I signed up for Apple TV Plus on Friday night. It took four taps, because Apple already had my card on file, and then I was looking at a menu that ran out before my tea did. A Jennifer Aniston show about a morning show. A Jason Momoa show where nobody can see. Snoopy.
Nine things. My unwatched Netflix row is longer than that by itself, and I have not opened it since August.
So I did what anyone in my job does at eleven at night, which is stop watching and start doing arithmetic. Five dollars a month. A slate you could finish in a long weekend if you were committed and slightly unwell. A free year attached to any new iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV box. Family sharing included, so the five dollars covers a household.
None of that adds up as an entertainment business. All of it adds up as something else.
Apple TV Plus is not competing with Netflix for your Thursday evening. It is competing with Samsung for your next phone.
We have seen this shape before and we keep misreading it. Amazon did not build Prime Video to beat HBO. It built Prime Video so the annual renewal notice would arrive while you were in the middle of something. The video was never the product. The renewal was the product.
Which is why the comparison everyone is running this month, Apple against Disney Plus next Tuesday, is the wrong comparison. Disney is selling a vault. A century of library, priced at seven dollars, aimed at the household that will pay for it forever because the children have opinions. That is a subscription business and it will behave like one.
Apple is selling a reason not to switch. The nine shows are not the offer. The offer is one more thread tying you to a device ecosystem that already holds your photos, your messages, and your music.
Here is the part that gets lost when strategists grade this as a content play. Retention products are allowed to be small. They are not allowed to be embarrassing. The whole job of the slate is to make leaving feel like a loss, and Apple spent real money clearing exactly that bar and not one dollar more.
Apple TV Plus is not competing with Netflix for your Thursday evening. It is competing with Samsung for your next phone.
So ask what your product is actually retaining before you benchmark it against the category it appears to sit in. Half the competitive decks I have watched go up in brand strategy rooms were built against the wrong opponent, confidently, in a very nice typeface.
I watched two episodes. Barnaby watched me. Truffles sat on the remote, which is the most accurate review of the launch slate anyone has published so far.