8 ms·

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

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.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jseliger 6y ago
  An evergreen germane to this point: http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-... I do grant writing for nonprofits, public agencies, and some research-based businesses, and we get a fair number of calls from smart people who started with the best of intentions and then after a number of hours of struggle decided to seek aid.
  - ChuckMcM 6y ago
    One of my favorite essays.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    > smart people who started with the best of intentions I had two roommates try to make a structurally stable stool / box out of lumber. 3 hours later I returned to find both of them pissed off & a "box" without a square corner in sight. Days later, I offered in a conversation with them how odd it is that dimensional lumber doesn't measure the named dimensions. They looked at me in shock and said "Maybe that's why nothing was lining up." That's "X does Y, because how hard can it be?" in a nutshell. But the broader takeaway is to test & validate your own assumptions -- they had a measuring tape the entire time.
Alex3917 6y ago
All of their video games look completely paint-by-numbers also. It's hard to imagine many people continuing to subscribe to these services once the free trials run out.
- 2muchcoffeeman 6y ago
  Yeah. So much potential too. Decently powerful streaming device that can play decent games. And can connect to BT controllers. But there’s nothing on it to play.
- mcphage 6y ago
  Apple doesn’t directly produce any video games, though. They may provide some funding, but most Apple Arcade titles appear on other platforms. And many of them are quite excellent. (There’s also a lot more of them out, so it’s easier to evaluate them as a whole)
- not4ew00 6y ago
  Apple services are designed for broad adoption. They are the Disney of tech. Non-tech, typical parents will stick with their vertical rather than be nickeled and dimed by Netflix, and Amazon, and CBS, and... I’m pretty sure how the 20th Century thought about this stuff is on the way out. My kids have no clue what any the names on those icons mean. They watch random stuff and don’t cling given the diversity. I am teaching my kids to make content with modern tools. ML will no doubt take over. Consider how much textual content we have given the internet. ML will be able to generate video and audio and where we need new ideas, help humans iterate much faster. The emotional value of any given property will nose dive as it happens. Mario and Solid Snake will be lost to time. Really though, unlike Aristotle, or Galileo, will humanity have lost anything near the overall value? Pop culture isn’t forever.
- nicolas_t 6y ago
  Don't agree with you on that. There's quite a few great games in apple arcade. Pilgrims, Beyond a Steel Sky, Neo Cab, Necrobarista, Takeshi and Hiroshi Those are more indie titles, they are rather original and different from AAA titles and don't have the refinement of AAA titles when it comes to graphics et al. But they are absolutely not paint-by-numbers
jcfields 6y ago
I would guess that Apple doesn't want any controversy from their media side harming the reputation of the other parts of the company, which is probably a sensible decision. Netflix is in a different position since the "media part" of the company is the entire company. Not sure how Amazon fits into all this because I'm not familiar with their offerings.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  I think it's abundantly clear Bezos gives no shits about controversy from one side harming another: how much profit does it make? So basically, The Boys where Vought=Amazon & superheros=Amazon divisions.
  - ayewo 6y ago
    Absolutely. Unfortunately, although Tim Cook has been at Apple for decades, he can't make the kind of bold, risky decisions that a founder who's been there from day 1 would.
- specialist 6y ago
  Agreed. Even more so than Disney. I'm still surprised Apple is now doing original content.
SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago
> Apple doesn't know how to make really good TV. It felt to me like it was a lot of middling, risk averse people What, no love for Ted Lasso? (I love that show, but I'm tired of grim gloomy edgy death-philic television. It's a nice change without being Hallmark.)
- Austin_Conlon 6y ago
  I'm not even sure if "comedy" is the right category for it, considering how moving and poignant it is on top of Ted Lasso's folksy yet self-aware shtick. It's a breath of fresh air seeing a character manipulate situations by being a genuinely good person instead of yet another sinister anti-hero.
- mns 6y ago
  I love that show, the only thing from Apple TV I actually watched. Got a subscription for buying something from them, and after 7 months decided to give it a go and try something less dark and gloomy. This is such a lighthearted gem, the perfect thing to watch for me right now. Not too much drama, just pure feel good stuff, don’t even know how to describe it, but I love that show.
- specialist 6y ago
  Their documentary Home gets me right in the feels too. Just terrific.
  - Austin_Conlon 6y ago
    It feels kind of Hallmark style and hagiographic to me, but it's still interesting and I've only watched three so far. The Indonesian bamboo architecture story is breathtaking.
bruceb 6y ago
Well not sure if they have good editing either. I saw the first episode of Tehran the other day, two noticeable errors. Passengers are on a commercial airline, but on the first outside shot it looks like a smaller corporate jet. Later when it lands it looks like a commercial jet. Later the same plane takes off from Tehran and there is a Southwest airlines jet in the background, like its supposed to be Tehran, not Phoenix. One hardly needs to be an aviation expert to notice these things. How could a well funded production miss two thing in the first episode of a show?
- Austin_Conlon 6y ago
  I don't think they were involved with the content of Tehran at all, only they acquired the rights to distribute it worldwide later on. You can also tell because there's no Apple hardware shown. However, in Servant, there's a continuity error where an Audi is shown without the emblem in one scene and then with it in another scene. This is especially surprising because Servant probably has the best Apple TV+ cinematography.
  - bruceb 6y ago
    ah, thanks for the clarification, that make more sense. I guess that can somewhat excuse the Southwest airlines goof if not American makers, but doesn't excuse showing different jets as the same plane
- fredophile 6y ago
  > How could a well funded production miss two thing in the first episode of a show? You must not have seen this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF5v0Y1uM7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF5v0Y1uM7g
- 1123581321 6y ago
  Tehran was made by Israeli KAN 11, a public TV channel roughly equivalent to a BBC channel.
madeofpalk 6y ago
> They have good line producers and of course great technical talent for set design, editing, production I don't understand this - these are Apple people themselves? I was always under the impression that external production companies were making these TV shows and Apple was just buying the rights. They might (or might not, if you ask Apple) make editorial decisions, but I never expected Apple to have technical talent and input for set design, etc/
ksec 6y ago
That is the problem I have with Apple Services as a whole, that is Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple News+ and Apple Arcade. None of these were started because Apple thinks they could do better and contribute something, a word Steve Jobs likes to use. They are doing it simply because they needed those Services Revenue. Something to dilute down their near 100% App Store Margin and Google Search Placement. Apple Music was something they wanted to save iTunes / Music as a Business. And they bought in Jimmy Iovine for that god damn "Next Song" idea. Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade were part of the grand plan for Apple One. Unlike iCloud, Apple Music and Apple News+, Apple TV and Arcade does not have any per unit cost. iCloud are cost / GB, Music are cost per song played, and News are cost per article read. TV shows and Arcade Games are paid as a whole at a fixed cost regardless of users. This give opportunity for Apple to bundle them at a discount. One could argue Apple Fitness+ is more like iTunes where it is used to sell more Apple Watch / iPod. And it isn't out yet so I am giving it some benefits of doubt.
- enos_feedler 6y ago
  I think there are a lot of assumptions in here about _why_ certain products and services were created. It is much harder for us to figure this out, looking from the outside. For Apple Fitness+, it might sell more watches, but the reason it requires a watch is because the product includes sensors that read useful data during the fitness experience that other devices simply don't have. Given Tim Cook has stated publicly that what Apple wants to be most known for when looking back on the company is improvements to people's health, I don't think Fitness+ was spun up to sell watches. It was created out of a genuine priority for the company to have a certain impact on the world. I also don't believe the purpose of Apple TV+ and Arcade was to create Apple One. It seems like they genuinely are trying to come up with a unique service for these two areas. Apple One is just a bundling. They are also responses to growing problems. Apple Arcade is an answer to the growing problem of in app purchases and advertising. They want to create a pure, fun gaming experience that you can put in front of your kids and not worry about it. I think Apple TV+ is more about business deals required to build the Apple TV app itself. You aren't going to have a seat at the table if you aren't serious about buying and delivering content.

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.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jseliger 6y ago
An evergreen germane to this point: http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-... I do grant writing for nonprofits, public agencies, and some research-based businesses, and we get a fair number of calls from smart people who started with the best of intentions and then after a number of hours of struggle decided to seek aid.
- ChuckMcM 6y ago
  One of my favorite essays.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  > smart people who started with the best of intentions I had two roommates try to make a structurally stable stool / box out of lumber. 3 hours later I returned to find both of them pissed off & a "box" without a square corner in sight. Days later, I offered in a conversation with them how odd it is that dimensional lumber doesn't measure the named dimensions. They looked at me in shock and said "Maybe that's why nothing was lining up." That's "X does Y, because how hard can it be?" in a nutshell. But the broader takeaway is to test & validate your own assumptions -- they had a measuring tape the entire time.

Alex3917 6y ago

All of their video games look completely paint-by-numbers also. It's hard to imagine many people continuing to subscribe to these services once the free trials run out.

2muchcoffeeman 6y ago
Yeah. So much potential too. Decently powerful streaming device that can play decent games. And can connect to BT controllers. But there’s nothing on it to play.
mcphage 6y ago
Apple doesn’t directly produce any video games, though. They may provide some funding, but most Apple Arcade titles appear on other platforms. And many of them are quite excellent. (There’s also a lot more of them out, so it’s easier to evaluate them as a whole)
not4ew00 6y ago
Apple services are designed for broad adoption. They are the Disney of tech. Non-tech, typical parents will stick with their vertical rather than be nickeled and dimed by Netflix, and Amazon, and CBS, and... I’m pretty sure how the 20th Century thought about this stuff is on the way out. My kids have no clue what any the names on those icons mean. They watch random stuff and don’t cling given the diversity. I am teaching my kids to make content with modern tools. ML will no doubt take over. Consider how much textual content we have given the internet. ML will be able to generate video and audio and where we need new ideas, help humans iterate much faster. The emotional value of any given property will nose dive as it happens. Mario and Solid Snake will be lost to time. Really though, unlike Aristotle, or Galileo, will humanity have lost anything near the overall value? Pop culture isn’t forever.
nicolas_t 6y ago
Don't agree with you on that. There's quite a few great games in apple arcade. Pilgrims, Beyond a Steel Sky, Neo Cab, Necrobarista, Takeshi and Hiroshi Those are more indie titles, they are rather original and different from AAA titles and don't have the refinement of AAA titles when it comes to graphics et al. But they are absolutely not paint-by-numbers

jcfields 6y ago

I would guess that Apple doesn't want any controversy from their media side harming the reputation of the other parts of the company, which is probably a sensible decision. Netflix is in a different position since the "media part" of the company is the entire company. Not sure how Amazon fits into all this because I'm not familiar with their offerings.

ethbr0 6y ago
I think it's abundantly clear Bezos gives no shits about controversy from one side harming another: how much profit does it make? So basically, The Boys where Vought=Amazon & superheros=Amazon divisions.
- ayewo 6y ago
  Absolutely. Unfortunately, although Tim Cook has been at Apple for decades, he can't make the kind of bold, risky decisions that a founder who's been there from day 1 would.
specialist 6y ago
Agreed. Even more so than Disney. I'm still surprised Apple is now doing original content.

SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago

> Apple doesn't know how to make really good TV. It felt to me like it was a lot of middling, risk averse people What, no love for Ted Lasso? (I love that show, but I'm tired of grim gloomy edgy death-philic television. It's a nice change without being Hallmark.)

Austin_Conlon 6y ago
I'm not even sure if "comedy" is the right category for it, considering how moving and poignant it is on top of Ted Lasso's folksy yet self-aware shtick. It's a breath of fresh air seeing a character manipulate situations by being a genuinely good person instead of yet another sinister anti-hero.
mns 6y ago
I love that show, the only thing from Apple TV I actually watched. Got a subscription for buying something from them, and after 7 months decided to give it a go and try something less dark and gloomy. This is such a lighthearted gem, the perfect thing to watch for me right now. Not too much drama, just pure feel good stuff, don’t even know how to describe it, but I love that show.
specialist 6y ago
Their documentary Home gets me right in the feels too. Just terrific.
- Austin_Conlon 6y ago
  It feels kind of Hallmark style and hagiographic to me, but it's still interesting and I've only watched three so far. The Indonesian bamboo architecture story is breathtaking.

bruceb 6y ago

Well not sure if they have good editing either. I saw the first episode of Tehran the other day, two noticeable errors. Passengers are on a commercial airline, but on the first outside shot it looks like a smaller corporate jet. Later when it lands it looks like a commercial jet. Later the same plane takes off from Tehran and there is a Southwest airlines jet in the background, like its supposed to be Tehran, not Phoenix. One hardly needs to be an aviation expert to notice these things. How could a well funded production miss two thing in the first episode of a show?

Austin_Conlon 6y ago
I don't think they were involved with the content of Tehran at all, only they acquired the rights to distribute it worldwide later on. You can also tell because there's no Apple hardware shown. However, in Servant, there's a continuity error where an Audi is shown without the emblem in one scene and then with it in another scene. This is especially surprising because Servant probably has the best Apple TV+ cinematography.
- bruceb 6y ago
  ah, thanks for the clarification, that make more sense. I guess that can somewhat excuse the Southwest airlines goof if not American makers, but doesn't excuse showing different jets as the same plane
fredophile 6y ago
> How could a well funded production miss two thing in the first episode of a show? You must not have seen this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF5v0Y1uM7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF5v0Y1uM7g
1123581321 6y ago
Tehran was made by Israeli KAN 11, a public TV channel roughly equivalent to a BBC channel.

madeofpalk 6y ago

> They have good line producers and of course great technical talent for set design, editing, production I don't understand this - these are Apple people themselves? I was always under the impression that external production companies were making these TV shows and Apple was just buying the rights. They might (or might not, if you ask Apple) make editorial decisions, but I never expected Apple to have technical talent and input for set design, etc/

ksec 6y ago

That is the problem I have with Apple Services as a whole, that is Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple News+ and Apple Arcade. None of these were started because Apple thinks they could do better and contribute something, a word Steve Jobs likes to use. They are doing it simply because they needed those Services Revenue. Something to dilute down their near 100% App Store Margin and Google Search Placement. Apple Music was something they wanted to save iTunes / Music as a Business. And they bought in Jimmy Iovine for that god damn "Next Song" idea. Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade were part of the grand plan for Apple One. Unlike iCloud, Apple Music and Apple News+, Apple TV and Arcade does not have any per unit cost. iCloud are cost / GB, Music are cost per song played, and News are cost per article read. TV shows and Arcade Games are paid as a whole at a fixed cost regardless of users. This give opportunity for Apple to bundle them at a discount. One could argue Apple Fitness+ is more like iTunes where it is used to sell more Apple Watch / iPod. And it isn't out yet so I am giving it some benefits of doubt.

enos_feedler 6y ago
I think there are a lot of assumptions in here about _why_ certain products and services were created. It is much harder for us to figure this out, looking from the outside. For Apple Fitness+, it might sell more watches, but the reason it requires a watch is because the product includes sensors that read useful data during the fitness experience that other devices simply don't have. Given Tim Cook has stated publicly that what Apple wants to be most known for when looking back on the company is improvements to people's health, I don't think Fitness+ was spun up to sell watches. It was created out of a genuine priority for the company to have a certain impact on the world. I also don't believe the purpose of Apple TV+ and Arcade was to create Apple One. It seems like they genuinely are trying to come up with a unique service for these two areas. Apple One is just a bundling. They are also responses to growing problems. Apple Arcade is an answer to the growing problem of in app purchases and advertising. They want to create a pure, fun gaming experience that you can put in front of your kids and not worry about it. I think Apple TV+ is more about business deals required to build the Apple TV app itself. You aren't going to have a seat at the table if you aren't serious about buying and delivering content.