Apple is ready to unveil their big bet on television

“Steve Jobs told his biographer in 2011 that Apple had ‘finally cracked’ a winning formula for television,” Tim Bradshaw and Anna Nicolaou report for Financial Times. But eight years later, his successor Tim Cook is still trying to win a place in his customers’ living rooms.”
“Now, after several false starts, Apple is ready to unveil its latest vision for TV, with an event at its Cupertino headquarters next week titled ‘It’s show time,'” Bradshaw and Nicolaou report. “Mr Cook’s latest bet is that an acceleration in cord-cutting and the proliferation of streaming services has created a new role for Apple as aggregator. Apple wants to reinvent the TV guide with a personalised slate of programming drawn from a wide range of sources, including a few shows of its own.”
“Its existing ‘TV’ app, which is already available on iPhones and iPads as well as the Apple TV box itself, is designed around each individual viewer’s favourite series, with personalised recommendations for other TV and movies drawn from a wide range of providers,” Bradshaw and Nicolaou report. “[Apple] now has more than 30 series in the works from big-name talents including Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg. Apple just needs one those original shows to become a hit — perhaps its new drama starring Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston, a sci-fi epic based on Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels, or a mystery thriller from Sixth Sense director M Night Shyamalan — to pull in viewers to its TV app… Apple has provided little information about the March 25 event, even to the studios whose shows will appear as part of its new video bundle. ”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Unlike with iPhone events, the mystery abounds. What will it cost? Will original content cost anything? How, exactly, will it work? What are the shows? How good (or bad) are they? Who will join and who, along with Netflix, will not? Etc.
We can’t wait for the 25th!
SEE ALSO:
Netflix won’t take part in Apple’s upgraded TV app – March 18, 2019
Apple’s original content: Free to owners of Apple devices – March 18, 2019
Analyst: Apple is planning to give billions of dollars in video content away for free – March 18, 2019
Apple patent application for Apple TV interface reveals aspects of live TV streaming service – February 5, 2019
Apple’s deep bench of original programming continues to grow – January 18, 2019
Apple plans to give away original content for free to device owners as part of new digital TV strategy – October 10, 2018