In a new interview published on Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook reveals the reason why Apple is in the movies and TV businesses, spending hundreds of millions on potential blockbusters like “F1: The Movie,” and why it’s about more than selling iPhones.
Cynthia Littleton for Variety:
“F1” marks a big milestone for Apple in its expansion over the past half-dozen years of making movies and TV shows. Apple is banking on Kosinski and the team behind 2022’s hit “Top Gun: Maverick” to deliver a four-quadrant smash that will be measured as much for its impact on pop culture and filmmaking as it will be in box office receipts…
In Cook’s view, “F1” is the perfect vehicle to test Apple’s power to affect culture with the soft power of a broad-appeal movie rather than through the hardware of its computers and smartphones…
Cook has a clear vision for what Apple TV+ and Apple Original Films bring to the company. “We stand at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts,” Cook says. “We wanted Apple TV+ to be a place where great storytellers would tell their best stories.”
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs, March 2, 2011 special event for iPad 2:
“It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.”
“We elected not to go out and procure a catalog. I know that’s a faster way into the business, but it didn’t feel like Apple at the end of the day,” Cook says. “Apple should have something that we pour our passion into, and that’s exactly what we’re doing with the shows. And now you can see us hitting a stride. It feels wonderful.”
“We studied it for years before we decided to do [Apple TV+]. I know there’s a lot of different views out there about why we’re into it. We’re into it to tell great stories, and we want it to be a great business as well. That’s why we’re into it, just plain and simple.”
“I don’t have it in my mind that I’m going to sell more iPhones because of it,” Cook says. “I don’t think about that at all. I think about it as a business. And just like we leverage the best of Apple across iPhones and across our services, we try to leverage the best of Apple TV+.”
The service’s run of late — Seth Rogen’s “The Studio,” Jon Hamm-starrer “Your Friends and Neighbors,” Season 2 of “Severance,” Jason Segel and Harrison Ford in “Shrinking,” Gary Oldman in “Slow Horses,” Cate Blanchett in “Disclaimer,” Kristen Wiig and Carol Burnett in “Palm Royale,” Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly in “Dark Matter” — has been particularly strong. Like the smooth blond wood and sanded white marble in the buildings at Apple Park, the list of A-listers doing business with Apple goes on forever.
MacDailyNews Take: Yup.
Those who can wrap their heads around Apple’s massive cash mountain and the company’s unparalleled ability to generate cash can clearly see who the winner will be. The most talented producers, writers, directors, editors, actors, etc. are attracted to exactly what Apple has and makes in vast abundance: Cash. The king.
Like bears to honey, it’s happening already. — MacDailyNews, January 3, 2018
Apple’s average daily profit in fiscal year 2024 was approximately $256.8 million. Apple’s annual spending on Apple TV+, Apple Original Films, and Apple Studios, which is estimated to be around $4.5 billion in 2025, can go on basically forever as it’s equivalent to about 17.52 days of Apple’s average daily profit (which continues to grow).
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
Tim Cook yet another waste product Apple TV+
The difference….
Jobs thought more broadly per;
“It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.”
Hardware/software that customers would use for pleasure and use to create their own heart-songs. Creating was part and parcel with consuming and consumption very often resulted in creating.
Cook’s AAPL is WAY MORE about consumption (except trite mediums like emojis). Movies are great (even though I remember a few months ago A-TV was a money suck?) and expect/hope APPL to add substance to the vacuous TV/movie realm…but it has nothing of the to-and-fro/ebb & flow of Job’s create/consume cycle. Yes, “they” create, but it ends with the customer’s consumption.
Even the biggest Apple TV “hit” can barely register on the top lists for the year in streaming.
You can maybe like the shows all you want. It’s going no where. Even I’ve enjoyed a few shows, but I’m not naive. When you are very expensive per bit of material and still extremely small it might be time to call it. It’s a money sinkhole that only a company with tons of cash can afford to continue. And that’s not in Apples DNA to endlessly blow this much money for basically nothing.
But no matter what you think. The future of streaming is really bad. Apple or not. But especially Apple. Time to pull the plug, license or sell what you’ve made. And get out with nothing while many of the others are buried in debt.