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This thread is rife with the same problem that many discussions here on MR has: too many people way too confident in their own opinions.

You must be reading a different thread

I see mostly people agreeing with Apple's own decision to cut back on something that isn't working

It's hard to argue "it's working" when the company funding it says "it's not"
 
It is not Tim Cook, it is Eddie Cue. Apple TV+ and Apple Music just dont compete well against Netflix / Disney + or Spotify. It is sad that Apple is chasing the services growth at all cost.

Even at 30M and $10 per sub, that is $3.6B per year. And Apple has reportedly poured in over $20B already. Not only was the first 1 to 2 year of Apple TV+ completely free, a lot of the 30M joined much later, and not everyone paid full price. Making the whole revenue over past 4 years much less than $10B.

That is a $10B loss on AppleTV+ so far.
 
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The only thing I really like about the current "future" is the App nature of it (device options and portability) and the lack of contracts.

I think many people were actually quite happy with the actual "product" of Cable TV ... it just got way too expensive and onerous

..and in the last 15 years has really filled up with total and complete garbage content on many channels.

When "The Weather Channel" turned into reality TV shows and almost no "Weather", one knew it was going in a bad direction

I do love the ability to add channels when I want, and if I get tired of it or need to save some money, I can just cancel the subscription. I don't think I'll ever do a contract for satellite or anything else like that. Because we can do that, my mom finally got rid of Dish Network.
 
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That's not surprising.

I somehow doubt that people at Apple even use the horrible UI, especially on the TV app.

Somehow in a similar way the photos app on the iphone hasn't been touched in years. Do people at Apple really use the photos app? Why would one want to view albums as a list? Let's keep it complicated instead.

But somehow magically one can view photo albums as a list on the iPad.
 
I like Apple TV+'s content quite a lot. I find the quality very consistent from program to program. What drives me crazy is only 10 episodes a season, then you have to wait a year or more for a story to continue. By that time your emotional investment in the characters has evaporated, the young actors are a year or more older and taller, and major plot lines are a distant memory. I know this is the same model all streamers use, but if Apple wants to build an audience, longer seasons and quicker turnarounds would go a long way.

Specifically in Foundation's case, spend less $ per episode (less elaborate sets, locations, and extras would be fine...), but spread it out to more episodes, and move the plot along faster.

Keep the audience's attention you've fought so hard to get.
 
I do love the ability to add channels when I want, and if I get tired of it or need to save some money, I can just cancel the subscription. I don't think I'll ever do a contract for satellite or anything else like that. Because we can do that, my mom finally got rid of Dish Network.

And the only reason the streaming services don't try contracts again is because of the portability of the product which creates actual competition -- something sorely lacking all over the business landscape
 
Keep the audience's attention you've fought so hard to get.

Well said -- that's how they lost me on For All Mankind

Way too much time off between really short seasons and I just ... barely bothered again after really long layoff .. watched an episode here and there and wasn't as into it anymore
 
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Apple TV+ is the only streaming service I subscribe to all year long. I enjoy a lot of their shows and they all are in 4K Dolby Vision which is a plus on an OLED TV.

They should market the service and the shows more. Almost everybody I know have no clue about Apple TV+. The few that know about the service only know about Ted Lasso and The Morning Show and aren't interested by them. Apple marketed these two shows a lot, but stayed quiet about the others and it's a shame.

Waiting almost 2 years (sometimes more) between two 8 episodes seasons is a bummer also.
 
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I like Apple TV+'s content quite a lot. I find the quality very consistent from program to program. What drives me crazy is only 10 episodes a season, then you have to wait a year or more for a story to continue. By that time your emotional investment in the characters has evaporated,
I dont find this at all.
the young actors are a year or more older and taller, and major plot lines are a distant memory.
Usually the recaps do a good job.
I know this is the same model all streamers use, but if Apple wants to build an audience, longer seasons and quicker turnarounds would go a long way.
For sure would like quicker turnarounds.
Specifically in Foundation's case, spend less $ per episode (less elaborate sets, locations, and extras would be fine...), but spread it out to more episodes, and move the plot along faster.

Keep the audience's attention you've fought so hard to get.
One show I don’t watch.
 
Not enough content feeding through to keep a subscription full time. I tend to watch the major shows in a 2-3month period each year. I would probably keep it longer if there were more like :

Masters of the Air, Foundation, Dark Matter, Invasion, For all Mankind , Silo, & Morning Show being my main go back to shows.
 
if they're not going to buy someone out and massively expand their library that way, then they should just forget the whole of TV+ and concentrate on the apple tv box and maybe make a TV with the apple box already built in, like Sky Glass
 
Maybe making stuff people want to watch while also stopping overspending on Hollywood cliché shows will bring some viewers to platform.

Why should i waste time of some boring Morning Show while I can watch House of Dragons or other top tier TV show for less money.

*(Maybe just buy HBO for this billions that were spend on crappy Apple shows to capture some viewer-base and let them <HBO> create shows for you was the move. Right now there are like 3/4 TV shows worth watching on Apple TV why should people waste time on boring, repetitive and copy-paste titles?)
100%

People complain that Apple TV+ is "too Woke". Which is true, but that's not the real issue; the problem is too OBVIOUS, too PREDICTABLE. The shows would suck just as much if they were anti-woke, same cliches just polarity reversed.

Compare to, say, a show like Mr and Mrs Smith on AMZ. After the first episode you think this is going to be a basic procedural, something like Moonlighting - spy story of the week as they slowly evolve some sort of romance. But it zigs in a very different direction, and just keeps zigging; like every episode was written by a different person (and if you look at the writing credits, that's not far off). This is unnerving if you want a predictable procedural, but most people watching prestige TV do NOT want that anymore.

Each time I buy a new Apple device I get my free month (or whatever it is) of Apple TV+; and I try an episode if each series. And pretty much every one of them feels like what I say - predictable, boring, seen it before. If your villain is some "evil company"I don't CARE whether that's a woke or anti-woke story line, I care that it's a stupid boring storyline.
And claiming it "has relevance" just makes it worse; what that tells me is that the storyline is CONCENTRATED cliches - not just the cliches of a single mind, but the cliches of the entire Twitterverse, all gathered in a single 30 or 60 minutes for me to ignore. You, the creatives, have so little to say that the only way you can put together your pathetic little show is to read the newspaper for ideas...
 
Not enough content feeding through to keep a subscription full time. I tend to watch the major shows in a 2-3month period each year. I would probably keep it longer if there were more like :

Masters of the Air, Foundation, Dark Matter, Invasion, For all Mankind , Silo, & Morning Show being my main go back to shows.

The weird thing about their approach is, to your point, they created a bunch of content far more suited to one time purchase (vs subscription)
 
Each time I buy a new Apple device I get my free month (or whatever it is) of Apple TV+; and I try an episode if each series. And pretty much every one of them feels like what I say - predictable, boring, seen it before.

This is how I feel about the entire company

They need new leadership bringing in actually new and interesting ideas and concepts -- top to bottom
 
After several free trials, I subscribed to Apple TV+ because the quality of the shows was good but these days with the flood of content I find myself mostly watching old series like Perry Mason and Gunsmoke on MeTV and YouTube videos about camping. I piggy back on my sister’s Prime but the only things I watch on that are old shows and again, I haven’t watched anything on it for probably over a month now.

I think a lot of it has to do with the old “Paradox of Choice” conundrum where if you have so many choices you end up not watching anything at all consistently. Plus, living in a northern state, I watch a lot more in the winter than I do in the summer. One thing I do find frustrating is that you never know when the next season is going to drop. Maybe others have figured it out but I haven’t.
 
the live sport would keep me subscribed, but when I tried watching a game it seems you can only watch it live on friday night. unless i'm being really stupid and can't find it (which is totally possible!) then you can't watch a game back later.
If you live in the UK then the time zones make watching live games almost impossible
 
This is the same story across the entire industry. Billions spent on content to anchor streaming services, yet last I saw FreeVee (basically the streaming equivalent of TV Land) is the most watched streaming service. That’s all just old shows…
 
Right?
It's crazy to me they aren't pouring cash into sports

Live sports is the proven single thing that gets folks watching in massive numbers and usually live (which advertisers LOVE)

20 billion buys a LOT of sports rights
And that'$ the crazy thing about live $port$... there are ad break$ built in to the flow of the game$. You can legitimately $tick adverti$ement$ into game$ that people have already "paid" for with their $ub$cription and mo$t people won't mind. Certainly no wor$e than looking at a $creen $aying "Action will resume $oon" and it gives the $treamer an extra revenue $ource.
 
And that'$ the crazy thing about live $port$... there are ad break$ built in to the flow of the game$. You can legitimately $tick adverti$ement$ into game$ that people have already "paid" for with their $ub$cription and mo$t people won't mind. Certainly no wor$e than looking at a $creen $aying "Action will resume $oon" and it gives the $treamer an extra revenue $ource.

One would think that Tim Cook would love this!

tim-money-cultcast.jpg
 
the live sport would keep me subscribed, but when I tried watching a game it seems you can only watch it live on friday night. unless i'm being really stupid and can't find it (which is totally possible!) then you can't watch a game back later.
If you live in the UK then the time zones make watching live games almost impossible
Just looked on my iPad and I have an option to go back and watch games from July 12th and 19th. Under Friday Night Baseball is a tile that says Friday Night Baseball Explore it all, which takes me to a list of games that are coming up, but if I swipe left, it shows me the last few weeks of games. Hope that helps.
 
Only reason I have AppleTV is because it's part of Apple One. Otherwise I would just pay for a month here or there when I need it (or find a free promo). I think the show quality is alright overall but you can tell they're trying to get mostly artsy shows that some suit thinks will be an award winner instead of spreading it around and getting just good general entertainment. And a lot of those artsy shows end up falling flat, and/or are really hard to get into.

I like that they added some random movies to the catalog that rotates in and out but I wish the collection was bigger. A sub to AppleTV could also give you something like a discount on purchasing movies for some cross-product pollination, or "buy a movie you rented within the rental period and have the rental fee apply towards the purchase cost" feature.
 
A TV show directly from the book couldn’t be done. People expect the actual impossible.


I think the reality of it is, if that is all people think it is, then they are the ones confused. Apple has produced some amazing content that deserves its place in Hollywood.
I am not sure I know what you mean. All I am saying is that the quality of the current productions alone will not solve their problem (or better stated, help them meet their goals). Netflix has developed their market share over years and without relying on A-List, huge budget productions (remember, Stranger Things was a gamble with few A-List actors, Squid Game was an acquisition, etc.). Apple has great shows, but it doesn't have enough content to be a go-to service for the average viewer. Netflix by production, acquisitions, and syndicated content is a stronger player. I am pleased Apple is not saying, let's just pour more money into A-List projects. I am also pleased that they aren't saying, let's raise the subscription costs based on a flawed model.

Additionally, I am not suggesting that people are confused about all the things Apple TV is. I am saying that because Apple TV is all these things, it doesn't fall under the same category as a streaming service alone. TVOS actually helps you manage your viewing of other streaming services, which makes it odd to think of its streaming service as simply a competitor with Netflix.
 
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