Apple’s First Foray into Original TV Is a Series About Apps | Hacker News Reader

Apple’s First Foray into Original TV Is a Series About Apps

nytimes.com

48 pointsjackgavigan50 comments

I find the concept of a TV show that can only be seen on certain devices and OSes to be sad.

I guess we've been trending in this direction for a while (no Amazon Prime Streaming app on Apple TV, for instance).

Fracturing of content-delivery-devices, hooray.

TV set in 2019: Apple TV, Fire TV, Chromecast, Settop from Cable provider, Kodi box, PS4 with Vue, all hooked in to a Roku-branded Smart TV. And also that Harmony Remote no longer works because each of those devices have proprietary APIs for their now-mandatory voice interface mics.

Or: one media center / seedbox accessing all pirated content you might ever want.

Not that I have it -- I don't own TVs, they're so '90s.

Put.io + Chromecast is pretty much all you need to view most popular content in minutes.

Why not? TV is larger then a computer monitor.

AirPlay from the Amazon Video app on iOS to an Apple TV works fine.

>no Amazon Prime Streaming app on Apple TV, for instance

I was under the impression they were working on that, [0] seems to agree with that

0) http://exstreamist.com/when-will-amazon-prime-be-on-apple-tv...

It'll last this way until a few of them start to lose money, then they'll sell off the division to some independent group (probably Comcast) that will offer all these shows in a single payment model.

I wonder if this is as close as we'll get to the "a-la carte" tv show utopia.

I find the concept of a TV show that can only be seen with certain cable subscriptions equally sad. It's just exclusivity contracts, just like pay-per-view and channels like HBO and sports channels, and video game exclusives, and applications only being available on specific operating systems, etc.

> just like pay-per-view and channels like HBO

It's not like that, because HBO doesn't cost as much as an Apple device. You can subscribe to HBO, watch whatever you want, and unsubscribe. You only paid for the content.

> sports channels

The most popular sports in the US are available on the networks. Minor sporting events are available for a small extra fee, regardless of your cable or satellite provider. Many are streamed over the internet by ESPN. Again, you can watch what you want without spending as much as an Apple device would cost.

> video game exclusives

It costs far more to port a video game than it does to simply stream your video content to other devices.

> applications only being available on specific operating systems

Again, much more expensive and time-consuming than just opening up streaming options for users.

The two largest collegiate championships (football and basketball) this year are cable only. That's been a growing trend over the past few years. The only two sports that are consistently on network TV during the "regular season" are the NFL (except Monday and Thursday) and major golf tournaments.

HBO’s online streaming thingy is $15/month. For someone who doesn’t have a cable subscription, that would be pretty steep to watch one or two shows.

> You can subscribe to HBO, watch whatever you want, and unsubscribe. You only paid for the content.

You can buy a used Apple TV on ebay for $20–30. You can buy one, watch what you want, and then resell it for approximately the same price you paid for it. On balance, you’ll be out the cost of one-way shipping. (This is assuming it doesn’t break in between. If it breaks, you can still resell it for $5–10 for parts.)

Ew. This sounds very tasteless.

How about doing something creative and that's not navel gazing or better yet use this money on OS X.

Why is this tasteless? App discovery is a huge problem in the app store with the amount of apps out there. I don't know the premise of the show, but I could see it being really cool if they brought some of the small teams behind apps to light and told their stories. Who cares who the host is if he does a good job? I for one think it has the potential to be an interesting show that is different from whats out there already.

I think this is a good counter to my gut reaction. I think that would be an interesting show to watch as well but I don't think that'd appeal to a broader audience at all and the particular host also speaks to that direction being unlikely. I'd love to be surprised.

If they want ideas for shows, how about life at uni, in the us, for the year 2016. Over here in Europe, we either get the view that it is like back in revenge of the nerds movies, or worse, stuff like this:

Http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-24/emory-students-scared-pain-after-safe-space-violated-word-trump-written-chalk

Hopefully it is not like revenge of the nerds in 2016, and hopefully it is also not full of students crying in "safe" spaces.

Might even be interesting!

You're getting downvoted because Trump is anti-intellectual, anti-small-business, and anti-American.

Everyone should feel violated by even knowing he exists. He is everything America isn't. If he becomes President (very unlikely), say goodbye to the Valley, say goodbye to every startup scene in this country, and watch the money flee to pro-business nations.

Side note, I expect to be also downvoted for my view (and for discussing politics on HN at all), but I don't really care.

> Side note, I expect to be also downvoted for my view

If anything, I expect you're likely to be downvoted for your statement that 'Everyone should feel violated by even knowing he exists', rather than because you don't support Trump.

I don't support Trump, but I don't feel violated for knowing he exists.

It's hate speech. Misogynist, racist, anti-intellectual and isolationist with bonus lying and flip flopping. If you don't feel violated, do you at least feel offended?

I feel offended by a lot of what he says.

He is not the first, and neither will he be the last U.S. politician (or even presidential candidate) to make me feel that way.

In any case, the answer to offensive speech is more speech that educates, not shrill denunciations of the person making that speech.

> If he becomes President (very unlikely)

Quite likely, IMO.

> He is everything America isn't.

Are you sure about that? Because he seems to be everything that America is or aspires to be (loud, brash, opinionated, ignorant, rich, etc...). I personally can't think of a more "American" candidate than Trump...

  Apple announced on Thursday that it was working with the 
  entertainer Will.i.am

Welp, this is going to be a trainwreck.

Are you kidding? Will.i.am making a tv show about apps? 2008 pop culture won't know what hit it!

/taps on i.am+ Dial smartwatch to set a reminder to DVR/

Came here to write just that!

No. It will be a blockbuster success. Apple will "buy" copies of whatever comes from this and push it to umpteen million apple products. Instant top seller. Instant award winner.

Once upon a time people complained about large publishing corps owning both the content and the platform. Apple has taken it a step further by owning the content, the platform, and now even the customers. Synergy.

My jaw is still dropped from 2014 when Apple forced their music of choice onto every iPhone in the world and wouldn't let you delete it.

http://www.wired.com/2014/09/apples-devious-u2-album-giveawa...

You can delete it from your library and it was a pretty honest mistake on their part.

They "purchased" the U2 album on behalf of the users but they clearly forgot that the default was to download that album automatically in the background.

I doubt they forgot that. It was a clever marketing stunt: drop the album into the library of every iTunes user. And it worked. They probably anticipated some backlash.

> they clearly forgot

Forgetting is something individuals do. It's not something done by massive companies with thousands of employees, including large PR and legal teams. This decision would have been part of whatever contract was signed with U2.

Come now - this would mean that companies never make stupid mistakes. They do. Often.

Yes, they do, but mistakes are often bad decisions, not simple forgetfulness.

Dozens of people working on a deal over the course of many months don't "forget" a core feature of the way their most important product works. They might make a bad decision, but they don't all suddenly come down with amnesia about how their own devices work.

They really do. The dishwasher draw jams every. Damn. Time. The coffee machine I'm currently using should be binned, as every feature is terrible. Spotify navigation on iOS consists of me hitting back, back, back, back back, back, back, back each time I open it. The fridge has coloured leds inside that look like a 90s Night club and are on when the fridge is closed. This is from the last 10 minutes. Companies basically suck at making things good.

They definitely do but for every iOS user to simultaneously start downloading the same U2 album, they must have added tons of extra redundancy in place for the servers not to go down. That would have been a huge unexpected amount of requests for a single album if they had actually "forgotten" about it.

How big is an MP3 album? 20MB? Maybe 30MB? That's nothing. Their global CDN can handle that without sweating.

Yes! And while we're on the subject, how about the unfair dominance of Internet Explorer?

I don't follow music pop culture, can anyone explain why? Has Will.i.am been in scandle or been unsuccessful in the past?

His smartwatch wasn't successful and some people don't like his music which translates to a lack of confidence this this show will be successful.

Which is a shame because at the end of the day he is an entrepreneur and giving it a shot. Much better than most of the other artists which just sing other people's songs and look pretty.

Black Eyed Peas are considered somewhat low-brow and tacky, as perhaps all dance-y pop acts tend to be. Then there was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deoOTqT-SMI

In my opinion, he's used often as a prop by companies who want to try to inject 'hip'-ness in to a product, and it screams r/fellowkids. He has tried to promote a bunch of products that have ended up complete failures (2 smartwatches so far), but is bandied about as this 'tech celebrity'.

Intel made him a "director of creative innovation" for no reason whatsoever. 3D Systems made him "Chief Creative Officer".

He tried to sell a $475 iphone case that added a lens and made it look like an old digital camera:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/feb/01/william-ip...

Basically, he is used to confer some artistic legitimacy to stogy corporations (not to say he isn't an artist, he has done very well in music) and in return these companies confer unearned tech legitimacy upon him, creating this cycle of forced legitimacy.

This gem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz2MPcsZJcM

http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/5/7162861/will-i-am-puls-sma...

Well, that's 4 minutes and 51 seconds I'll never get back.

Why can't Apple just stick with what it's good at?

Well it wasn't very good at PDAs but we got the iPhone...

I'm not sure what Apple's good at anymore. Hardware, I guess? Maybe?

Apparently they can push FBI around like it's a little baby. The list of entities who can do that is pretty short...

I'm reminded of the incredibly bad "Silicon Valley" (not the HBO one, which is amazing - but the one by Randi Zuck...) and how REALLY REALLY bad that was - I doubt Apple will fail that bad, but we will see.

Will.i.am got Apple boom boom pow.

If this isn't Apple jumping the shark I don't know what it would be....

Reply on news.ycombinator.com