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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Unlike other streaming networks, Apple TV has a lot of backing from leadership to remain prestige and passion driven, as it's a good loss leader and brand maker for Apple.

For example, look at the zeitgeist Ted Lasso, Severance, Tehran, and Pachinko have all been able to leverage.

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> as it's a good loss leader

Brand maker is hard to argue with because it's so vague, but how does Apple TV function as a loss leader? Isn't the idea of a loss leader that it's supposed to help sell whatever actually makes money?

How does Apple TV sell hardware for Apple? The only person I know with a subscription has an Android phone and Windows laptop and signed up just long enough to watch Severance.

They don’t really need more customers, they just need to keep the ones they have

What is Apple TV doing to accomplish that goal, though? Are you saying there are some fraction of Apple customers who would switch to Android or Windows if Apple didn't have a streaming service?

Do you know many families? I can’t really think of one in my bubble without an Apple One subscription at this point except for the Spotify holdouts.

Bundling the new HBO with Apple Music has got to be very easy to sell.

Apple TV 4K boxes also stream TV+ at a much higher bit rate than any other service but that’s a bit enthusiast.

I don't know a single person in my country with an Apple One subscription.

That's 100 million people right there.

I don’t know if your country has very many upper middle class WEIRD families entirely embedded into the Apple ecosystem, but it’s become noticeably more common here post Ted Lasso era I think.

I don't think Apple makes any content that isn't for Americans do they?

I guess Slow Horses is British but very little of what they air has any real appeal in Asia so no one is going to pay for it.

Pachinko was big in South Korea when both season 1 and 2 were released, and plenty of ad time was given to it in SK.

Arguably Tehran was in a similar position as well, but it was an already existing show on Kan 11 that Apple got the international licensing rights for - same way HBO Max got Sha'at Ne'ila/Valley of Tears.

Don't forget HBO's Homeland and Hatufim/Prisoners of War.

How many people do you know?

I know plenty of families. Including my own. Three of us, with iPhone 16s. Two of us with recent iPads. Three of us with Apple Watches. There's 5 MBPs. Three Apple TV 4Ks, a Mac Studio.

And no Apple One.

"Spotify holdouts" kinda makes it sound like you see them as misguided. I have no love for Spotify. I love Rdio (RIP). Tidal (I loved, but can't see lasting much longer, but it pays quite a bit more to artists than Apple, and a LOT more than Spotify).

Apple TV has a few good original shows.

> Bundling the new HBO with Apple Music has got to be very easy to sell.

Uhh, sure. https://music.apple.com/us/curator/hbo-max/1536480621 - oh good, I can listen to the soundtrack to.... FBoy Island, 12 Dates of Christmas, and some of the reality TV stars of ... Sweet Life: Los Angeles? Maybe we have different definitions of "very easy sell".

I'm surprised Apple Arcade is still a thing. But there it is across all Apple One tiers. Meanwhile to get Fitness and News you have to go to the Premier tier.

Oddly enough, Apple is providing obscure supplemental material for die-hard fans, distributed in e-book form for iDevices. You can read the satirical self-help book The You You Are from Severance for free, but you absolutely must have an iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

Isn't that mostly just a function of it being newer? All the other streaming services focused on being prestige loss leaders in their early years too.

Apple TV+ started in 2019. Hulu and Netflix streaming in 2007. HBO Go in 2010. Etc.

Unlike the other players (except Amazon), Apple is not primarily a streaming company, so it makes it easier to bundle streaming as a loss leader while leaving open the option to do a tuck-in acquisition of high value IP if the opportunity arises (eg. MLS games).

>it's a good loss leader

And that is problem. Old era Apple dont do Loss leaders. Apple TV+, or the services strategy involving News+, Fitness+, Arcade, Music etc are fundamentally different to old / Steve Job's Apple.

All of them were created hoping it is valuable enough so you could subscribe to Apple or "Apple One" in a bid to hide and leverage the $30B raw profits from Google Search and App Store.

Steve once said IIRC in D9, you create a great product, then you figure out the go to market strategy. Right now Apple is the other way around, at least for Services, they figure out the strategy, and then think about what product should go in that strategy.

And Apple could lose a billion a year for decades if it wanted to.

Yep! They probably don't want to and most likely have a plan on better monetizing Apple TV, in the short term the brand making aspect is well worth it for a brand like Apple.

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple TV ends up acquiring a prestige production house at some point, or uses Apple TV to enhance other marketing partnerships with adjacent brands.

Their foray into sports with MLS is a good example

> I wouldn't be surprised if Apple TV ends up acquiring a prestige production house at some point

I agree, AND I’m similarly asking why I agree myself: there were always persistent rumors under Steve that Apple would one day acquire Disney, they were always fun to think about in a “what if” way, _and_ it seems hilariously impractical in retrospect.

Alternatively - and now that I'm thinking about it - I think Apple TV might adopt the A/24 model of purchasing individual movies and shows that they like, and marketing it like crazy.

In fact, that does seem to be Apple TV's model already. For example, Ted Lasso, Mythic Quest, Pachinko, Foundation, Silo, Severance, The Studio, and For All Mankind are all produced by entirely different production houses but licensing for them was acquired by Apple.

There is some crazy stat that apple could stop selling everything they make and still run operations for another 25 years or something wild like that.

Ok, what exactly does this zeitgeist leveraging get for Apple?

Not brand recognition, the brand is well known. Is it some goodwill with…who exactly?

For instance I can see why big corps underwrite public television programs. The audience says “That’s a good company,” and the company talks up its community investment anytime it can.

What is Apple getting for the billion it is spending on TV? Maybe the CEO gets to rub elbows with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon? I’m not seeing what that does for the company, but seriously, sometimes that kind of ego nonsense drives decisions.

Losing $1 billion distracts from the many billions they get from 30% App Store fees.

Fortunately we also have Android with its many high-quality app store alternatives[1] like the Amazon Appstore, and Google Play's low platform fees[2].

[1] https://www.androidauthority.com/best-app-stores-936652/

[2] https://sharpsheets.io/blog/app-store-and-google-play-commis...

In addition to infosample's comment, it also gives Apple a presence in the news that's unambiguously positive over, say, the AI company du jour. (After all, Apple's financials won't tell you about flops.)

Amazon MGM is like that too

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