Media

[VIDEO] If there’s one line that ties these three videos together, besides the fact that all three were Shot on iPhone, it’s this line:

Soccer is my passion, it’s what I love the most.

These three videos, embedded in main Loop post, are wonderfully worth watching, especially if you have a little footy in your soul.

[VIDEO] Tim Cook weighs in on the idea of a CEO speaking out. Wonderful video (embedded in the main Loop post), goes right to the heart of Tim’s beliefs and Apple core values.

Wall Street Journal:

Under the terms of the contract, Apple has ordered multiple series from Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit media and educational platform best known for the long-running show “Sesame Street.” Shows will be live-action, animated as well as one featuring puppets, according to a person close to Apple.

Sesame Street itself isn’t part of the deal. This jibes with what Jim and I were discussing on the latest Dalrymple Report (should pop up later today). We were discussing Apple’s stated aim of focusing on family-friendly programming, avoiding edgier, R-rated stuff.

Gene Munster, Loup Ventures:

At the helm of the company’s content efforts are Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg, who Apple hired away from Sony in 2017. Erlicht and Van Amburg ran Sony’s primetime series division since 2005. They will report directly to Eddie Cue, who runs Apple’s Services business. Apple has also hired an array of industry veterans from a range of backgrounds including streaming platforms like Hulu and Amazon Studios, and mainstay media companies like WGN America and Legendary Entertainment.

Nice rollup of Apple’s content efforts to date. Amazing to see it all together like this.

And this comparison with Netflix:

At first glance, it appears Netflix’s lead in original content is insurmountable. Netflix will end 2018 with close to 1,000 original titles and spend an estimated $3.5 billion on new titles this year. Keep in mind that almost half of that content is outside of the U.S. That compares to Apple, which has 2 titles out today and another 16 in the works (to be released in 2019 at the earliest), expecting to spend about $900 million this year.

But:

However, history is on Apple’s side, given that just five years ago Netflix had 13 original titles including the debut season of House of Cards. In other words, with the right resources, which Apple has, Apple’s original content titles can ramp from just under two dozen to potentially over one hundred. We note that Apple has stated they are focused on quality vs. quantity.

To me, that last is the key. Can Apple figure out how to deliver the quality? If I was looking at a model for how to do this, I would start with Netflix, but then move on to HBO. Netflix has plenty of swings and misses, HBO less so. If I was on the Apple team, I’d be asking the question, “What is HBO’s secret sauce?”

NOTE: This is a new version of the video. The improvements are gorgeous and obvious. Worth watching again.

Greg Joswiak is Apple’s VP for iOS, iPad, and iPhone Product Marketing. Mike Rockwell comes from Dolby Labs and, before that Avid, and worked on ProTools for DigiDesign. Mike made his way over to AR and now runs AR for Apple.

The entire interview (embedded in the main Loop post) is typical Gruber goodness. Fascinating conversation from beginning to end. Enjoy.

These are Apple’s hand-picked highlight photos. Two stand out for me.

First, there’s Kelsey Peterson showing off her Memoji skills. I think Memoji are well done, capture that certain Apple design something that will sell a lot of iPhone X’s and then help sell the next wave of Face ID-enabled devices.

Second, there’s LEGO’s director of innovation, Martin Sanders, walking through Lego AR City. I thought this was a powerful demonstration of the possibilities of ARKit 2, showing how a real-world product like Lego can be tightly linked to the virtual world of AR, with the potential for product sales on both sides. Buy the Lego set, then buy addons in the virtual world to greatly enhance the experience.