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Apple Reportedly Exploring Producing Original TV Shows
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Wait, so what was the "think different" advertisement all about then? A way just to manipulate customers? I don't think that was its intent, do you?
If the quality of the exclusives is high, then yes.
Let me get this straight, are you saying it is very easy to produce a successful and profitable movie? Like all you need is to start with $50 million, then "hire" the right people and wham, next year you have $70 million from the proceeds of your movie. Or is it hard and the people who are doing this have spent decades of their life working their way up through the movie industry and even then most of their movies are economic failures. Just the hits are so big it is okay.
How would Apple compete with the guys in Hollywood? Is it just that Apple has money? The studios in Hollywood have no shortage of access to cash. So I don't see much advantage for Apple there.
Apple needs to go back to a thousand noes for every yes. I'm not convinced they need to do this just like I wasn't convinced they need to spend $3 billion on Beats. Apple could easily have set up a nice and simple streaming music service similar to Google Play Music for a lot less than $3B. Instead they're trying to boil the ocean with a user experience that is quite overwhelming and a UI that is not incredibly user friendly. We don't need Connect, we don't need radio stations. I can pull up the TuneIn app any day of the week on my iOS devices and listen to Radio 1 or thousands of other radio stations. I don't need Beats 1. What's the point?
Yes, it is. Of course, there are flops as well, but studios do exist to have a portfolio of movies, to reduce the risk and spread it over large variety of films, so even if some flop, some bring profit, so on average you end up with profit. Otherwise, all studios would disappear in few years, but they don't, don't they?
Good movie's ingredients are well known, of course, good directors, good looking stars, nice scenario and etc. Thats why Hollywood is called industry, not art. Investing into this industry can have good profits and hits, just witness Steve Jobs becoming a billionaire on strength of 3D lamp company, Pixar. Steve knew everything about movies, that why he invested in the movie company which brought incredible money to him, later to Disney, made him Disney owner. Steve Jobs has been one of largest investors in Hollywood.
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Not explicitly, but the implicit message behind it..
Perhaps.
Or what about Apples philosophy when it comes to environmental impact? Values? Or are you just going to say a value must be explicitly named "value," or otherwise it isn't one?
People, ready infrastructure, all licenses and permits are ready, no needless delays, paperwork, everything is just working. And Apple loves when everything just working. So why have a headache of creating something new when you can buy and get money back by selling more headphones? And you get all contracts with artists ready, all streaming deals done already, nice. Basically, they didn't lose a single penny in that. I bet that Beats already brought Apple enough money to justify the buy, mainly through saving time and funds and also through headphone sales which now sell at every Apple Store. Maybe it will take few more years but eventually those 3 billion will be money well spent. You get entire streaming industry for that.
Oh man, what values are in using recycled plastics? its just the way things done, reducing environmental impact. Companies have to do it.
If Jobs was alive, he would just make Disney and Pixar make exclusives for AppleTV. Those exclusives would have let's say 6 month exclusive access on AppleTV and thats it. Later they would sell it to everyone, but first to Apple only. The reason Jobs didn't do it before, because AppleTV probably was not a money making proposition, it was a tool for iTunes.
Ok, most large companies do it. Kudos to Apple, of course. I don't think its real Apple value, but everyone entitled to his own opinion, of course. Anyway, thats doesn't have to do it with the topic and Clarkson wouldn't be required to wear Apple logo T-shirt everyday and look at iPads only. Actually, Apple may receive money for promoting, say, Dell's notebooks on the program. Its a different business, you know.
Company executives float conflicting information all the time to mislead and keep competitors guessing. I'm sure everyone is aware of Jobs' misleading strong pronouncements. Also, times change, excellent opportunities arise. I have no problem with that. Unless someone here is privy to Apple's plans and inside information it's all a guess.
As to whether a certain future direction would be good or bad, how could anyone on the outside draw a conclusion without the benefit of inside information only available to Apple? There's tremendous breadth within Apple. Anything is possible. The often trotted out and reflexive Apple is being stretched too thin is tiresome.
There was a time when I thought Apple should do something like this. That time probably passed about 2 years ago. Right now Apple is just doing too much. This is probably the reason Apple has released nothing but sub par software for a few years now. Here are some examples:
1. Apple Maps- Although I use Apple maps and I have very few issues with it, it could be much better and it says something that it actually generated an apology from the company as well as the firing of a top exec.
2. Apple Music- I'm a paying streaming customer. I used Spotify. Being a loyal Apple customer I switched to Beats when Apple bought them and although it was missing a few features (namely a queue) the product was great. In many ways it was better than Spotify. The UI was better and frankly just made more sense. It organized albums and songs much better than Spotify as well. So naturally when Apple announced Apple Music I was excited. I was going to get some of the features that were missing in Beats, a bigger library of songs, and I'd be able to merge my iTunes library with my streaming library. There were even rumors it might be cheaper.
I've had problems from the very start of using Apple Music. Although I eventually got it, at first I couldn't import my Beats library into AM. Then as I began to use it I realized that the AM interface was a little confusing and in my opinion, a step backwards from Beats. Beats had great organization for albums and songs. It organized an artists albums chronologically and it put the release date by the album so that you could explore an artist and have some context. Beats also had tabs for things like compilations and EPs. By separating this I could go look up an older artist like the Talking Heads and get a much better idea of their discography on Beats than I currently can on AM.
The last thing I will say about AM is that I have had more issues with bugs than I've ever had with any other piece of Apple software. I have to restart my phone multiple times a day. It's constantly asking me to sign up as a paying member although I am already signed up. Needless to say, "it just works" doesn't seem to apply to this product. It sucks because they forced me to leave a product that did work. I intend to stick with it for the time being, but Apple really needs to work out some issues.
3. iCloud- Although this has gotten better it's still not good. I was especially excited for the new release of photos because I was hopeful that it would allow me to better organize my library on all my devices. Unfortunately there still isn't very good tools for organizing photos how you want them. I still have to save a photo to the "all photos" album and then copy it into the album that I actually want it in. Apple should allow us to have more control over the albums instead of just having these defaults and then they should have a "save to" button that allows us to choose which album we want to put the image in.
These are just a few examples, but with Apple working on desktops, laptops, watches, phones, ipods, Apple Pay, cars, iPads, streaming, iCloud, yearly software upgrades, Siri, Apple TV, etc. The last thing I want to hear is that they are now trying to produce some content. They've been moving quickly into a lot of areas and I think it's come at the expense of quality. They need to refocus.
1. Apple Maps- Although I use Apple maps and I have very few issues with it, it could be much better and it says something that it actually generated an apology from the company as well as the firing of a top exec.
2. Apple Music- I'm a paying streaming customer. I used Spotify. Being a loyal Apple customer I switched to Beats when Apple bought them and although it was missing a few features (namely a queue) the product was great. In many ways it was better than Spotify. The UI was better and frankly just made more sense. It organized albums and songs much better than Spotify as well. So naturally when Apple announced Apple Music I was excited. I was going to get some of the features that were missing in Beats, a bigger library of songs, and I'd be able to merge my iTunes library with my streaming library. There were even rumors it might be cheaper.
I've had problems from the very start of using Apple Music. Although I eventually got it, at first I couldn't import my Beats library into AM. Then as I began to use it I realized that the AM interface was a little confusing and in my opinion, a step backwards from Beats. Beats had great organization for albums and songs. It organized an artists albums chronologically and it put the release date by the album so that you could explore an artist and have some context. Beats also had tabs for things like compilations and EPs. By separating this I could go look up an older artist like the Talking Heads and get a much better idea of their discography on Beats than I currently can on AM.
The last thing I will say about AM is that I have had more issues with bugs than I've ever had with any other piece of Apple software. I have to restart my phone multiple times a day. It's constantly asking me to sign up as a paying member although I am already signed up. Needless to say, "it just works" doesn't seem to apply to this product. It sucks because they forced me to leave a product that did work. I intend to stick with it for the time being, but Apple really needs to work out some issues.
3. iCloud- Although this has gotten better it's still not good. I was especially excited for the new release of photos because I was hopeful that it would allow me to better organize my library on all my devices. Unfortunately there still isn't very good tools for organizing photos how you want them. I still have to save a photo to the "all photos" album and then copy it into the album that I actually want it in. Apple should allow us to have more control over the albums instead of just having these defaults and then they should have a "save to" button that allows us to choose which album we want to put the image in.
These are just a few examples, but with Apple working on desktops, laptops, watches, phones, ipods, Apple Pay, cars, iPads, streaming, iCloud, yearly software upgrades, Siri, Apple TV, etc. The last thing I want to hear is that they are now trying to produce some content. They've been moving quickly into a lot of areas and I think it's come at the expense of quality. They need to refocus.
Well, for largest company in the world, they are incredibly focused. Just one model of smartphone at a time, one desktop, one all in all, few notebooks, few tablets. Thats all in hardware. In software, few Pro apps. A big online store, one for everything, but thats it. It is not spread too much in any business sense. If Apple had hotels, electric machinery, insurance (like Sony), TVs, construction, real estate, etc, yes, you could say its a bit diversified, but that because most large companies, and Apple IS the largest in the world, do invest in various industries to avoid being tied a single industry. But Apple is not really that much diversified. Most of its income comes from smartphones.
Tim Cook hasn't typically done that though. But I don't think Cook is the one pushing for this. It sounds like Eddy Cue is driving this just like he did the Beats acquisition. Cook is the one that needs to say no.
You don't grow, or even maintain, a $200B with half a dozen products.
As several posters have mentioned previously, one has to wonder what type of original programming would be "pure" enough to be Apple labeled.
Cook and company are so disgustingly politically correct in every aspect of their operation, it is extremely difficult to imagine an Apple produced "House of Cards" or "Orange is the New Black", etc.
There is no way to produce sharp, edgy, relevant and/or witty content if the rule is "Offend No-one".
Cook and company are so disgustingly politically correct in every aspect of their operation, it is extremely difficult to imagine an Apple produced "House of Cards" or "Orange is the New Black", etc.
There is no way to produce sharp, edgy, relevant and/or witty content if the rule is "Offend No-one".
I think you assume too much. For best model, look at Disney Pictures and its affiliated or partner movie companies: Touchstone, Pixar, Dreamworks, Miramax, Dimension films, Marvel with its superheroes, Lucasfilm. Not bad for company (Disney) whose largest single shareholder has been Steve Jobs, huh? I don't know what you mean by edgy, but how about Existenz, for example?
The problem I would envision is putting an Apple brand or endorsement on whatever production facility was created. Just look at their policies with regard to approving/rejecting apps. Would they be willing to be associated with an original production such as "The Brink", an HBO original series?