the others (although watching Apple’s streaming service on streaming hardware does require Apple’s streaming app).