Apple: Why News Plus, TV Plus, Arcade and Card Card Events Are Unusual



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There have been good Apple events and bad Apple events since Tim Cook took office as CEO seven and a half years ago, but nothing resembles the event today. . For the first time I can remember, Apple brought nothing to the table but its power.

To sum up, Apple announced the creation of a subscription-based news service (Apple News +), which includes the digital version of all the magazines you've heard about, as well as almost every newspaper (except of Washington Post and the New York Times.) He announced a television service (Apple TV +) featuring original programs, like Netflix and Prime Video from Amazon. He announced that you can access all the TV services you already subscribe to via Apple TV, which is as important as, for example, getting a new clicker for your smart TV. It has announced Apple Arcade, a set of video games released online on all your Apple devices. And she announced that she was proposing a new credit card developed with Goldman Sachs, the bank named by Matt Taibbi, "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, steadily blocking its bloody funnel in all what smells like money. " seems particularly appropriate for a day when Apple has been trying to pack totally insignificant things into our collective throat.

All that Apple had to offer today was power and numbers. "They have a billion pockets, a billion pockets," said Oprah Winfrey, explaining why she decided to produce shows for the company. It's so simple.

Cook and his henchmen talked about creativity, but Apple's creativity was nowhere. Some applications would have benefited, but the interface seems just as confusing as the current offer of the company.

Instead, Apple uses its power to feed on the creativity of others. Start a TV service to compete with Netflix? Rent stars! Steven Spielberg, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, J.J. Abrams and Winfrey came on stage to do what creative people are doing less creative: talking about creativity. A news service? Take advantage of the fact that the information sector is facing a fatal distribution problem by charging these despicable publications 50 cents for the right to be bundled and sold at low prices under the Apple brand. How about a credit card? The Apple / Goldman offer offers cash back, rewards and confidentiality promises, like all other credit cards on the planet.

Speaking of confidentiality … Cook has seized every possible opportunity to badert that Apple's commitment to privacy protection is indicative of the core goodness of society, as opposed to the stingy data custodians of Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. But today's event revealed how Apple is, in fact, the same kind of beast. His devices may be in our pockets, but Apple wants us in his pocket. Like the others, he wants to absorb all our time. There is only one compelling reason to subscribe to a credit card, an arcade, a TV app, and an information service: access all of this through a single company and a single phone is obviously easier than having to access these items separately.

In the past, Apple offered creativity and convenience. The products were excellent in themselves and the way they worked together was both creative and practical. This time, there was only comfort. Despite all the talk about creativity, it was Apple's least creative event since 1996, the year before Steve Jobs returned to the company. And he is unfortunately dead.

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