Apple’s Streaming Bet

Apple’s got their streaming service now. Apple TV+, launching soon, with the obligatory celebrities—Spielberg, Oprah, names that make entertainment feel legitimate. A new app, channels you can subscribe to individually, all the standard moves.

What’s interesting to me is just how much this doesn’t matter on any level except the purely financial one. Apple has money. They can make decent shows. They can push it onto millions of devices without thinking twice. None of that is interesting or innovative, it’s just what happens when a company with a trillion-dollar market cap decides to compete in a category. Netflix got to build something when the space was actually new. Now it’s just about who’s willing to spend more.

The real story is that we’ve cycled back to the exact problem streaming was supposed to fix—too many services, too many subscriptions, too much friction. Someone will realize this in a couple years and pivot to some new model, and in the meantime Apple makes money because they make everything feel like the default. They usually win that game.