‘Seriously, I Could Have Done Lasso’

Very funny new commercial for Apple TV+: “Everyone but Jon Hamm”. But it’s funny because it’s true: there’s now quite a bit of original content on TV+, and Apple’s library continues to grow.

The knock against TV+ from the get-go is that its library was so small compared to rival services like Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, etc. “Who’s going to pay $5 a month for just a handful of shows and movies?” But Apple’s TV+ strategy is following the company’s traditional pattern of steady incremental improvement.

The Swiss site MacPrime has been counting TV+’s original content, and with the release of Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth last week, TV+ is up to 100 original movies and series, totaling over 500 hours. And they’re tracking at least 65 upcoming projects. (Safari does a remarkable job translating MacPrime’s site to English.)

Apple excels at these long run games. (See: Apple Pay.) The news media, as a general rule, has no attention span whatsoever.

★ Saturday, 22 January 2022