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Apple TV Was Making a Show About Gawker. Then Tim Cook Found Out

185 points by jimmy2020 6y ago

guender 6y ago
Shitty article by a shitty BuzzFeeder without a sense or understanding of history. The networks and movie studios have been killing shows and films that their execs don’t like forever. Also, check what the Hollywood black list and HUAC were all about. Nothing new here. Let’s move on.
an_opabinia 6y ago
> Another company, Anonymous Content, bought the option to develop a New Yorker article about Gawker, a person familiar with the deal said. (The New Yorker article was written by Jeffrey Toobin, a frequent target of Gawker.) That is really fucking funny. > Apple TV+, which started a year ago, has struggled to find its feet in a climate in which its top creative executives, Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg, appear to be constantly trying to guess what Mr. Cook and Mr. Cue might like, or might object to. Pretty much everyone expected Apple to make terrible TV. Like Amazon, even like two good shows would be an enormous accomplishment.
- forrestthewoods 6y ago
  > even like two good shows would be an enormous accomplishment. Ted Lasso is stellar. Mythic Quest is great. Boys State was a great purchase. I haven't watched Earth at Night in Color yet, but it looks really cool and promising. It's not really worth $5/mo yet. But it came for free with my new iPhone and I've enjoyed the content so far. Edit: Why on earth would anyone downvote this? Because I liked a few shows on AppleTV? Y'all crazy and make zero sense.
  - deleted 6y ago
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- herbstein 6y ago
  > Like Amazon, even like two good shows would be an enormous accomplishment They've, imo, already gone one amazing show in 'Ted Lasso'. The premise doesn't sound like it should work. A comedy based on old American soccer commercials? But somehow it really, really works.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Ted Lasso/Morning Show/Mythic Quest are easily my favorite shows this year.
    - mrkurt 6y ago
      Does mythic quest get a lot better after episode 1? We watched it right after Ted Lasso and it was so ... mean. It _seems_ like something I should like, though.
      - brians 6y ago
        I found it fun. There’s more opportunity for sweetness as you get to know the characters. The arc of the QA engineers is excellent.
        Austin_Conlon 6y ago
        The QA guy Lou is like a caricature of someone who spends a lot of time on Hacker News.
      - Austin_Conlon 6y ago
        For the most part it's a similar style after. I found it amusing overall just seeing the game development industry being satirized, just like I enjoyed HBO Silicon Valley in that way even if it wasn't necessarily a great show. Episode 5 specifically though comes out of left field, and is one of the best episodes of television on the platform.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        I wouldn’t expect everyone to like Mythic Quest. You’ll like if you like It’s always Sunny in Philly.
- Razengan 6y ago
  See is pretty awesome. Dickinson is fun. The Elephant Queen is beautiful. The Morning Show, For All Mankind and The Servant are alright. Looking forward to Foundation.
  - Austin_Conlon 6y ago
    Out of curiosity, why do you think Servant is mediocre? I thought it was a compelling story around the reborn doll, and that M. Night Shyamalan made it consistently creepy and engaging without being outright paranormal in season one.
    - Razengan 6y ago
      Too uneventful and sometimes pretentious. Some episodes could have been done away with entirely and the result would have been the same. Nice polish and production though. I did enjoy it as something to leave playing in the background while doing something else, or to watch when there's nothing else to do.
- Thaxll 6y ago
  The Boys is pretty good. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190634/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190634/
  - dpkonofa 6y ago
    I love The Boys and, especially, how gory it is specifically to make a point. It reminds me a lot of Verhoeven and RoboCop. That being said, Amazon doesn't have any other good shows that I'm willing to tune into. Sneaky Pete was awesome and they fucked them over so bad that it makes it hard for me to get invested in anything put out by Amazon.
    - ethbr0 6y ago
      If you like dark humor, Patriot is criminally under-rated. Probably the best thing I've seen on Amazon Prime. Recommended if you like: In Bruges, pre-2009 Guy Ritchie, Oceans *.
      - rospaya 6y ago
        I love everything you mentioned (including Patriot), but it's nothing like those regarding production since it's very slow and the humor is dry, dark and not always easily noticeable. It's a slow burner, which is exactly the opposite of any Oceans x or Guy Ritchie. In any case I recommend it, the premise was enough to get me to sign up.
        ethbr0 6y ago
        I kinda blocked out the other parts of Oceans and Ritchie. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_j9qAhXfNAU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_j9qAhXfNAU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xVmyBUWB0-A https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xVmyBUWB0-A https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_c1kBwsv8PM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_c1kBwsv8PM
    - confidantlake 6y ago
      Any thoughts on The Expanse? I quite like it.
- dpkonofa 6y ago
  I feel like "The Morning Show", "For All Mankind", and "Ted Lasso" are 3 shows that I would put solidly in the "great" category so I don't see how you can say that two "good" shows would be an accomplishment.
  - yoz-y 6y ago
    Home After Dark and Tiny World are great too. Amazon does tons of great series like Fleabag, Marvelous Ms Maisel, Expanse, The Boys...
- swiley 6y ago
  That's the problem with the platforms Apple runs, look at how the software on the iPhone is. Quake? gcc? anything that isn't either shovelware or an ad? Nope!
  - m463 6y ago
    It's just that the app store was created to sell phones. As software is a complement to hardware, that means to sell phones they had to commoditize the software. Thing is, it worked too well. Before the app store, software could cost 39.99 and people were fine with it. But n a very short time the price an app quickly became 99 cents, and then free. Years later we're seeing the result of all this. To be paid for software development apps must either sell data or use psychological tricks such as making gaming tedious unless you pay.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  Amazon has some really solid shows. Tbh I think their lineup of originals is better than netflix's.
- StephenAmar 6y ago
  Amazon has had a very good last few years, between Mr Maisel to The Boys. I think they have figured themselves out. Also, The Expanse.
- polytely 6y ago
  Huh, Anonymous Content sounded familiar so I did a quick search and I discovered that they are responsible for producing a lot of stuff I have really enjoyed: True Detective, Mr. Robot, The OA, Flint Town, Maniac, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Steko 6y ago
  Obviously they don't have the volume but their average quality is probably as good as any streaming service. Over 16 non-film/doc/kids series the mean tomatometer/metascores is a pretty solid 74/64 and there's 5 with 90+/70+: Ted Lasso, Tehran, Mythic Quest, Little America, and Central Park. I enjoyed the first 4 of those and haven't seen the last.
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vimy 6y ago
They should just hire the people that made Halt and Catch Fire[1] to make a show about the creation of the first mac based on the www.folklore.org stories. [1]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312/
- mulcahey 6y ago
  I like that idea for a documentary, but think it'd perhaps come off as arrogant -- like someone producing a dramatic biopic about themselves.
  - oddity 6y ago
    It would be very on brand for Apple. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designed_by_Apple_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designed_by_Apple_in_Californi...
- claudeganon 6y ago
  Can you even imagine the levels of corporate interference trying to do that for Apple? It would be an absolute nightmare for everyone involved and entirely drained of creativity.
- Austin_Conlon 6y ago
  I'd like to see a NeXT documentary produced by anyone. The General Magic one was great.
- imperialdrive 6y ago
  HaCF is suuuuch a great piece of work! I can't even read the name without a smile from the joys of watching it.
nabla9 6y ago
Offending China is probably #1 in the no-no list in Disney, Apple and other megacorps. Hell, Apple even lobbies against forced labour laws against Uighur slaves.
- novok 6y ago
  I don't think China gives a fuck about gawker.
  - iwasakabukiman 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure they're saying that Apple, etc. are trying not to offend China with their programming. It's unrelated to Gawker, but mentioned in the article.
ketamine__ 6y ago
Could Tim really be upset about being outed when he posed for photos with MBS? It seems like he doesn't care that much about LGBT.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  I don't really understand this comment. He can decide to pose with anyone he wants, and he can make his sexual preference as obvious as he wants, that still doesn't give Gawker the right to do what they did.
  - harry8 6y ago
    MBS is the ruler of Saudi, I don't believe he was democratically elected. Have a little look at the crimes of many of the people Saudi of have decapitated, with swords, to see the point of the comment above. It's an easy one to miss as most media seem to play it down rather a lot, I don't know why. Because Saudi are our allies? Why are they our allies? I genuinely don't know. There is a conflict between caring about LGBT issues and supporting a dictator who literally chops the heads of homosexuals for being homosexuals. It's unpleasant to consider which is why comments dance around it, like I started to, then didn't.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > It's an easy one to miss as most media seem to play it down rather a lot, I don't know why. Because Saudi are our allies? No, the corporate media plays it down because the Saudis are major investors in US firms, including media (both old and new media). It's not about them being allies, it's about them being owners.
      - bigbubba 6y ago
        Is Tim Cook an example of corporate media who's owned by the Saudis?
        dragonwriter 6y ago
saagarjha 6y ago
We had a similar story about Apple interfering with creative direction before Apple TV+ was released, saying that the content would be family-friendly. This was clearly not true based on the first crop of content that was released. I wonder if this was really what was happening? Or maybe this is yet another misunderstanding of how Apple is exercising their influence?
worker767424 6y ago
A little related background on Gawker outing people. The original story[1] was made by Owen Thomas, the same writer who outed Peter Thiel. Interestingly, both he and Gawker founder Nick Denton are gay. 1: https://gawker.com/5082473/is-apple-coo-tim-cook-gay https://gawker.com/5082473/is-apple-coo-tim-cook-gay 2: https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Gawker-Peter-Thiel-and-me-7971310.php https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Gawker-Peter-Thiel-a...
- ebiester 6y ago
  Outing is a controversial but old practice from the 80s in the queer community, and involves outing public figures who were involved in making the lives of the LGBT community worse. The classic text I know was Outing, Part 1 from Michelangelo Signorile's "Queer In America." but https://www.newsweek.com/age-outing-202878 https://www.newsweek.com/age-outing-202878 is an article from back then.
  - rozab 6y ago
    A now flagged comment further down appears to be criticizing Cook for his relations with Saudi Arabian leadership. That would make sense.
    - nickff 6y ago
      Nick Denton was known for being happy to gossip and slander; he always said his victims loved the attention, and that if they hated it so much, they could always sue him. Eventually, some did.
  - donpott 6y ago
    The book "Conspiracy: A True Story of Power, Sex, and a Billionaire's Secret Plot to Destroy a Media Empire" by Ryan Holiday was very interesting, and it´s a detailed look into this whole case.
  - viktorcode 6y ago
    > Outing is a controversial but old practice I would translate "controversial" here as "shitty". It is just selling other people's privacy for clicks, which may damage their lives.
AndrewKemendo 6y ago
Speaking from first hand experience as "talent" - Apple doesn't know how to make really good TV. It felt to me like it was a lot of middling, risk averse people at the middle layers of production and show running, with an inflated sense of worth . That's pretty common in hollywood - and it generally produces mediocre outcomes - not AMAZING gamechanging outcomes. They have good line producers and of course great technical talent for set design, editing, production - but the left hand of marketing doesn't talk with the right hand and you get a lot of disjointed efforts. If you look at Netflix, for all their downsides, they go big and hard, buy working shows based on data and don't shy away from controversy. They also have way better middle talent which I think makes the difference.
- Austin_Conlon 6y ago
  Only speaking to the output, Servant by M. Night Shyamalan doesn't strike me as risk-averse overall despite the micromanaging detail from the article, and Ted Lasso is widely considered to be top tier.
- jmcgough 6y ago
  Could you explain what you mean by middle talent / middle layers?
  - AndrewKemendo 6y ago
    Sure, think of any movie or TV show kind of like a startup or a company. The Executive Producers are like the Board. The show runner, director and sometimes certain talent are like the C-Suite or SVPs. These set the vision, pace, hiring, management, budgeting etc... like in a normal business. There are then the middle level directors (casting, lighting, sound) editors and line producers who do the lions share of the work and are supposed to interpret the intents of the director and show runners - basically handle all the details and make sure things run smoothly. Finally the supporting cast, craft services etc...are basically told what to do, how to do it and when.
- ChuckMcM 6y ago
  Funny reading this. A classmate of mine from USC was telling me that their production company was working with Apple to produce a show and it was not going well. Apparently among the folks they felt if Apple just filmed themselves flailing around trying to make something it would be a better show than the show they were making. They reminded me of Truffaut's "Day for Night" which we had seen in Cinema 190 (the cinema elective that engineers often take) and said it was kind of like that, only way funnier in a sad sort of way. We have a running comparison of "LA people coming to the Bay Area to do tech because 'How hard can it be?'" and the reverse being true as well, "Bay Area people going to LA to produce television/movies because 'How hard can it be?'" Reality is complicated, and smart people so often seem to miss that.
zavulon 6y ago
> Mr. Tate said he thought frequently about the story [outing Tim Cook] afterward, and even wondered whether Mr. Cook’s parents had known about his identity before the report. “It’s something that gave me pause and that I thought about, but I would do it the same way again,” he said. This right here tells you everything you need to know about Gawker and people that worked there.
zxcvbn4038 6y ago
Don't forget The Man in the High Castle, pretty much the best Amazon show IMO until The Expanse came over from Sci-fi - though they could have done a lot more with the ending. Have the Nazis go to a universe where Mars or Venus isn’t a rock and slug it out over who will rule the solar system, have political intriegue with a bunch of Hitlers plotting against each other, have the communists using dinosaurs as weapons, have the Nazis encounter an very advanced Egyptian civilization that never fell, endless possibilities!
- dmitriid 6y ago
  > The Man in the High Castle It was very good in its first season. Then it rapidly lost steam, since the writers had no idea what to do with the amazing characters they brought to life and the moral dilemmas they inevitably ran into. As a result you had most of the characters just aimlessly wander around looking forlorn.
  - gwd 6y ago
    From what I've heard, the first season of the show very closely follows the book of the same name, which was written by Phillip K. Dick (who also wrote the book on which Blade Runner was written, as well as Minority Report, and loads of others). So probably the writers are OK at translating someone else's characters from the page to the screen, but not that good at actually writing them. EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adaptations_of_works_by_Philip_K._Dick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adaptations_of_works_b...
    - zxcvbn4038 6y ago
      Very true. House of cards definitely wasn’t the same once they exhausted their source material. The plots weren’t as intricate, having Frank and Claire at odds didn’t really work, Frank and Freddy at odds didn’t really work, and personally I would like to have seen the Zoey/Rachel story lines fall off - sort “little people” fading to obscurity as Frank marches on to his next conquest. Maybe they will do a reboot one day.
  - 6y ago
aminozuur 6y ago
This was an excellent read. Thanks for sharing.
wavesounds 6y ago
I don't get how Apple being a tech company has anything to do with this. If it was NBC making the show and Gawker outed the CEO of NBC does the New York Times think that the NBC CEO would act differently?
seehafer 6y ago
This article is more evidence that major media outlets hate tech and will slant every article to find a way to smear tech. Here’s how: imagine a Miramax development executive, circa 1999, bringing in a movie that was about an actress who was molested by an overweight studio executive and then was blacklisted when she spoke up. That executive would be fired in an instant. Tim Cook is obviously no Weinstein, and he has the moral high ground here contra Gawker. But the principle is the same: don’t expect The Boss to greenlight a topic they’re sensitive about. This has nothing to do “Big Tech has so much power these days”.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  This article is more evidence that major media outlets hate tech and will slant every article to find a way to smear tech. Classic blaming the messenger. This has nothing to do “Big Tech has so much power these days”. You and I must have read different articles. The one I just read has nothing to do with Silicon Valley's persecution complex. It was about Apple not understanding how to make TV shows.
gok 6y ago
> But Hollywood is now firmly in the grip of giant companies "Now?" When was Hollywood controlled by...small companies?
rzz3 6y ago
Why does it seem like everyone on HN but me has a New York Times account? I have moral issues with getting one.
- ffpip 6y ago
  Disable javascript for nytimes.com. It's a one click action with uBlock Origin in your browser. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-scripting https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...
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hakdbha 6y ago
What a waste of time
sneak 6y ago
> Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president for internet software and services, who has been at the company since 1989, has told partners that “the two things we will never do are hard-core nudity and China,” one creative figure who has worked with Apple told me. (BuzzFeed News first reported last year that Mr. Cue had instructed creators to “avoid portraying China in a poor light.”) I miss the days when Apple wasn't run by cowards. (It's also interesting that simple nudity now qualifies as "hard-core", a term formerly reserved for pornography.)
- idnefju 6y ago
  Jobs was famously against pornography on a personal level. You will find email exchanges back in the day with fans/bloggers/writers where he lists his reasons why porn is not allowed on the App Store.
tptacek 6y ago
But now, from beyond the grave, Gawker is revealing another reality in this era of media consolidation: that the chief executive of one of the biggest companies in the world, who testifies before Congress and negotiates with China, also decides what television shows get made. I'm having a little trouble with the premise of this story, that it's somehow novel for an executive to have a hand in killing a show. This is like 40% of the premise of 30 Rock. But that was about the Sheinhardt Wigs hegemony over NBC (and tri-vection microwaves), not Tim Cook's influence over a tiny portfolio of streaming shows nobody watches. As long as he doesn't fuck with Ted Lasso, I honestly don't give a shit. I'm sure I'll buy another Apple product in 2021, which will re-up my Apple TV+ subscription somehow.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  It's the confluence of executive authority that folks are sketched out by, not the executive authority or actions themselves, imo.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    You know Jack Donaghy testified before congress too, right?
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      Without really taking a position on the merits of the issue, I think the idea is that Jack Donaghy might testify before Congress about the television shows he runs, while Tim Cook testifies before Congress about matters unrelated to television.
      - tptacek 6y ago
        He testifies representing GE!
        thaumasiotes 6y ago
        Fair enough.
kepler1 6y ago
Every media outlet, production company, aggregator, makes implicit decisions about what they choose to fund, air, endorse, or not fund, not air, or not endorse. Is this any worse than the many decisions other channels make every day to support vs. kill certain shows? Apple isn't obligated to be fair in any sense, and we should stop expecting them to be virtuous or protectors of anyone's expectation that they are.
- onecommentman 6y ago
  This would not be the first time. Imagine canceling a top-5 TV show in the early 1970s because of political/cultural pressure...Bridget Loves Bernie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridget_Loves_Bernie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridget_Loves_Bernie Apple isn’t obligated to be fair, but the public very much can expect them to be virtuous...the two aren’t incompatible. As Apple will probably discover as pressures grow about labor practices in China.
tpush 6y ago
Wonder how Apple's gonna deal with the 30% European content requirements that are coming [0]. [0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/12/09/new-eu-legislation-proposes-30-european-content-minimum-for-apple-tv-netflix https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/12/09/new-eu-legislatio...
- robin_reala 6y ago
  It’s just a proposed bill at this point. To say it’s definitely coming is a bit too strong.
  - tpush 6y ago
    The bill is an implementation of an EU directive [0] which was ratified in November 2018. All EU member states will have to transpose it into national law. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/audiovisual-media-services-directive-avmsd https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/audiovisual-me...
maxharris 6y ago
Gawker wasn't just an ordinary media voice that simply made the mistake of offending economically powerful people. In Apple's case, it paid a significant amount of money for a prototype iPhone that it absolutely knew was stolen. In Thiel's case, it outed a gay man that didn't want to come out. The earlier act was illegal; both acts are immoral. I have real problem with Apple's cooperation with China, the total lack of documentation for developers, the faulty keyboards, the locking down of the App Store and total ban on sideloaded apps. I also have a big problem with the security stuff it builds in that can be (and most likely is) used for domestic spying. I want to run Linux on the M1 MacBook Pro. I think Scott Forstall should be brought back into the CEO role to replace Tim Cook. So don't get me wrong, my position is not reflexively pro-Apple or pro-Cook here. I'm just saying that Gawker is just about the worst possible example to use. Does their point even stand at all without Gawker?
- jimnotgym 6y ago
  That's the thing about free speech and press freedom, you are either for it or against it. The fact that you or I find Gawker's output distasteful is irrelevant. On the illegallity point, that is a job for law enforcement, not corporations to decide.
  - nickff 6y ago
    It's a bit unrealistic to expect your victims to lionize you in a television show.
    - MinusGix 6y ago
      If it was having a person having to make a television show about someone they hated then I would agree, but corporations are _not_ people and so the reasoning does not apply.
  - doctor_eval 6y ago
    It is absolutely a corporation's job to decide where it will spend its money. Cook didn't stop someone else making a show about Gawker, he stopped the company he runs from doing so. Huge difference.
DavidSJ 6y ago
I believe the following statements are simultaneously true, yet rarely simultaneously acknowledged: 1) The First Amendment says nothing about which content companies must produce, promote, or allow with their resources and on their platforms. 2) The principle of free speech extends beyond the First Amendment or government censorship: our society has a considerable interest in the open exchange of ideas and information, especially by the least popular among us, so that we may conduct the difficult conversations which are the prerequisite for progress, and possess the freedoms of thought and communication which are the prerequisites for enlightenment. 3) The increasing centralization of control over new media in a handful of large technology companies (mainly Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter) poses an intense threat to the aforementioned open exchange of ideas, especially where such ideas may threaten business interests of those companies, or merely taint them by association with something or someone unpopular. 4) The lack of collective immunity to viral forms of political disinformation on new media platforms, the speed with which such disinformation spreads, and the active, asymmetric promotion of that disinformation by certain political actors, poses a paradox of tolerance of a sort, threatening the continuation of the open society on which everything good depends. These four truths form a tangled knot which must be cut, but to do so, we must first see its whole, and not merely one or two of its threads.
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  > Twitter I find it really funny when Twitter is lumped in with the rest of these countries. It is almost like an order or magnitude smaller than all the others, and makes considerably less money. Twitter is a small niche social network with people who control the news, which vastly overstates it's size.
  - DavidSJ 6y ago
    I thought about that point when constructing that list, but despite Twitter's small size as a business, it has outsized power in the media environment. For complementary reasons, I excluded Microsoft, despite its large size. I'm sure one could debate the exact composition of that list, but it's not too important to the larger point.
  - 6y ago
boringg 6y ago
The only reason this is a story is so that the show can get another buyer. Honestly good for Tim Cook to shut this Gawker crap down. They were garbage when they were around and we don't need rose colored glasses looking back over their history to live on in TV show format. Also the executive who cleared this probably should have thought a little bit more about it.

185 points by jimmy2020 6y ago

Shitty article by a shitty BuzzFeeder without a sense or understanding of history. The networks and movie studios have been killing shows and films that their execs don’t like forever. Also, check what the Hollywood black list and HUAC were all about. Nothing new here. Let’s move on.

an_opabinia 6y ago

> Another company, Anonymous Content, bought the option to develop a New Yorker article about Gawker, a person familiar with the deal said. (The New Yorker article was written by Jeffrey Toobin, a frequent target of Gawker.) That is really fucking funny. > Apple TV+, which started a year ago, has struggled to find its feet in a climate in which its top creative executives, Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg, appear to be constantly trying to guess what Mr. Cook and Mr. Cue might like, or might object to. Pretty much everyone expected Apple to make terrible TV. Like Amazon, even like two good shows would be an enormous accomplishment.

forrestthewoods 6y ago
> even like two good shows would be an enormous accomplishment. Ted Lasso is stellar. Mythic Quest is great. Boys State was a great purchase. I haven't watched Earth at Night in Color yet, but it looks really cool and promising. It's not really worth $5/mo yet. But it came for free with my new iPhone and I've enjoyed the content so far. Edit: Why on earth would anyone downvote this? Because I liked a few shows on AppleTV? Y'all crazy and make zero sense.
- deleted 6y ago
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herbstein 6y ago
> Like Amazon, even like two good shows would be an enormous accomplishment They've, imo, already gone one amazing show in 'Ted Lasso'. The premise doesn't sound like it should work. A comedy based on old American soccer commercials? But somehow it really, really works.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Ted Lasso/Morning Show/Mythic Quest are easily my favorite shows this year.
  - mrkurt 6y ago
    Does mythic quest get a lot better after episode 1? We watched it right after Ted Lasso and it was so ... mean. It _seems_ like something I should like, though.
    - brians 6y ago
      I found it fun. There’s more opportunity for sweetness as you get to know the characters. The arc of the QA engineers is excellent.
      - Austin_Conlon 6y ago
        The QA guy Lou is like a caricature of someone who spends a lot of time on Hacker News.
    - Austin_Conlon 6y ago
      For the most part it's a similar style after. I found it amusing overall just seeing the game development industry being satirized, just like I enjoyed HBO Silicon Valley in that way even if it wasn't necessarily a great show. Episode 5 specifically though comes out of left field, and is one of the best episodes of television on the platform.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      I wouldn’t expect everyone to like Mythic Quest. You’ll like if you like It’s always Sunny in Philly.
Razengan 6y ago
See is pretty awesome. Dickinson is fun. The Elephant Queen is beautiful. The Morning Show, For All Mankind and The Servant are alright. Looking forward to Foundation.
- Austin_Conlon 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, why do you think Servant is mediocre? I thought it was a compelling story around the reborn doll, and that M. Night Shyamalan made it consistently creepy and engaging without being outright paranormal in season one.
  - Razengan 6y ago
    Too uneventful and sometimes pretentious. Some episodes could have been done away with entirely and the result would have been the same. Nice polish and production though. I did enjoy it as something to leave playing in the background while doing something else, or to watch when there's nothing else to do.
Thaxll 6y ago
The Boys is pretty good. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190634/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190634/
- dpkonofa 6y ago
  I love The Boys and, especially, how gory it is specifically to make a point. It reminds me a lot of Verhoeven and RoboCop. That being said, Amazon doesn't have any other good shows that I'm willing to tune into. Sneaky Pete was awesome and they fucked them over so bad that it makes it hard for me to get invested in anything put out by Amazon.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    If you like dark humor, Patriot is criminally under-rated. Probably the best thing I've seen on Amazon Prime. Recommended if you like: In Bruges, pre-2009 Guy Ritchie, Oceans *.
    - rospaya 6y ago
      I love everything you mentioned (including Patriot), but it's nothing like those regarding production since it's very slow and the humor is dry, dark and not always easily noticeable. It's a slow burner, which is exactly the opposite of any Oceans x or Guy Ritchie. In any case I recommend it, the premise was enough to get me to sign up.
      - ethbr0 6y ago
        I kinda blocked out the other parts of Oceans and Ritchie. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_j9qAhXfNAU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_j9qAhXfNAU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xVmyBUWB0-A https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xVmyBUWB0-A https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_c1kBwsv8PM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_c1kBwsv8PM
  - confidantlake 6y ago
    Any thoughts on The Expanse? I quite like it.
dpkonofa 6y ago
I feel like "The Morning Show", "For All Mankind", and "Ted Lasso" are 3 shows that I would put solidly in the "great" category so I don't see how you can say that two "good" shows would be an accomplishment.
- yoz-y 6y ago
  Home After Dark and Tiny World are great too. Amazon does tons of great series like Fleabag, Marvelous Ms Maisel, Expanse, The Boys...
swiley 6y ago
That's the problem with the platforms Apple runs, look at how the software on the iPhone is. Quake? gcc? anything that isn't either shovelware or an ad? Nope!
- m463 6y ago
  It's just that the app store was created to sell phones. As software is a complement to hardware, that means to sell phones they had to commoditize the software. Thing is, it worked too well. Before the app store, software could cost 39.99 and people were fine with it. But n a very short time the price an app quickly became 99 cents, and then free. Years later we're seeing the result of all this. To be paid for software development apps must either sell data or use psychological tricks such as making gaming tedious unless you pay.
colinmhayes 6y ago
Amazon has some really solid shows. Tbh I think their lineup of originals is better than netflix's.
StephenAmar 6y ago
Amazon has had a very good last few years, between Mr Maisel to The Boys. I think they have figured themselves out. Also, The Expanse.
polytely 6y ago
Huh, Anonymous Content sounded familiar so I did a quick search and I discovered that they are responsible for producing a lot of stuff I have really enjoyed: True Detective, Mr. Robot, The OA, Flint Town, Maniac, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Steko 6y ago
Obviously they don't have the volume but their average quality is probably as good as any streaming service. Over 16 non-film/doc/kids series the mean tomatometer/metascores is a pretty solid 74/64 and there's 5 with 90+/70+: Ted Lasso, Tehran, Mythic Quest, Little America, and Central Park. I enjoyed the first 4 of those and haven't seen the last.

deleted 6y ago

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vimy 6y ago

They should just hire the people that made Halt and Catch Fire[1] to make a show about the creation of the first mac based on the www.folklore.org stories. [1]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312/

mulcahey 6y ago
I like that idea for a documentary, but think it'd perhaps come off as arrogant -- like someone producing a dramatic biopic about themselves.
- oddity 6y ago
  It would be very on brand for Apple. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designed_by_Apple_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designed_by_Apple_in_Californi...
claudeganon 6y ago
Can you even imagine the levels of corporate interference trying to do that for Apple? It would be an absolute nightmare for everyone involved and entirely drained of creativity.
Austin_Conlon 6y ago
I'd like to see a NeXT documentary produced by anyone. The General Magic one was great.
imperialdrive 6y ago
HaCF is suuuuch a great piece of work! I can't even read the name without a smile from the joys of watching it.

nabla9 6y ago

Offending China is probably #1 in the no-no list in Disney, Apple and other megacorps. Hell, Apple even lobbies against forced labour laws against Uighur slaves.

novok 6y ago
I don't think China gives a fuck about gawker.
- iwasakabukiman 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure they're saying that Apple, etc. are trying not to offend China with their programming. It's unrelated to Gawker, but mentioned in the article.

ketamine__ 6y ago

Could Tim really be upset about being outed when he posed for photos with MBS? It seems like he doesn't care that much about LGBT.

ehsankia 6y ago
I don't really understand this comment. He can decide to pose with anyone he wants, and he can make his sexual preference as obvious as he wants, that still doesn't give Gawker the right to do what they did.
- harry8 6y ago
  MBS is the ruler of Saudi, I don't believe he was democratically elected. Have a little look at the crimes of many of the people Saudi of have decapitated, with swords, to see the point of the comment above. It's an easy one to miss as most media seem to play it down rather a lot, I don't know why. Because Saudi are our allies? Why are they our allies? I genuinely don't know. There is a conflict between caring about LGBT issues and supporting a dictator who literally chops the heads of homosexuals for being homosexuals. It's unpleasant to consider which is why comments dance around it, like I started to, then didn't.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > It's an easy one to miss as most media seem to play it down rather a lot, I don't know why. Because Saudi are our allies? No, the corporate media plays it down because the Saudis are major investors in US firms, including media (both old and new media). It's not about them being allies, it's about them being owners.
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      Is Tim Cook an example of corporate media who's owned by the Saudis?
      - dragonwriter 6y ago

saagarjha 6y ago

We had a similar story about Apple interfering with creative direction before Apple TV+ was released, saying that the content would be family-friendly. This was clearly not true based on the first crop of content that was released. I wonder if this was really what was happening? Or maybe this is yet another misunderstanding of how Apple is exercising their influence?

worker767424 6y ago

A little related background on Gawker outing people. The original story[1] was made by Owen Thomas, the same writer who outed Peter Thiel. Interestingly, both he and Gawker founder Nick Denton are gay. 1: https://gawker.com/5082473/is-apple-coo-tim-cook-gay https://gawker.com/5082473/is-apple-coo-tim-cook-gay 2: https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Gawker-Peter-Thiel-and-me-7971310.php https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Gawker-Peter-Thiel-a...

ebiester 6y ago
Outing is a controversial but old practice from the 80s in the queer community, and involves outing public figures who were involved in making the lives of the LGBT community worse. The classic text I know was Outing, Part 1 from Michelangelo Signorile's "Queer In America." but https://www.newsweek.com/age-outing-202878 https://www.newsweek.com/age-outing-202878 is an article from back then.
- rozab 6y ago
  A now flagged comment further down appears to be criticizing Cook for his relations with Saudi Arabian leadership. That would make sense.
  - nickff 6y ago
    Nick Denton was known for being happy to gossip and slander; he always said his victims loved the attention, and that if they hated it so much, they could always sue him. Eventually, some did.
- donpott 6y ago
  The book "Conspiracy: A True Story of Power, Sex, and a Billionaire's Secret Plot to Destroy a Media Empire" by Ryan Holiday was very interesting, and it´s a detailed look into this whole case.
- viktorcode 6y ago
  > Outing is a controversial but old practice I would translate "controversial" here as "shitty". It is just selling other people's privacy for clicks, which may damage their lives.

AndrewKemendo 6y ago

Speaking from first hand experience as "talent" - Apple doesn't know how to make really good TV. It felt to me like it was a lot of middling, risk averse people at the middle layers of production and show running, with an inflated sense of worth . That's pretty common in hollywood - and it generally produces mediocre outcomes - not AMAZING gamechanging outcomes. They have good line producers and of course great technical talent for set design, editing, production - but the left hand of marketing doesn't talk with the right hand and you get a lot of disjointed efforts. If you look at Netflix, for all their downsides, they go big and hard, buy working shows based on data and don't shy away from controversy. They also have way better middle talent which I think makes the difference.

Austin_Conlon 6y ago
Only speaking to the output, Servant by M. Night Shyamalan doesn't strike me as risk-averse overall despite the micromanaging detail from the article, and Ted Lasso is widely considered to be top tier.
jmcgough 6y ago
Could you explain what you mean by middle talent / middle layers?
- AndrewKemendo 6y ago
  Sure, think of any movie or TV show kind of like a startup or a company. The Executive Producers are like the Board. The show runner, director and sometimes certain talent are like the C-Suite or SVPs. These set the vision, pace, hiring, management, budgeting etc... like in a normal business. There are then the middle level directors (casting, lighting, sound) editors and line producers who do the lions share of the work and are supposed to interpret the intents of the director and show runners - basically handle all the details and make sure things run smoothly. Finally the supporting cast, craft services etc...are basically told what to do, how to do it and when.
ChuckMcM 6y ago
Funny reading this. A classmate of mine from USC was telling me that their production company was working with Apple to produce a show and it was not going well. Apparently among the folks they felt if Apple just filmed themselves flailing around trying to make something it would be a better show than the show they were making. They reminded me of Truffaut's "Day for Night" which we had seen in Cinema 190 (the cinema elective that engineers often take) and said it was kind of like that, only way funnier in a sad sort of way. We have a running comparison of "LA people coming to the Bay Area to do tech because 'How hard can it be?'" and the reverse being true as well, "Bay Area people going to LA to produce television/movies because 'How hard can it be?'" Reality is complicated, and smart people so often seem to miss that.

zavulon 6y ago

> Mr. Tate said he thought frequently about the story [outing Tim Cook] afterward, and even wondered whether Mr. Cook’s parents had known about his identity before the report. “It’s something that gave me pause and that I thought about, but I would do it the same way again,” he said. This right here tells you everything you need to know about Gawker and people that worked there.

zxcvbn4038 6y ago

Don't forget The Man in the High Castle, pretty much the best Amazon show IMO until The Expanse came over from Sci-fi - though they could have done a lot more with the ending. Have the Nazis go to a universe where Mars or Venus isn’t a rock and slug it out over who will rule the solar system, have political intriegue with a bunch of Hitlers plotting against each other, have the communists using dinosaurs as weapons, have the Nazis encounter an very advanced Egyptian civilization that never fell, endless possibilities!

dmitriid 6y ago
> The Man in the High Castle It was very good in its first season. Then it rapidly lost steam, since the writers had no idea what to do with the amazing characters they brought to life and the moral dilemmas they inevitably ran into. As a result you had most of the characters just aimlessly wander around looking forlorn.
- gwd 6y ago
  From what I've heard, the first season of the show very closely follows the book of the same name, which was written by Phillip K. Dick (who also wrote the book on which Blade Runner was written, as well as Minority Report, and loads of others). So probably the writers are OK at translating someone else's characters from the page to the screen, but not that good at actually writing them. EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adaptations_of_works_by_Philip_K._Dick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adaptations_of_works_b...
  - zxcvbn4038 6y ago
    Very true. House of cards definitely wasn’t the same once they exhausted their source material. The plots weren’t as intricate, having Frank and Claire at odds didn’t really work, Frank and Freddy at odds didn’t really work, and personally I would like to have seen the Zoey/Rachel story lines fall off - sort “little people” fading to obscurity as Frank marches on to his next conquest. Maybe they will do a reboot one day.
- 6y ago

aminozuur 6y ago

This was an excellent read. Thanks for sharing.

wavesounds 6y ago

I don't get how Apple being a tech company has anything to do with this. If it was NBC making the show and Gawker outed the CEO of NBC does the New York Times think that the NBC CEO would act differently?

seehafer 6y ago

This article is more evidence that major media outlets hate tech and will slant every article to find a way to smear tech. Here’s how: imagine a Miramax development executive, circa 1999, bringing in a movie that was about an actress who was molested by an overweight studio executive and then was blacklisted when she spoke up. That executive would be fired in an instant. Tim Cook is obviously no Weinstein, and he has the moral high ground here contra Gawker. But the principle is the same: don’t expect The Boss to greenlight a topic they’re sensitive about. This has nothing to do “Big Tech has so much power these days”.

reaperducer 6y ago
This article is more evidence that major media outlets hate tech and will slant every article to find a way to smear tech. Classic blaming the messenger. This has nothing to do “Big Tech has so much power these days”. You and I must have read different articles. The one I just read has nothing to do with Silicon Valley's persecution complex. It was about Apple not understanding how to make TV shows.

gok 6y ago

> But Hollywood is now firmly in the grip of giant companies "Now?" When was Hollywood controlled by...small companies?

rzz3 6y ago

Why does it seem like everyone on HN but me has a New York Times account? I have moral issues with getting one.

ffpip 6y ago
Disable javascript for nytimes.com. It's a one click action with uBlock Origin in your browser. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-scripting https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hakdbha 6y ago

What a waste of time

sneak 6y ago

> Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president for internet software and services, who has been at the company since 1989, has told partners that “the two things we will never do are hard-core nudity and China,” one creative figure who has worked with Apple told me. (BuzzFeed News first reported last year that Mr. Cue had instructed creators to “avoid portraying China in a poor light.”) I miss the days when Apple wasn't run by cowards. (It's also interesting that simple nudity now qualifies as "hard-core", a term formerly reserved for pornography.)

idnefju 6y ago
Jobs was famously against pornography on a personal level. You will find email exchanges back in the day with fans/bloggers/writers where he lists his reasons why porn is not allowed on the App Store.

tptacek 6y ago

But now, from beyond the grave, Gawker is revealing another reality in this era of media consolidation: that the chief executive of one of the biggest companies in the world, who testifies before Congress and negotiates with China, also decides what television shows get made. I'm having a little trouble with the premise of this story, that it's somehow novel for an executive to have a hand in killing a show. This is like 40% of the premise of 30 Rock. But that was about the Sheinhardt Wigs hegemony over NBC (and tri-vection microwaves), not Tim Cook's influence over a tiny portfolio of streaming shows nobody watches. As long as he doesn't fuck with Ted Lasso, I honestly don't give a shit. I'm sure I'll buy another Apple product in 2021, which will re-up my Apple TV+ subscription somehow.

arcticbull 6y ago
It's the confluence of executive authority that folks are sketched out by, not the executive authority or actions themselves, imo.
- tptacek 6y ago
  You know Jack Donaghy testified before congress too, right?
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    Without really taking a position on the merits of the issue, I think the idea is that Jack Donaghy might testify before Congress about the television shows he runs, while Tim Cook testifies before Congress about matters unrelated to television.
    - tptacek 6y ago
      He testifies representing GE!
      - thaumasiotes 6y ago
        Fair enough.

kepler1 6y ago

Every media outlet, production company, aggregator, makes implicit decisions about what they choose to fund, air, endorse, or not fund, not air, or not endorse. Is this any worse than the many decisions other channels make every day to support vs. kill certain shows? Apple isn't obligated to be fair in any sense, and we should stop expecting them to be virtuous or protectors of anyone's expectation that they are.

onecommentman 6y ago
This would not be the first time. Imagine canceling a top-5 TV show in the early 1970s because of political/cultural pressure...Bridget Loves Bernie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridget_Loves_Bernie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridget_Loves_Bernie Apple isn’t obligated to be fair, but the public very much can expect them to be virtuous...the two aren’t incompatible. As Apple will probably discover as pressures grow about labor practices in China.

tpush 6y ago

Wonder how Apple's gonna deal with the 30% European content requirements that are coming [0]. [0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/12/09/new-eu-legislation-proposes-30-european-content-minimum-for-apple-tv-netflix https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/12/09/new-eu-legislatio...

robin_reala 6y ago
It’s just a proposed bill at this point. To say it’s definitely coming is a bit too strong.
- tpush 6y ago
  The bill is an implementation of an EU directive [0] which was ratified in November 2018. All EU member states will have to transpose it into national law. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/audiovisual-media-services-directive-avmsd https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/audiovisual-me...

maxharris 6y ago

Gawker wasn't just an ordinary media voice that simply made the mistake of offending economically powerful people. In Apple's case, it paid a significant amount of money for a prototype iPhone that it absolutely knew was stolen. In Thiel's case, it outed a gay man that didn't want to come out. The earlier act was illegal; both acts are immoral. I have real problem with Apple's cooperation with China, the total lack of documentation for developers, the faulty keyboards, the locking down of the App Store and total ban on sideloaded apps. I also have a big problem with the security stuff it builds in that can be (and most likely is) used for domestic spying. I want to run Linux on the M1 MacBook Pro. I think Scott Forstall should be brought back into the CEO role to replace Tim Cook. So don't get me wrong, my position is not reflexively pro-Apple or pro-Cook here. I'm just saying that Gawker is just about the worst possible example to use. Does their point even stand at all without Gawker?

jimnotgym 6y ago
That's the thing about free speech and press freedom, you are either for it or against it. The fact that you or I find Gawker's output distasteful is irrelevant. On the illegallity point, that is a job for law enforcement, not corporations to decide.
- nickff 6y ago
  It's a bit unrealistic to expect your victims to lionize you in a television show.
  - MinusGix 6y ago
    If it was having a person having to make a television show about someone they hated then I would agree, but corporations are _not_ people and so the reasoning does not apply.
- doctor_eval 6y ago
  It is absolutely a corporation's job to decide where it will spend its money. Cook didn't stop someone else making a show about Gawker, he stopped the company he runs from doing so. Huge difference.

DavidSJ 6y ago

I believe the following statements are simultaneously true, yet rarely simultaneously acknowledged: 1) The First Amendment says nothing about which content companies must produce, promote, or allow with their resources and on their platforms. 2) The principle of free speech extends beyond the First Amendment or government censorship: our society has a considerable interest in the open exchange of ideas and information, especially by the least popular among us, so that we may conduct the difficult conversations which are the prerequisite for progress, and possess the freedoms of thought and communication which are the prerequisites for enlightenment. 3) The increasing centralization of control over new media in a handful of large technology companies (mainly Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter) poses an intense threat to the aforementioned open exchange of ideas, especially where such ideas may threaten business interests of those companies, or merely taint them by association with something or someone unpopular. 4) The lack of collective immunity to viral forms of political disinformation on new media platforms, the speed with which such disinformation spreads, and the active, asymmetric promotion of that disinformation by certain political actors, poses a paradox of tolerance of a sort, threatening the continuation of the open society on which everything good depends. These four truths form a tangled knot which must be cut, but to do so, we must first see its whole, and not merely one or two of its threads.

madeofpalk 6y ago
> Twitter I find it really funny when Twitter is lumped in with the rest of these countries. It is almost like an order or magnitude smaller than all the others, and makes considerably less money. Twitter is a small niche social network with people who control the news, which vastly overstates it's size.
- DavidSJ 6y ago
  I thought about that point when constructing that list, but despite Twitter's small size as a business, it has outsized power in the media environment. For complementary reasons, I excluded Microsoft, despite its large size. I'm sure one could debate the exact composition of that list, but it's not too important to the larger point.
- 6y ago

boringg 6y ago

The only reason this is a story is so that the show can get another buyer. Honestly good for Tim Cook to shut this Gawker crap down. They were garbage when they were around and we don't need rose colored glasses looking back over their history to live on in TV show format. Also the executive who cleared this probably should have thought a little bit more about it.