Week in Review: Everything We’ve Told You About Apple TV Is True; Twitter Tries Yet Another Hail Mary
1. Everything We’ve Told You About Apple TV Is True
For a while now we’ve been reporting on why Apple can’t seem to get their mythical Apple TV going. The TL;DR answer is hubris, but it’s been interesting to see all the various forms that’s taken. From not getting that TV networks rely on advertising revenue to stay afloat to assuming that networks and studios would uncomplainingly bend to their will because they were Apple, their adventures through TV-land often seem like a Coen Brothers movie. It’s all outlined in this phenomenal article by the Wall Street Journal’s Shalini Ramachandran and Daisuke Wakabayashi.
Why It Matters
3 of the big 4 of the tech world (oftentimes called GAFA—Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) reported stellar second quarters. Apple, on the other hand… not so stellar. They are struggling to figure out what happens when everyone who wants an iPhone has one, and when the newest model really doesn’t offer much improvement. (Multilevel touch? Most people gave it a multilevel “no.”)Apple Music, their answer to Spotify and Pandora has not been the smash hit they’d hoped, and adding a single show, “Carpool Karaoke,” as an exclusive is not going to get anyone to give up Spotify.iTunes is just a store, albeit an expensive one compared to the all-you-can-eat buffets on Hulu, Amazon and Netflix, and it relies on an increasingly outdated business model—having grown up in a world where everything is available everywhere, Gen Zees don’t really grasp the concept of owning media.The Apple TV streaming device is sort of a big yawn too, it’s a perfectly fine product, but it’s the perfect example of how Apple’s paradigm is falling apart. Apple succeeded in the past by developing products that were so much better designed and easier to use than the competition that they could justify premium pricing. But an Apple TV is double or triple the price of a $49 Roku stick. And the interface? It’s debatable if it’s better at all, but even the biggest fanboy would be hard pressed to argue that it’s two or three times better than Roku.In addition to failing big time at trying to launch a TV service, Apple seems particularly tone deaf when it comes to creating their own shows. At a time when Netflix is spending millions filming big budget TV series for an international audience and Amazon is becoming the go-to studio for Sundance darlings, Apple comes out with… “Planet of the Apps,” a reality show for geeks. So much for thinking big.
What You Need To Do About It
We’re Apple people too. We have MacBooks and iPads and iPhones and this post is being written on Pages, not Word. But it’s time to take Apple off the front burner as a serious player in the TV industry. They’re “all hat” at this point and really not a part of the new ecosystem. Don’t write them off completely—with all the cash they have on hand, they could easily buy a major studio or even Spotify or Hulu, but those sorts of deals seem to be far off on the horizon for now.
2. Twitter Tries Yet Another Hail Mary
Twitter keeps trying to find a reason for existing. They’ve gotten slammed by listless user growth, by falling ad revenue (something they blamed on the media world’s refusal to understand just how valuable they really were, dammit!) and by their baffling inability to stop the vicious harassment of celebrities and regular people alike. The latter was brought to the forefront last week when Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones was literally chased off of Twitter by trolls harassing her 24/7.
Why It Matters
So how does Twitter respond? By tripling down on live video. As if that could make all their problems go away.They’ve struck deals with the NBA to show everything-but-the-actual-game, and with the NHL and MLB to broadcast select games.Will it work? Have you ever tried to watch a hockey game in a sports bar? If you have, you know it’s pretty tough to follow the action on a 132-inch screen. That puck moves very fast.So imagine watching it on a smartphone.Twitter needs to figure out the user experience part of their live video, lest we all wind up watching hockey games on screens the size of iWatches. (Overlays, anyone?) But more than that, they’ve got to solve all the problems that keep users from adopting the platform when there isn’t a Rangers game playing.
What You Need To Do About It
Be judicious about how you use Twitter. Remember that tweets have reach way beyond Twitter’s user base and get noticed by the media faster than Instagram posts, and weigh that against what you want to achieve.If you think you might want to get in on those live streams of sporting events as a sponsor or advertiser, make sure you press Twitter on what the interface is going to look like, and whether it’s going to be something people are going to want to stay with for two hours straight.
