Apple Would Like You to Watch TV Now, Please

Apple announced a streaming service this week, which means the streaming wars have officially absorbed all available oxygen. Apple TV+—that’s the name—will arrive in the fall to compete with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and whatever else is currently carving up your monthly budget. The roster of names attached to it is calibrated to make you feel like this is serious: Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, J.J. Abrams, M. Night Shyamalan, Jason Momoa. The press event had the energy of a late-stage real estate pitch, everyone smiling just a little too hard.

What’s interesting to me about Apple entering this space is that they’re not actually late—they’re just careful. Netflix has been spending like a government program to build a library. Apple has money that makes Netflix’s war chest look like a coffee fund, and they’re choosing to spend it on fewer, bigger bets. Whether that produces better television or just more expensive disappointments is the open question. Original content is a gamble regardless of budget, and prestige alone doesn’t make good shows.

The more useful announcement, quietly, was Apple TV Channels—a hub where you subscribe to HBO, Showtime, and others from inside a single interface. That part is actually practical in the way that having one remote for multiple inputs is practical: it doesn’t give you anything new, but it reduces friction. Apple is good at friction reduction. The aggregation play might end up mattering more than the originals do, long term.

No price announced yet, which is doing a lot of work right now. Everything else about this is calibrated to sound premium, and premium has a number. I’m curious what they think it is—and whether anyone outside the existing Apple ecosystem is going to care enough to find out.