Apple TV - Systems Acceptance Tests

Question

These are questions direced to Apple:
1) Do you use Systems Acceptance Tests for the AppleTV software?
2) If yes, will you publish them?
3) Do you agree that some of the issues reported on these forums should be added, if they're not already included, into SATs for the AppleTV software?
The AppleTV is my first real experience of Apple and I have owned in for several years. I am not yet inspired to buy a Mac, even though it is great looking hardware. If only Apple could get the software quality up to the level of the design quality.

Answer 1

I assume that your My Music -> Artists list works perfectly to allow you access to this music.
Let me give you two examples.
1) I have a CD called Fame Academy 2002 where each track is by different artist(s) but collectively they are Fame Academy. So, each track is tagged with Artist being who sang the song, Album Artist as Fame Academy and the 'Part of a compilation' tag is ticked. This seems to match exactly the example you gave.
In My Music -> Artists list, I get an entry for Fame Academy with a picture of the album Fame Academy 2002, but when I select it, nothing happens. Effectively it is finding no songs. There are no entries in the list for any of the artists as in the Artist tag, so I cannot access any of the songs from that album.
2) I have a Christmas compilation album where each song has its associated Artist tag set and the Album Artist tag is clear and the compilation tag is set. Note that in iTunes, it shows the album name under the album artwork and then shows the text 'Various Artists' under the album name. This is NOT taken from the Album Artist tag as this is not set. iTunes works this out by the fact that the Album Artist tag is clear and the Artist tags are different.
In My Music -> Artists, there is an entry for each Artist tag and I can access the songs.
However, if I set the Album Artist tag to 'Various Artists', it appears in iTunes the same, however, in My Music -> Artists, there are no entries for each Artist tag, but there is an entry called Various Artists. The correct album artwork is shown, however there are no songs underneath it.
So, I challenge you to check that you really have got the text 'Various Artists' in the Album Artist tag. Because if you do, then your AppleTV update 2.3 is handling your tags differently to mine. My guess is that the Album Artist tag is clear and you are seeing what iTunes automatically shows when this is case.
By the way, the old saying from where I come from is GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out), but perhaps that's a cultural difference. The saying is true of both software as well as the data. However, as Winston has already pointed out, in this case the AppleTV is handling the correct tag data incorrectly and needs fixing. The job of a professional software engineer is to make allowances for rubbish data, it's called data tolerance.