mattinoz

Anilu_777 said:

I may be upgrading my Series 6 this year but as I’m in Canada I expect it to still be there as Masimo doesn’t have the patent registered here afaik

StrangeDays said:

charlesn said:

I've worked in television for over 30 years. Here's what you need to understand:

No major streamer except for Netflix is making money. They all continue to lose money, hundreds of millions, quarter after quarter. This is not a sustainable business model in any business. The losses have dropped since ad-supported tiers were introduced and it is hoped that these tiers will be the path to eventual profitability. One thing is clear: without these tiers, the streamers couldn't have survived. 

So what happened? The reasoning behind the ad-free subscription streaming model was that Netflix would get to a billion subscribers, with the other major streamers getting into the mid to upper hundreds of millions. At that scale, the subscription ad-free model works. But then Netflix hit a wall at under 300 million subscribers and the alarm bells went off that the subscriber universe was going to be a whole lot smaller than anyone thought. And this happened while spending tens of billions of dollars each year on scripted shows, the majority of which almost no one was watching because that's what happens when you release more than 500 new shows to the public each year--who can possibly even know what's on? It would be a full time job just to track it all. 

So... the lower-priced, ad-supported tier became a necessity for streamers to have a shot at remaining in business. And still some might not make it to profitability and survive, even with that extra revenue stream--we shall see. As for Apple: their bottom line for Apple TV+ must look terrible. I can't imagine how much they're losing per quarter. They likely have the smallest number of subscribers among the major streamers and, while they don't produce nearly as much content, a lot of what they do produce is incredibly expensive, especially in the sci-fi genre that plays a big role in Apple TV+ shows. Every episode of those series is at movie-level quality, and that costs tens of millions per episode to produce. Of course, for Apple, streaming is just a side business, and almost more like a marketing effort to further burnish and enhance Apple's high-quality brand. But still--it can't make sense even for Apple to continue sustaining huge losses in streaming, so an ad-supported tier would make sense. 

Personally, I got hooked on ad-free streaming and I hope it can remain an option without getting ridiculously expensive. If you haven't noticed, the streamers are working hard to push people to their more profitable, ad-supported tiers by offering deals for them and not ad-free subscriptions. And, of course, there isn't a way to "DVR" streaming content and fast-forward through the ads--you're stuck with them playing through, which is a giant step backward from the DVR set-top box era. 

It’s a shame they can’t cut the cinematic-level budgets and return to better writing instead of production values. As I always point out — Star Trek TNG and DS9 were low-budget affairs yet remain much more popular than any of the expensive “New Trek” and their glitzy 10-episode seasons of absurd lens flares and gloss. Why were they better? Because the writing was better, despite very basic sets. Better writing = better performances, better narratives arcs, better character development. Which matters more? All that, or sets & VFX?

It’s a choice. 

michelb76 said:

Seems very unlikely. Unless Apple has a totally new, unseen before, superior state of the art folding screen mechanism, that other brands do not have, that isn't as crappy as what is on the market right now. Also, indeed, what would it run? Has to be iPadOS.