I can see this being the app equivalent to those house-building shows. Sort of like an unscripted documentary.
It'll likely be more interesting to the general audience, rather than the techy/dev crowd who wouldn't find much novelty in the process. It's also a wonderful platform for showing off apps, since most apps don't have a real comms budget and end up relying entirely on social media/online ads.
I'm not as pessimistic about the show as most of you. Apps are probably the most creative and diverse field we have at the moment, so I imagine there are going to be some interesting stories, personalities and technologies to show off. I can sense a certain myopia in the commenters here, these aren't going to be typical apps with typical development processes, as such if you're looking at your installed apps right now - it's probably not going to be anything like those.
Is this seriously something people want to watch? I suppose it could be interesting but at first blush it sounds quite boring.
Series no, documentary, sure. It doesn’t seem like there’s enough content for a ‘series’, unless it’s reality TV (and then it’s just completely worthless).
It's described as unscripted reality TV:
"the tech giant is working with Will.i.am and producers Ben Silverman (who executive produced The Office) and Howard T. Owens to launch a new unscripted series about app developers. the casting call stipulates that contestants have a functioning app in beta by October 21st. Filming is expected to begin later this year in Los Angeles and run through early 2017, so don't expect to see any trailers for a while. The show will reportedly be available through Apple's own platforms (so, Apple TV, iTunes, etc)" It doesn't sound like they will even be targeting well known apps that people would be interested in. It's good to see what goes into making popular titles because that helps people see what it took to make those successes. Some games that seem very basic have lots of employees and cost millions to make.
These are short clips but they give some indication of the development process and what the companies behind them are like. There was a long-running documentary for a Kickstarter game:
That company had successful games back in the 90s but the point-and-click genre they targeted died down as consoles took off and Kickstarter let them connect with the people who still liked the genre to help fund new games. They filmed the documentary all the way from the Kickstarter campaign through to launch, which was a period of about 3 years. They would have run out of money developing it and ended up splitting the game in two parts and the documentary has about 20 videos ranging from 0.5-1 hour long.
That is an example of an Office-style documentary but is way too long and not very interesting to watch. None of the videos have many views on Youtube. Some of the scenes shown are similar to the TV show Silicon Valley and there's a theme of trying to get their product ready for shipping but it's not drama, it's just reality TV.
There was a movie about smaller developers, again this focused on people who had made millions from their games (Fez, Super Meat Boy and Braid by Jonathan Blow who recently launched The Witness and is looking for someone to port the game to iOS: http://toucharcade.com/2016/02/03/jonathan-blows-the-witness-might-be-coming-to-ios-but-dont-hold-your-breath-yet/ - maybe Apple could supply or hire a small team (Aspyr/Feral) to get that game ported over and film it)
This shows a compelling story about people mostly working out of their bedrooms for years to make their product and eventually finding success.
I assume they are going to pick the apps with the best potential of success and film as they launch them, possibly with a summary of the app's development. It would be a bit of a letdown if the apps aren't successful. The worst thing it could be is average e.g someone launches an uninspiring app and it meets or falls below revenue expectations.
I think it would be more interesting if they interviewed some well-known faces in the industry. Markus Persson (aka Notch) who developed Minecraft, which is the top paid app in the App Store:
In 2015, the mobile version sold 30 million copies vs 18 million on PC so the App Store had a big impact in the success of that game.
Apple's case studies aren't very high profile in other areas. With their pro apps, they tend to highlight companies that aren't well known. It's more interesting to see well-known people/companies/products and get an insight into what their journey looked like. Things that I think would be interesting are the stories of big data behind apps like Tinder and Candy Crush, the development teams and process behind the popular apps, the development environments, interviews with creative staff behind the apps. Some people are very interesting characters:
"Like many wealthy people, Jonathan Blow vividly remembers the moment he became rich. At the time, in late 2008, he was $40,000 in debt and living in a modest San Francisco apartment, having just spent more than three years meticulously refining his video game, Braid—an innovative time-warping platformer (think Super Mario Bros. meets Borges), whose $200,000 development Blow funded himself. Although Braid had been released, to lavish praise from the video-game press, on Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade service that August, Blow didn’t see a cent from the game until one autumn day when he sat down at a café in the city’s Mission district. “I opened up my Web browser and Holy fuck, I’m rich now,” he recalled. “There were a lot of zeros in my bank account.”
Blow’s similarities to the average millionaire end right there, however, because unlike most wealthy people, he seems faintly irritated by his memory of striking it rich. When Blow told me, during a typically metaphysical conversation in a park near his Berkeley office, that his windfall was “absurd,” he didn’t mean it in the whimsical “Can you believe my luck?” sense; he meant it in the philosophical, Camus-puffing-a-cigarette sense of a deeply ridiculous cosmic joke. “It just drives home how fictional money is,” Blow said, squinting against the unseasonably bright December sun. “One day I’m looking at my bank account and there’s not much money, and the next day there’s a large number in there and I’m rich. In both cases, it’s a fictional number on the computer screen, and the only reason that I’m rich is because somebody typed a number into my bank account.” For the world’s most existentially obsessed game developer, coming into seven figures just provided another opportunity to ponder the nature of meaning in the universe.
Which is not to say that Blow has forsaken his wealth. As Braid grew into a bona fide phenomenon in its first year—selling several hundred thousand copies, winning armloads of industry awards, and becoming Exhibit A in the case for the video game as a legitimate artistic medium—Blow made several upgrades to his austere lifestyle. In place of his old Honda, he now drives a $150,000 crimson Tesla Roadster, a low-slung all-electric automotive dynamo that offers a highly realistic simulation of being shot out of a cannon whenever Blow clamps down on the accelerator. And after a yearlong victory lap filled with lectures and laurels, he moved into a spacious hilltop condo that overlooks the eastern half of the city as it slopes down to the sapphire-colored bay.
Yet aside from his electric car—the virtues of which he extols with messianic zeal—Blow displays total indifference toward the material fruits of wealth. His apartment stands mostly empty; books on physics and Eastern philosophy lie in haphazard piles, as though he has only half finished carting his belongings in from a moving truck outside. His minimal collection of furniture is almost all rented, including the springy beige sofa he got just a few months ago, after he arranged to have several video-game journalists over and realized he had nowhere for them to sit. “I’ve never liked money, really,” Blow told me. “Having a big high score in my bank account is not interesting to me. I have a nice car now, but I don’t really own that many objects, and I don’t know what else I would spend money on. So for me, money is just a tool I can use to get things done.”
More specifically, Blow has decided to use his money—nearly all of it—to finance what may be the most intellectually ambitious video game in history, one that he hopes will radically expand the limitations of his chosen field."
The apps are developed by an independent company but Katy Perry showed off the Apple Watch and Taylor Swift appeared in Apple's ads, the Kardashians will appear in anything. If they cover these and get any celebrity appearances, that should be good for a few million views.
Beyond acknowledging the bad potential title let's look at original content. I think original content is the next big thing for Apple. I hope they focus on 3 segments of this. Movies, Series and user. The younger generations are not even watching the new TV content from the large providers. They are watching user content, making their own content and love to watch old series from years past. I grew up in a world where you couldn't wait for the "new" season of something. That doesn't much matter anymore to the younger crowd.
Beyond acknowledging the bad potential title let's look at original content. I think original content is the next big thing for Apple. I hope they focus on 3 segments of this. Movies, Series and user. The younger generations are not even watching the new TV content from the large providers. They are watching user content, making their own content and love to watch old series from years past. I grew up in a world where you couldn't wait for the "new" season of something. That doesn't much matter anymore to the younger crowd.
I don't know, with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, and others recently coming out with some industry changing creative original content it's going to be hard for Apple to come out with something even more different without looking like a "me too" operation. I think Apple should branch out into some new industries but TV programming doesn't seem ripe for Apple to make its mark.
Beyond acknowledging the bad potential title let's look at original content. I think original content is the next big thing for Apple. I hope they focus on 3 segments of this. Movies, Series and user. The younger generations are not even watching the new TV content from the large providers. They are watching user content, making their own content and love to watch old series from years past. I grew up in a world where you couldn't wait for the "new" season of something. That doesn't much matter anymore to the younger crowd.
I don't know, with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, and others recently coming out with some industry changing creative original content it's going to be hard for Apple to come out with something even more different without looking like a "me too" operation. I think Apple should branch out into some new industries but TV programming doesn't seem ripe for Apple to make its mark.
Very valid. I was thinking this type of move could force the current content holders to loosen up a bit and offer their content at a fair price to the user or in a thin bundle format like was rumored a while ago. It is slowly going that way with more and more (not many) content providers offering a stream package without cable subscription. Just thought this could be the catalyst potentially.
It’s going to be about developers, about apps, about Apple. It’s going to be a giant ADVERTISEMENT for Christ’s sake. What did you morons think it was going to be?
The more I read about Apple's effort, the more I am becoming aware that others are startng something similar. For example, NPR has a program focused on startups... How they were started, why they were started, what kept and keeps the starters going, how did it feel to pursue the dream, etc.
Apple could have something really good on its hands. The fun thing for me is Apple is trying to do something new and different for itself. It is gaining experience that it does not have. There will be failures. There may be successes.
So many people here are being negative about this effort without opening their minds to the possibility of actually learning something from the new show.
actually human beings didn't evolve from apes. apes and humans both evolved from a common ancestor, but aside from that they're not related
Actually we don't know what happened. It's still just a theory.
biological evolution is both a "fact" and a "theory". like the "theory" of gravity -- a tested hypothesis, that stands until new data modifies it. none has. theory in the scientific use doesn't mean what a crackpot uncle means when he says "I have a theory..."
"Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.
Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms."
Beyond acknowledging the bad potential title let's look at original content. I think original content is the next big thing for Apple. I hope they focus on 3 segments of this. Movies, Series and user. The younger generations are not even watching the new TV content from the large providers. They are watching user content, making their own content and love to watch old series from years past. I grew up in a world where you couldn't wait for the "new" season of something. That doesn't much matter anymore to the younger crowd.
I don't know, with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, and others recently coming out with some industry changing creative original content it's going to be hard for Apple to come out with something even more different without looking like a "me too" operation. I think Apple should branch out into some new industries but TV programming doesn't seem ripe for Apple to make its mark.
As usual, Marvin comes up with a whole load of specifics. I wonder why AI simply doesn't have him as an editor. He brings a lot of information into the forum.
Comments
And believe me, I meant no offense to any real apes out there.
I've seen countless nature documentaries and apes can be quite noble and evolved creatures, which is more than I can say for many humans.
Just take a look at what's happening in the world.
maybe just MAYBE it's a revolutionary interactive show. Hopefully we get to test apps after every episode and vote etc.
It'll likely be more interesting to the general audience, rather than the techy/dev crowd who wouldn't find much novelty in the process. It's also a wonderful platform for showing off apps, since most apps don't have a real comms budget and end up relying entirely on social media/online ads.
I'm not as pessimistic about the show as most of you. Apps are probably the most creative and diverse field we have at the moment, so I imagine there are going to be some interesting stories, personalities and technologies to show off. I can sense a certain myopia in the commenters here, these aren't going to be typical apps with typical development processes, as such if you're looking at your installed apps right now - it's probably not going to be anything like those.
"the tech giant is working with Will.i.am and producers Ben Silverman (who executive produced The Office) and Howard T. Owens to launch a new unscripted series about app developers.
the casting call stipulates that contestants have a functioning app in beta by October 21st. Filming is expected to begin later this year in Los Angeles and run through early 2017, so don't expect to see any trailers for a while. The show will reportedly be available through Apple's own platforms (so, Apple TV, iTunes, etc)"
It doesn't sound like they will even be targeting well known apps that people would be interested in. It's good to see what goes into making popular titles because that helps people see what it took to make those successes. Some games that seem very basic have lots of employees and cost millions to make.
These are short clips but they give some indication of the development process and what the companies behind them are like. There was a long-running documentary for a Kickstarter game:
That company had successful games back in the 90s but the point-and-click genre they targeted died down as consoles took off and Kickstarter let them connect with the people who still liked the genre to help fund new games. They filmed the documentary all the way from the Kickstarter campaign through to launch, which was a period of about 3 years. They would have run out of money developing it and ended up splitting the game in two parts and the documentary has about 20 videos ranging from 0.5-1 hour long.
That is an example of an Office-style documentary but is way too long and not very interesting to watch. None of the videos have many views on Youtube. Some of the scenes shown are similar to the TV show Silicon Valley and there's a theme of trying to get their product ready for shipping but it's not drama, it's just reality TV.
There was a movie about smaller developers, again this focused on people who had made millions from their games (Fez, Super Meat Boy and Braid by Jonathan Blow who recently launched The Witness and is looking for someone to port the game to iOS: http://toucharcade.com/2016/02/03/jonathan-blows-the-witness-might-be-coming-to-ios-but-dont-hold-your-breath-yet/ - maybe Apple could supply or hire a small team (Aspyr/Feral) to get that game ported over and film it)
This shows a compelling story about people mostly working out of their bedrooms for years to make their product and eventually finding success.
I assume they are going to pick the apps with the best potential of success and film as they launch them, possibly with a summary of the app's development. It would be a bit of a letdown if the apps aren't successful. The worst thing it could be is average e.g someone launches an uninspiring app and it meets or falls below revenue expectations.
I think it would be more interesting if they interviewed some well-known faces in the industry. Markus Persson (aka Notch) who developed Minecraft, which is the top paid app in the App Store:
https://www.appannie.com/apps/ios/top/
sold his company to Microsoft for $2.5b and made $1.5b. He outbid Jay-Z and Beyonce for a $70m house in Beverly Hills:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-12-19-minecraft-creator-notch-just-bought-the-most-expensive-house-ever-in-beverly-hills-for-usd70m
In 2015, the mobile version sold 30 million copies vs 18 million on PC so the App Store had a big impact in the success of that game.
Apple's case studies aren't very high profile in other areas. With their pro apps, they tend to highlight companies that aren't well known. It's more interesting to see well-known people/companies/products and get an insight into what their journey looked like. Things that I think would be interesting are the stories of big data behind apps like Tinder and Candy Crush, the development teams and process behind the popular apps, the development environments, interviews with creative staff behind the apps. Some people are very interesting characters:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/the-most-dangerous-gamer/308928/
"Like many wealthy people, Jonathan Blow vividly remembers the moment he became rich. At the time, in late 2008, he was $40,000 in debt and living in a modest San Francisco apartment, having just spent more than three years meticulously refining his video game, Braid—an innovative time-warping platformer (think Super Mario Bros. meets Borges), whose $200,000 development Blow funded himself. Although Braid had been released, to lavish praise from the video-game press, on Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade service that August, Blow didn’t see a cent from the game until one autumn day when he sat down at a café in the city’s Mission district. “I opened up my Web browser and Holy fuck, I’m rich now,” he recalled. “There were a lot of zeros in my bank account.”
Blow’s similarities to the average millionaire end right there, however, because unlike most wealthy people, he seems faintly irritated by his memory of striking it rich. When Blow told me, during a typically metaphysical conversation in a park near his Berkeley office, that his windfall was “absurd,” he didn’t mean it in the whimsical “Can you believe my luck?” sense; he meant it in the philosophical, Camus-puffing-a-cigarette sense of a deeply ridiculous cosmic joke. “It just drives home how fictional money is,” Blow said, squinting against the unseasonably bright December sun. “One day I’m looking at my bank account and there’s not much money, and the next day there’s a large number in there and I’m rich. In both cases, it’s a fictional number on the computer screen, and the only reason that I’m rich is because somebody typed a number into my bank account.” For the world’s most existentially obsessed game developer, coming into seven figures just provided another opportunity to ponder the nature of meaning in the universe.
Which is not to say that Blow has forsaken his wealth. As Braid grew into a bona fide phenomenon in its first year—selling several hundred thousand copies, winning armloads of industry awards, and becoming Exhibit A in the case for the video game as a legitimate artistic medium—Blow made several upgrades to his austere lifestyle. In place of his old Honda, he now drives a $150,000 crimson Tesla Roadster, a low-slung all-electric automotive dynamo that offers a highly realistic simulation of being shot out of a cannon whenever Blow clamps down on the accelerator. And after a yearlong victory lap filled with lectures and laurels, he moved into a spacious hilltop condo that overlooks the eastern half of the city as it slopes down to the sapphire-colored bay.
Yet aside from his electric car—the virtues of which he extols with messianic zeal—Blow displays total indifference toward the material fruits of wealth. His apartment stands mostly empty; books on physics and Eastern philosophy lie in haphazard piles, as though he has only half finished carting his belongings in from a moving truck outside. His minimal collection of furniture is almost all rented, including the springy beige sofa he got just a few months ago, after he arranged to have several video-game journalists over and realized he had nowhere for them to sit. “I’ve never liked money, really,” Blow told me. “Having a big high score in my bank account is not interesting to me. I have a nice car now, but I don’t really own that many objects, and I don’t know what else I would spend money on. So for me, money is just a tool I can use to get things done.”
More specifically, Blow has decided to use his money—nearly all of it—to finance what may be the most intellectually ambitious video game in history, one that he hopes will radically expand the limitations of his chosen field."
They can also cover celebrity apps:
http://www.eonline.com/news/736741/taylor-swift-partners-with-glu-mobile-for-new-app-game-like-katy-perry-kim-kardashian
The apps are developed by an independent company but Katy Perry showed off the Apple Watch and Taylor Swift appeared in Apple's ads, the Kardashians will appear in anything. If they cover these and get any celebrity appearances, that should be good for a few million views.
Apple could have something really good on its hands. The fun thing for me is Apple is trying to do something new and different for itself. It is gaining experience that it does not have. There will be failures. There may be successes.
So many people here are being negative about this effort without opening their minds to the possibility of actually learning something from the new show.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html
"Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.
Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms."