Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 03/25 - Apple Goes Hollywood!

Episode Date: March 25, 2019

The Apple event broken down piece by piece, YouTube wants out of the streaming video wars, Nintendo is working on two new Switch devices, is consolidation finally coming to the digital media space, and why you should know the name Transsion. Sponsors: Tiny.website DataDogHQ.com/ridehome Links: Apple launches $9.99 Apple News Plus with more than 300 magazines (The Verge) Apple introduced its own credit card, the Apple Card (TechCrunch) Apple announces Apple TV Plus video subscription service (The Verge) YouTube Bows Out of Hollywood Arms Race With Netflix and Amazon (Bloomberg) Nintendo to Launch Two New Switch Models (WSJ) Digital media companies Group Nine Media and Refinery29 are said to be in talks to merge (Business Insider) Shenzhen Transsion applies to raise capital on Shanghai’s technology board after taking Africa’s phone market by storm (South China Morning Post) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech Meme Right Home for Monday. March 25th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough.

Today, the Apple event broken down piece by piece. YouTube once out of the streaming video wars, Nintendo is working on two new switch devices, is consolidation finally coming to the digital media space, and why you should know the name Transion? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. So like we always have to do for these event days, I'm just going to give you the straight-up facts

as I know them at this moment, and then we'll see tomorrow how people react and analyze all that has happened today. But today at the Steve Jobs Theater, it was all services, no hardware for Apple. Let's take a look at this in chronological order. First was the Apple News subscription product. You'll get access to more than 300 magazines and news sources, including the New Yorker, Esquire, the Atlantic, National Geographic, Men's Health, Vogue, and the Wall Street Journal. The service will be called Apple News Plus, and quoting from the Verge, quote, It would cost you more than $8,000 per year if you wanted to subscribe to all the publications in Apple News Plus individually. Apple says, but the News Plus price will be $9.99 per month.

Family sharing of the Apple News Plus subscription will be allowed with each user having their own individual favorites and customizations. The U.S. and Canada are the first two countries to get Apple News Plus, which rolls out today via an update to iOS. and Mac devices? The first month will be free. Australia and the UK will follow in the fall of this year with the rest of Europe to come later. Stressing its habitual emphasis on privacy, Apple promises it won't know what you read in Apple News Plus

and won't allow advertisers to track you. What you read in Apple News will not follow you across the web, says the company, end quote. Next up, and your excitement about this might vary, but a credit card. It's called Apple Card. It's backed by Goldman Sachs and MasterCard. It's coming this summer, quoting from TechCrunch. The Apple Card is designed for the iPhone and will work with the wallet app. You sign up from your iPhone and you can use it with Apple Pay in just a few minutes. After signing up, you control the Apple Card from the wallet app. When you tap on the card, you can see your last transactions, how much you owe, how much money you spent on each category. You can tap on a transaction to see the location in a tiny Apple Maps view. Every time you make an Apple pay transaction, you get 2% in cash back. You don't have to wait until the end of the month as your cash is credited every day.

For Apple purchases, you get 3% back. When it comes to the fine prints, there's no late fees, no annual fees, no international fees, and no over-limit fees. If you can't pay your credit card balance, you can start a multi-month plan. Apple tries to clearly define the terms of the plan. You can contact customer support through text messages. in the messages app. The Apple card isn't limited to a virtual card. You'll get a physical titanium card with laser etched name.

There's no credit card, no CVV code, no expiration date, and no signature on the card. You have to use the wallet app to get that information. Physical transactions are eligible to up to 1% in daily cash, end quote. Next, this was kept a little bit under the radar a bit, but Apple did in fact announce a gaming streaming service of its own. It's called Apple Arcade. It's an ad-free gaming service that bundles 100 plus paid offline playable iPhone and iPad games. It's coming this fall. Notably, though, the price was not announced today, quoting again from TechCrunch. This is a content play rather than a tech product like Google's recently announced Stadia game

streaming platform. The subscription will provide access to all of the content in the games without ads. Apple has the benefit of building this directly into the App Store. You'll be able to access Apple Arcade from a new bottom tab in the App Store app. This may be the company's best chance at leveraging its strength on iOS to finally build a better home for games on Mac, end quote. Next, the much-belly-hooed Apple video subscription services. And this is going to be a bit complicated to explain because it's not just one thing. It's a whole bunch of different things. So let's just start with the Apple TV app, which has been redesigned. Details on that, quoting the verge.

We designed a new TV experience where you can pay for only the channels you want, all in one app with the password you already have, said Apple's Peter Stern. Watch everything on demand and ad-free. Download your shows and take them with you anywhere. Enjoy the highest quality picture and sound available, he said. The Apple TV app has been entirely redesigned to keep all content in one place, whereas the old one would switch you over to third-party apps when it actually came time to watch something.

No more bouncing around from app to app, Stern said. There are some exceptions to that, however. Netflix isn't backing the new TV app and thus doesn't offer this integration. Apple confirm the TV app will be coming to the Mac soon, and the company has also announced in iTunes movies and TV app for Samsung TVs, just one step to reach customers beyond its own devices. That same app will be coming to television. televisions from Sony, LG, Vizio, and others, end quote.

So again, the summation of the first part of the TV news is this. This is a platform for subscribing to people's existing subscription services via Apple, a la carte, all in one place. Imagine a single place to find anything you want to pay for in video. That place used to be your cable box. Now Apple wants it to be the Apple TV app. Subscribe, find, watch, HBO, Showtime, Stars, CBS, CBS, all access, all that stuff. Pay for it there. Apple takes a cut. Start watching. Oh, but you can also pay for a new Apple TV Plus, their own version of the original content

channels just mentioned. So they want you to pay for HBO and they want you to pay for Apple TV Plus all in the new Apple TV app. Apple TV Plus, however, is an ad-free subscription service available online and off coming this fall to 100 plus countries. And it was the news of the Apple TV Plus that got the stars to turn out, and a lot of them to come on stage to pitch their shows on Apple TV Plus. It felt a bit like the advertising up front as much as it felt like an Apple event, really. Josh Gad, Octavia Spencer, Stephen Spielberg, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, Steve Carell, Jason Mamoa.

Oh, and yes, right at the end, Oprah. Oprah says she'll be bringing some new documentaries and the return of her book club to the new platform. So let me end by doing a quick summation of some of the quickest hot takes, and then I'm sure we can talk about all of this more tomorrow. David Pierce on the Apple News Plus service, quote, this mix of curated and personalized is really important and really fascinating. Google and Facebook go full algorithm, which has big side effects. Apple's trying to split the difference in a really interesting way, end quote.

Kevin Ruse on the Apple News Plus service, I'm sure Apple News Plus will be fine, but man, is it weird to hear a tech company describing human curated news as some high concept innovation and not the way news was selected and distributed for 400 years before the sorted feed era, end quote. Brian Stelter on the Apple News Plus service. Wall Street Journal Internal Memo says Apple News Plus users will only get a, quote, curated collection of general interest news. To access business reporting, you'll still need to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. Mamo says, quote, our collaboration with Apple will also extend to areas like video, voice, market data, and AI, end quote. Sacha Sagan on the credit card, quote, Apple's credit card is going to be a money printing machine. Apple's TV Plus shows are going to be a money burning machine. Rich DeMurro on the credit card.

Apple just revealed the big caveat to all this cashback on Apple card. If you use the physical card to pay, you get 1% cash back. Sounds like you have to tap Apple Pay on your phone or iOS device to get the 2% cash back, end quote. At Nebbellion on the game streaming service. And unlike streaming services, all games will be playable offline. Shots fired. And Rob Pagoraro, quote, An Apple TV app on Roku and Amazon Fire TV players is really kind of

nuts. So why then keep Apple News Plus a Mac and iOS only proposition? Does Apple want to meet paying subscribers on their devices of choice or not? End quote. Well, Apple might have just officially announced itself as a high-end prestige content creator, but it looks like YouTube will not be following suit. Sources are telling Bloomberg that YouTube has canceled plans for the production of high-end dramas and comedies as it pulls back from earlier plans for a paid search. of its own, offering up Hollywood quality shows. Quote, The Google Own Business has stopped accepting pitches for expensive scripted shows,

said the people who asked not to be identified because the decision hasn't been announced. The AXED programs include the sci-fi drama Origin and the comedy overthinking with Cat in June, prompting their producers to seek new homes for the shows, the people said. The retreat from direct competition with Netflix and Amazon's Prime Video Service reflects the high cost in billions of dollars needed to take on those deeply entrenched players even for a rich tech giant like Google, the people said. YouTube generated more than 15 billion in ad sales last year without a huge slate of glitzy productions

and concluded its money is better invested in music and gaming, end quote. Something, something you go into a streaming video war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. You'd be forgiven for thinking so, given the news, news of the last few weeks, but hardware is decidedly not dead, even in gaming. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Nintendo could launch two new switch consoles this summer, a high-end model aimed at serious gamers and a cheaper model with a focus on portability. One version will have enhanced features targeted at avid video gamers, although it won't be as powerful as Sony's

PlayStation 4 Pro or Microsoft's Xbox 1X, according to parts suppliers and software developers. for Nintendo who have access to a prototype of the machine. The other version is a cheaper option for casual gamers that Nintendo sees as a successor to its aging handheld 3DS device, the suppliers and developers say. The new models are likely to be unveiled at the E3 Video Game Expo in Los Angeles in June and possibly released a few months later, one person familiar with Nintendo's plans said. Kyoto-based Nintendo declined to comment, end quote. So while everyone is moving to the cloud,

Nintendo is doubling down, literally, on what it does best. Notable, however, that Nintendo is bucking the traditional five- or six-year cycle between major console refreshes. Also notable that the design of these new devices sounds to be completely new as well. You would be wrong to think the enhanced version is similar to what Sony did with PS4 Pro, and the other is just a cheap alternative that looks very similar to some past handheld machines. say Sony's PlayStation Vita, a source is quoted as saying in the story. Follow up to something we discussed on one of the first ever weekend bonus episodes. According to Business Insider, Group 9 Media and Refinery 29 are in talks to merge.

If you'll recall in our January 26 conversation with Rafat Ali, we discussed this very idea of these struggling digital media brands combining forces, consolidating either in search of better ad rates, as Jonah Paredi has suggested, or simply out of necessity. Quote, a Group 9 refinery merger, however, may be far from a done deal. Lots of companies are said to have been talking to one another about combining, and any merger would face big hurdles. Investors, including Discovery and Turner, which have backed Group 9 and refinery, respectively,

and the boards of both companies would have to agree on the terms. It's also hard to combine companies with different cultures, and the participating companies would have to agree on the value each would have, in the merged entity. One possibility is that the companies could combine in a stock deal in which no money would change hands, people who have experience with media mergers and acquisitions say, end quote. If you need a refresher on why this might be an unfolding narrative over the next year, consolidation in the digital media space, listen to that Rafat Ali episode, or this tweet from Mike Duda sums it up nicely, quote, all of the digital media companies that raised insane amounts of

money at crazy valuations and hired willy-nilly are now looking to merge. It's a great time to be starting fresh as a lean media and information company in an extremely valuable market, end quote. From the super interesting and super important tech company that you've probably never heard of file, Transon has filed for an IPO on China's upcoming NASDAQ-like exchange in Shanghai. What is Transon? Well, through brands like Techno, Infinix, and ITEL, It controls 58.7% of Africa's feature phone market, and the feature phone market is still huge in Africa, and 34.3% of Africa's smartphone market ahead of Samsung and Huawei, quoting the South China Morning Post. Tranchen's plan also sheds light on a little-known company, founded in 2006 by Zhu Zhao Jiang,

which has made it a strategy to sell entry-level phones in developing economies to undercut pricier smartphones by Apple Samsung or such Chinese manufacturers as Huawei Technologies and Zhaomi. Transon's Spark 2 model has a full display, a face ID unlocking system, and sells for as little as 40,500 Nyara, which is US $112 on Africa's online commerce platform, Jumia. Quote, Transon is in urgent need of money, end quote,

to finance its expansion and growth, said Frank Zhu, an analyst at Q Fund, a Hong Kong-based hedge fund. quote, the company is facing more competition as it moves up the value chain to produce smartphones, and they need money to improve their infrastructure and services to attract more customers, end quote. So since I have less than an hour and a half from the moment I'm speaking these words into the microphone to get this show out to you, hopefully, nothing more to say today other than, of course, we will dig deeper into all the Apple stuff tomorrow. Talk to you then.