It took a while for the latest Amazon Fire TV update to be delivered, but I don't think it was worth the wait. While it offered one new feature that perhaps some households will like, in the end, it is merely an update that puts Amazon behind the curve when it comes to the streaming device interface.

This may be a case of having waited too long and having expectations raised, so let's look back for a bit of background: in September 2020, Amazon announced that it was updating the Fire TV user interface for a "new Fire TV experience" and the OS layout was redesigned. This update took place in December 2020. However, it was not included on all Fire TV devices.

Initially, only the Fire TV Stick 2020 and Fire TV Stick Lite received the update. Then in March of this year, Amazon's Fire TV Cube (both 1st and 2nd generation) and Fire TV Stick 4K finally supported the update.

So the update has been slowly rolling out to my study, and I am only now seeing it.

But first, here's what I actually like about this update.

The big news is the ability to set individual Fire TV user profiles. This is great for customized recommendations and seeing only your own apps. It also makes it easy for everyone in a house with multiple Fire TV devices to get their own personalized experience (to share access to Prime Video) on the same Amazon account. Just because I downloaded "Peacock" for "WWE" doesn't mean that the rest of the family needs to have "Peacock" in the top 5 apps on their home screen (more on that later).

In addition, some apps have a preview row where you can see a list of potential programs related to that program. Surprisingly, some apps have more content displayed here than others; Netflix, Disney Plus, and Hulu have only one row, while Prime Video and IMDbTV (owned by Amazon) have multiple rows. This is the same way with Fire TV, which simply has more of everything Amazon owns.

The Fire TV OS is still mostly a funnel for Amazon content. At the top of the home screen are banners for Prime Video channels you can subscribe to, movies you can rent on Prime Video, and uninteresting shows on Prime Video. On rare occasions, an exception seems to have been made for the HBO Max app's "Game of Thrones" Iron Anniversary stream.

Also, the navigation tabs at the top of the screen are gone, Amazon has moved their content to the "Home," "Search," and "Live" tabs in the center of the screen, and the "Settings" gear on the right is next to the "Apps" button The Apps icon (the box with the three boxes inside) is a little more visible than it was before the cursor I wish it was more obvious, as I had to hover over it to see what it was. When I showed it to my father, he could not guess what it was.

The home screen still contains many ads under the top half of the screen. Perhaps because Amazon knows that people are trained to ignore that half of the content. Scroll down and you will see a row of Sponsored promoting Discovery+ via Prime Video Channels, and if you hover over it, you will see an ad in the upper right corner and hear a sound.

The "Free to me - Amazon Channels" and "Popular TV on Prime Video Channels" rows are a bit annoying, but at this stage I am used to Amazon. The former is definitely neat because it helps me find value in what I'm already paying for, but the latter is full of stuff I'm not interested in (no, I'm not interested in the animated series "Star Trek: The Lower Decks" and I'm done with "The Walking Dead" please).

A few rows further down is sponsored content. Now apps and games. And this process repeats itself like the Instagram Stories carousel. And it repeats like the carousel of Instagram Stories.

This is terrible. Some people may like living like Amazon, but just because you buy a device from one company, you don't want to be forced to be served mainly things from that company's ecosystem. Apple has always been criticized for its walled garden, but it has done a pretty good job of making the tvOS interface clean and ad-free.

No need to look that far to see what Amazon should do.

The next OS 10 update for Roku (which we hope will arrive sooner rather than later) will offer something called Instant Resume. When you launch the app, you can immediately return to your last state; more than 15 channels are supported, including AT&T TV, FOX News Channel, Fubo, Plex, and STARZ.

If this is the case, it would appear that Amazon is truly dedicated to making the streaming experience better. If not, it would appear that Amazon is just adding more ways to distribute its own stuff. And when Amazon's hits are few and far between and you need season 3 of "The Boys" but have to wait a while, it's hard to imagine a streaming life that lives solely within Amazon's walls.