"Game of Thrones, move over." What Apple showed today in its Show Time event

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

It all started yesterday, the day before the presentation. Engineers turned on the cameras in the empty Steve Jobs theater - and specifically mocked the users who decided to connect early. For example, Captain America called them on the big screen (he never got through). Strange silhouettes flew past. Someone tried to collect a whole picture from all of this (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 earn $ 1.1 million for each episode of their series (and Witherspoon is very happy about it ).

Apple News + - news and magazines in one application

It all started with ... news.

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

The main “trick” that Tim Cook put pressure on (followed by various company department heads) was the priority of reliable sources. All the slides here could be changed to one: "We are not Facebook!". They say that each source is checked and carefully selected, and priority is given not to algorithms, but to real people-editors of News +, so that all propaganda, “sensationalism” and blatant advertising will not break through to the main page.

Now in News + more than 300 magazines will be available, including TIME, Vogue, Esquire. The Wall Street Journal has joined. Subscribing to everything will cost $ 9.99 (and Apple says that if you subscribed to all sources separately, it would be worth $ 8,000 per year).

The sadness is that all the raspberries will be available only on Apple gadgets. And some of the most popular American newspapers, like 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, the rest is distributed among newspapers and magazines that users read. News + should be a very successful service so that newspapers and magazines see some substantial profit.

Long showed the benefits of the design of the new application on the iPhone and iPad. The launch of Apple News + - 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, to remove the extra 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 will receive your card in the application. Available for payment wherever they work with Apple Pay.

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

Apple representatives explained how their offer is better than banks:

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

Cashback is 2% (instead of 1% for banks). And if you spent credit card resources to buy at 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.

About the benefits of the card told for quite some time. Apple, apparently, really wants to transfer Americans to their card. Let's see how to take off. A little more you can read at the marks .

Apple Arcade - high quality paid games

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

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 inaccessible on any other platform.

They showed demos, it looked very impressive, at least in the video. Apple had to fork out for such exclusive titles. The director of one of the games, for example, was Hironobu Sakaguchi, the 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 is no advertising or shopping inside the app. You can play anywhere, even without an Internet connection. The cost of the subscription is not reported.

Apple TV

Updated Apple TV application. Access to all TV channels - sports, news, TV shows - is available within the application. Including Hulu, HBO and Showtime. Making a paid subscription to these channels is also possible within the application. Again, Apple says that everything is supervised by real people, "expert editors who advise you on the best TV shows as your friend."

Here, in the same application, films will be included, having migrated from iTunes. They, apparently, can be both bought and rented.

And - for the first time it will be available also 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.

Apple TV redesign for iOS is scheduled for May.

Apple TV +

"We want to give culture something of our own."

Separate service, TV +, which you can also subscribe to. Like HBO or Netflix. With your own movies and TV shows. Actually, the main and most impressive part of the presentation.

Apple is investing a billion in the production of its own shows and TV shows. Hollywood producers came to the scene to help Apple with this, and Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams, M. Night Shyamalan, and a dozen well-known actors gave an introduction to the big screen. The video came out a little long, tedious and black and white, which is somehow even strange for the video service.

But then it began!

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

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

In the finals in white, Oprah Winfrey, the richest and most famous TV presenter in the US, entered the stage (under $ 3 billion, if that). She told me that now she is joining forces with Apple. Will bring light and joy. He is working on two documentaries that will “unite people”. And yet (for some reason) they will build the brightest and largest book club on the planet, so that it unites people with the help of books (where does Apple TV + have - not the slightest idea).

Then Tim Cook came out again, hugged Opra, shed a tear, thanked old Apple employees and new partners, said goodbye. Hooray!

+ Ocean content

In general, of course, the number of different films being developed, TV series and other projects is very impressive when it is presented like this before you. Apparently, this is the calculation. It seems that the content is just the sea. Although if the same Netflix came out to tell about all its projects, this would not be enough for a month.

Especially a lot of attention was given to the section for children. Here and 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 of The Morning Show about the life of the news host, where, in fact, Aniston will star with Witherspoon, as well as Steve Carell, the star of the "Office".

JJ Abrams does the comedy drama Little Voice in half an hour episodes. There will be several TV series about immigrants (one from the Korean author). Spielberg does 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 the Founding novel by Isaac Asimov. 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 Whiteiti, will adapt the fantastic tale of The Time Bandits.

Captain America, Chris Evans, will act in an 8-episode drama Defending Jacob - about a father whose 14th daughter was accused of murder. And Shyamalan makes yet unnamed psychological thriller for 10 episodes.

There will also be documentaries, most of which Apple just bought at various festivals. Elephant Queen about the elephant that saves its flock. Home about the most unusual houses in the world. Losing Earth about global warming. And these are just the ones we know about.

Apple TV + will be available this fall. The price of the subscription was not mentioned again.

- emasculated product

The show has not yet come out, but there are already enough scandals. They say Apple executives have a very difficult relationship with “creative talent”. Tim Cook personally intervenes in the writers' affairs, saying to change one or another aspect of the series. "He has paranoia about everything that could harm the brand."

For example, they say, the company insists that its gadgets are 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 in a fit of anger wants to break the phone, he will most likely quickly come to its senses, remember that this is Apple, and put it back in his pocket.

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

Howard Gordon, known for his political dramas “Motherland” and “24”, was less fortunate. He wanted to give a good budget, but he offered to make a series about two veterans who were disappointed in life, who are starting massacres. This topic Apple immediately closed, and refused to cooperate.

Brutal cruelty and “adult” topics, they say, are almost never approved. Apple bans even nudity and abuse. New "Breaking Bad" or "Game of Thrones", with mat and tits, from Apple TV + do not wait.

The future of television

TV shows and movies 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 viewing something interesting. Looking at the huge success of Netflix, almost every company that has enough money and ambition wants to grab a piece of tasty market.

But the market for streaming TV services is already very full. Only from cloud Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, plus - dozens of traditional ones. In just a month, Disney + is going to present its site to Disney - with its entire insane collection of films, from Sleeping Beauty to the latest Avengers. According to Reelgood, on average, an American home is subscribed to 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 attracted a lot of famous people for promotion. But its 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 TV shows. Netflix has grown its audience over 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 "Game of Thrones" (in one year!), One season almost every day. 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 just one series on The Lord of the Rings, making it the most expensive TV series in history.

And this arms race is not going to stop. Netflix’s annual spending on content creation is expected to increase to $ 23 billion by the year 2022. Hulu at CES 2018 reported that it could raise its budget to $ 20- $ 30 billion to release more TV series of “The Handmaid's Tale”. Apple, Disney and other players will have to fork out to stay competitive and attract the best talent. Few people doubt that next year, regardless of the popularity of the service, Apple will allocate to it significantly more than the current billion.

The result of this wildest competition - even more diverse content for us loved! And now almost without any restrictions in the budget. If something gains popularity and finds its audience (like the posh "Space"), other TV giants are happy to intercept this show for themselves. The second "Firefly", the main sadness of American geeks, will not happen again. While large companies are desperately fighting for users, apparently we all win.