after the pitcher of mojitos was drained,”
wrote Variety. Among a sea of headlines like
“I Watched Planet of the Apps So You Don’t
Have To” and “Apple’s Planet of the Apps Is
Even Worse Than You Thought,” Variety’s
was one of the kinder sentiments.
Carpool Karaoke: The Series landed
on iTunes and Apple TV shortly thereaf-
ter, and while it didn’t invite the same
rancor as Planet of the Apps, it also did lit-
tle to distinguish itself. The original talk-
show segment relied on Corden’s ability
to bridge the gap between viewer and
celebrity; Apple’s version simply put two
celebrities in a car and turned on the dash-
cam. Seth MacFarlane and Ariana Grande?
Billy Eichner and Metallica? When Apple
renewed the series, TechCrunch went
with the headline “Sorry, Apple’s Carpool
Karaoke Gets a Second Season.”
What’s more, the company’s content
trouble extended beyond ill-conceived
reality shows. As The Wall Street Journal
would later report, Apple scrapped its plans
for Vital Signs around the same time. The
issue was Tim Cook’s discomfort with the
show’s graphic content. Violence and sex
might have been a ratings-boosting recipe
for HBO or Netflix, but Apple was trying to
be a content company that was also depen-
dent on its consumers continuing to buy
phones and computers. Prestige was fine.
Prurience was not.T
EN DAYS AFTER Planet of the Apps
premiered, Apple announced
that it had hired two television
veterans to head up “video programming
worldwide.” Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van
Amburg had been copresidents of Sony
Pictures Television for a decade. The two
were known for rescuing the division from
early-2000s dreck like Shasta McNasty
and Madigan Men, replacing it with shows
that fit the burgeoning age of so-called
prestige TV: Breaking Bad, Community,
Damages, Masters of Sex. At Apple, report-
ing to the company’s head of services,
Eddy Cue, they would try to help one of the
richest companies in the world do televi-
sion the right way.
Though the timing of Apple’s announce-
ment seemed comically coincidental, Erlicht
and Van Amburg had been talking to Apple
for some time. In its quest to develop con-
tent that could hold up to fare from NetflixIF APPLE WERE A PERSON—
IF IT TRULY TOOK MORTAL
FORM—THAT FORM MIGHT BE
RONALD MOORE.
best secrets into daylight—iTunes, iPhones,
iPads—but one rumor Cook could still dance
around was the company’s plans for tele-
vision. (Apple had released a Macintosh
back in 1993 that could display a TV feed,
but the curio lasted only a few months on
the market.) Industry watchers had long
wondered what the company might have
in store. “Intense interest” became Cook’s
favorite side step—as in, TV was “an area
of intense interest for us.” In those days, he
was referring to the experience of watch-
ing television. The Apple TV set-top device,
which launched in 2007, was beginning to
gain some sales steam by its third genera-
tion, and the company was widely believed
to be prototyping an Apple-branded TV set.
Over the years, though, Cook’s intense
interest began to shift. According to The
Wall Street Journal, Apple approached
Time Warner about acquisition in mid-2016;
some even suspected the company might
make a bid for Netflix. Neither happened,
but by then what was once called “web tele-
vision” had come into its own, and stream-
ing content took on a new urgency. Amazon
had won multiple Emmys for its original
show Transparent, and Hulu had evolved
from a platform that just delivered the pre-
vious day’s cable shows to one with its own
slate of original programming.
Apple seemed ready to jump into the
pool. Cook began trumpeting the perfor-
mance of the company’s “services” divi-
sion, which included iTunes, Apple Music,
Apple Pay, and the App Store. Services were
by then second only to the iPhone in gen-
erating revenue for Apple, and Cook said
he saw more growth for that group ahead.
Part of it, it seemed, would come from tele-
vision; Apple quietly began filming Vital
Signs, a show based on the life of hip hop
legend Dr. Dre (cofounder of headphone
maker Beats, which Apple bought in 2014).
The show, which reportedly contained
sex and violence, would be watchable via
iTunes and Apple TV boxes. Soon, Apple also
developed a Shark Tank–style reality show
called Planet of the Apps, which the com-
pany began casting in the summer of 2016;
then a series based on Carpool Karaoke, a
perma-viral segment from James Corden’s
late-night NBC talk show.
In October 2016, during a quarterly
earnings call with investors, Cook’s rheto-
ric finally changed. When an analyst asked
him about the productions, he responded:
“I think it’s a great opportunity for us both
from a creation point of view and an own-
ership point of view.” Mostly tap dancing,
to be sure, but “creation” and “ownership”
were new words in Apple’s vocabulary. And
none too soon. Not only would Apple miss its
own revenue target in 2016, in large part due
to slowing sales of iOS devices, but its share
of the movie-rental market—which, thanks
to iTunes, had been more than 50 percent—
was tumbling, cannibalized by smart cable
boxes and Amazon. Apple’s services division
needed an extra boost if it was going to help
the company offset such setbacks.
Planet of the Apps premiered on June 6,- In it, contestants were given 60 sec-
onds to pitch their app idea—while on a
moving walkway—to a panel of judges that
included Jessica Alba, will.i.am, Gwyneth
Paltrow, and tech entrepreneur Gary
Vaynerchuk, author of such books as Crush
It! and Crushing It! The ensuing reviews
also crushed it, the “it” in this case being
any hopes of a second season. “Apple’s first
offering ... feels like something that was
developed at a cocktail party, and not given
much more rigorous thought or attention