"Game of Thrones, move on." What Apple showed today at its Show Time event

A couple of hours ago, a very large presentation of Apple ended, dedicated to various services and the company's breakthrough in the field of TV. It lasted almost two hours, noticeably longer than the presentation of the iPhone and iPad. To be honest, it was also much more interesting to watch. Apple is moving away from its main business, and now wants to become a company that gives us entertainment (hmm, I wonder, why would that be ?).

It all started yesterday, the day before the presentation. Engineers turned on cameras in an empty Steve Jobs theater - and specifically mocked users who decided to connect early. For example, Captain America called them on the big screen (he never got through). Strange silhouettes flew by. Someone tried to put together a whole picture (a TV show with Chris Evans, where he hunts for ghosts !?), but in the end they agreed that it was just unobtrusive trolling.

However, Apple came to Hollywood, this small village, and therefore there were plenty of reliable rumors about the upcoming event. For example, it was known that two or three dozen new films and shows from such stars as Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams and Oprah Winfrey should be announced. They also said that Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon receive $ 1.1 million for each episode of their series (and Witherspoon is very happy about this ).

Apple News + - news and magazines in one app

It all started with ... news.

Tim Cook was the first to enter the scene and talked about their new focus on services. The first of these will be Apple News +, essentially Netflix, only for newspapers and magazines. The service is based on Texture, which Apple bought and closed just a year ago.

The main "chip" that Tim Cook pressed on (and followed by various heads of company departments) is the priority of reliable sources. All the slides here could be changed to one: “We are not Facebook!”. Like, each source is checked and carefully selected, and priority is given not to the algorithms, but to the real people-editors of News +, so that any propaganda, "sensationalism" and impudent advertising does not break into the main page.

Now News + will have access to over 300 magazines, including TIME, Vogue, Esquire. The Wall Street Journal has joined. A subscription for everything will cost $ 9.99 (and Apple says that if you subscribed to all sources separately, it would cost $ 8000 per year).

The sad thing is that all raspberries will be available only on Apple gadgets. And some of the most popular American newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, refused to participate. According to rumors, due to the fact that Apple takes 50% of the subscription, distributing the rest between the newspaper magazines that users read. News + should be an extremely successful service for newspapers and magazines to see some substantial profit.

For a long time they showed the advantages of designing a new application on the iPhone and iPad. The launch of Apple News + is today, the first month is free.

Apple Card - Bonus Credit Card

Tim Cook expects Apple Pay to process more than 10 billion transactions in 2019. It will be connected in more than 40 countries. And to make payment even more convenient, remove unnecessary fees and increase reliability, the company now presents the Apple Card. Credit card. You register through your iPhone, and in a couple of minutes you get your card in the application. Available for payment wherever they work with Apple Pay.

The card will live in the Wallet application, so that it automatically calculates costs and budgets. Apple says it even uses machine learning technology to eliminate all these weird transaction names. In history, they will always be replaced by the names of stores and specific products.

Apple representatives explained why their offer is better than banks:

Every time you spend with an Apple Card, you get cashback daily. We call it Daily Cash.

Cashback is 2% (instead of 1% for banks). And if you spent the resources of a credit card on a purchase in the Apple store, the cashback will be 3%.

The card does not have a number, CVV, signature, end date. All data is stored inside your wallet application.

They talked about the advantages of the card for quite some time. Apple, apparently, really wants to transfer Americans to its card. Let's see how it takes off. You can read a little more with marks .

Apple Arcade - High Quality Paid Games

Cook came out again. He started talking about the coolness of the App Store. Like, more than half a billion people visit the online store every week. There are already more than 300,000 games on the site. “We want to make gaming better than ever,” says Cook. “But it's almost impossible to compete in popularity with free games.”

Therefore, the company, again, presents a new service: Apple Arcade. Subscription gives you access to a collection of exclusive cool games for smartphones, desktops and TV. At the launch stage, 100+ games are already ready, all of them are original, made with the support of Apple and therefore not available on any other platform.

Demos were shown, it looked very impressive, at least in the video. Apple had to fork out well for such exclusive titles. The director of one of the games, for example, was Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of Final Fantasy.

You can play on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV. All games are offline only. None of them have multiplayer. Accordingly, there are no ads or in-app purchases. You can play anywhere, even without an internet connection. The cost of the subscription has not yet been reported.

Apple tv

Updated Apple TV app. Access to all TV channels - sports, news, TV shows - is available inside the application. Including Hulu, HBO and Showtime. You can also subscribe to these channels within the application. Again, Apple talks about being curated by real people, “expert editors who advise you on the best TV shows, like your friend.”

Here, in the same application, movies will be included, having migrated from iTunes. Apparently, they can be either bought or rented.

And - for the first time it will also be available for macbooks. They will have access to Apple TV this fall. It is planned that access to the application will be in more than 100 countries.

Redesign of Apple TV for iOS is scheduled for May.

Apple TV +

“We want to give our culture something of our own.”

A separate service, TV +, which you can also subscribe to. Like HBO or Netflix. With their own films and series. Actually, the main and most impressive part of the presentation.

Apple is investing a billion in the production of its own shows and series. Hollywood producers came on the scene to help Apple do this, and Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams, M. Knight Shyamalan, and a dozen well-known actors gave the introduction with their parting words on the big screen. The video came out slightly long, boring and black and white, which is somehow strange for the video service.

But then - it began!

Steven Spielberg came out live (no one expected!), Spoke about his Amazing Stories project for Apple. At this stage, the walls of the Steve Jobs Theater opened and also began to show images - it looks cool, apparently, the audience did not even know that they could do this.

It turned out that almost all the celebrities from the video came to tell about their content. Even Aquaman Jason Momoa played with biceps. Each time the scene turned black, and suddenly new actors, directors, or even dolls from Sesame Street appeared on it. At the end, we showed the installation - a trailer, so to speak, for all future shows, “the highest quality content,” as Apple calls it.

In the final in white, Oprah Winfrey, the richest and most famous TV presenter in the United States, entered the scene (under $ 3 billion, if that). She said that now she is joining forces with Apple. Will bring light and joy. He is working on two documentaries that "bring people together." And also (for some reason) it will build the brightest and largest book club on the planet so that it unites people with the help of books (what does Apple TV + have to do with it - not the slightest idea).

Then Tim Cook came out again, hugged Oprah, let out a tear, thanked the old Apple employees and new partners, said goodbye. Hurrah!

+ Ocean of content

In general, of course, the number of different films, TV shows and other projects under development is very impressive when it is presented like this to you. Apparently, this is a calculation. It seems that the content is just a sea. Although if the same Netflix came out to talk about all of its projects, that would not have been a month.

Particularly much attention was paid to sections for children. There are films (Central Park, Wolfwalkers), and animated series. And two shows "Sesame Streets", one - animation, the second - live.

It is known about the comedy Dickinson, the drama The Morning Show about the life of a news anchor, where, in fact, Aniston will star with Witherspoon, as well as Steve Carell, the star of the "Office".

JJ Abrams does the comedic drama Little Voice in half-hour episodes. There will be several series about immigrants at once (one from a Korean author). Spielberg is doing his science fiction, and there will also be For All Mankind about an alternative universe in which the space race of the Cold War never stopped.

One of the most interesting projects is the adaptation of Isaac Asimov's novel “Foundation”. Ten episodes about the distant future and the galactic empire, which is beginning to fall apart. From David Goyer (Batman: The Beginning). And the director of “Torah: Ragnarok” Taika Waititi will make the adaptation of the fantastic fairy tale “Bandits of Time”.

Captain America, Chris Evans, will star in the 8-episode drama Defending Jacob, about a father whose 14-daughter was charged with murder. And Shyamalan is doing an unnamed psychological thriller for 10 episodes.

There will be documentaries, most of which Apple just bought at various festivals. Elephant Queen is about an elephant saving her pack. Home about the most unusual houses in the world. Losing Earth on global warming. And these are only those that we know about.

Apple TV + will be available this fall. The subscription price has not been announced again.

- Blanked product

The shows have not yet come out, and there are already enough scandals. Apple executives are said to have a very complicated relationship with “creative talent.” Tim Cook personally intervenes in the affairs of the scriptwriters, saying to change one or another aspect of the series. “He has paranoia about anything that could harm the brand.”

For example, they say the company insists that its gadgets be visible in the show (if the setting allows it). And, according to rumors, it prohibits the use of any Apple technology in a negative context. So if the character of the series wants to break the phone in a fit of anger, he will most likely quickly change his mind, remember that this is Apple, and put it back in his pocket.

The Wall Street Journal reported that they wanted to remove the crucifixes from Shyamalan’s thriller series. He fought for a long time, and they were allowed to leave.

Howard Gordon, known for his political drama Homeland and 24, was less fortunate. They wanted to give him a good budget, but he offered to make a series about two disappointed veterans in life who are starting massacres. Apple immediately closed this topic, and refused to cooperate.

Brutal cruelty and "adult" topics, they say, are almost never approved. Apple forbids even nudity and abuse. Do not expect new Apple Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, with obscene and boobs, from Apple TV +.

The future of television

TV shows and films will always be popular (until some more advanced form of light entertainment appears). We have more and more free time, and we can devote it to watching something interesting. Looking at the huge success of Netflix, almost every company that has enough money and ambition wants to grab a piece of the tidbit market.

But the market for streaming TV services is already very full. Only from cloudy Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, plus - dozens of traditional ones. In just a month's time, Disney + is set to unveil Disney, with all its crazy collection of films, from Sleeping Beauty to the latest Avengers. According to Reelgood, an average American home is signed up for 4.2 streaming services. One of them is Netflix - in 96% of cases. And if the user has only one video service, in 83% of cases it is Netflix.

Apple has already spent a billion, and has attracted many famous people for promotion. But her library is still very limited, and it will be difficult to lure users into a new fledgling service even with a couple of very good series. Netflix has grown its audience for two decades.

In 2019, Netflix will spend $ 15 billion on content production. This is a huge amount. It would be enough for 300 seasons of the Game of Thrones (in one year!), One season almost every day. In order to somehow compete with Netflix, HBO raised its annual budget to $ 2.5 billion. And Amazon, with its bottomless pockets, wants to spend $ 1 billion on only one series on The Lord of the Rings, making it the most expensive television series in history.

And this arms race is not going to stop. Netflix’s annual content creation spending is expected to increase to $ 23 billion by 2022. Hulu at CES 2018 announced that it could raise its budget to $ 20- $ 30 billion in order to release more series of servant level stories. Apple, Disney, and other players will also have to fork out to stay competitive and attract better talent. Few doubts that next year, regardless of the popularity of the service, Apple will allocate significantly more than the current billion for it.

The result of such savage competition is even more diverse content for our loved ones! And now, almost without budget restrictions. If something gains popularity and finds its audience (like the chic “Space”), other TV giants will happily intercept such a show for themselves. The second "Firefly", the main sadness of the American geeks, will no longer happen. While large companies are desperately fighting for users, apparently we all win.