Apple and the Flow Mirage


“CODA,” a movie from Apple, became the first movie to arrive in the US from a streaming service this week. win the Oscar for best picture. Milestone means: Founding of Hollywood finally accepting the movies and TV series we watch over the internet as legitimate entertainment.

But wait: why does Apple have a video streaming service? And what effect does it have on us when piles of corporate money warp the market for the conveniences we love? (I asked similar questions last year About Amazon.)

The Oscars are nice, but for Apple, success is largely defined by making more profits each year. Sorry, those are the rules of capitalism. It’s hard to say whether streaming video contributes to that goal or is an expensive distraction for Apple.

Spending piles of money, sometimes recklessly, in pursuit of potential future profits is an age-old business strategy. Sometimes it works. Other times it leads to MoviePass, which burns billions of dollars selling virtually unlimited movie tickets for $10 a month, and then the bust is gone.

Either way, companies are throwing money around. could be great for us, at least for a while. It likely brought us cheaper and better streaming video services, low-cost Uber rides, and cheap gas than we could ever have had. Yes, I will make a link between cheap gas and streaming video. Stay with me.

In the short run, sometimes products resulting from irrational spending can be both a glorious mirage for us and a dangerous mirage when the money runs dry.

Some background: Apple launched a video streaming service in 2019 called Apple TV+. Some people who buy a new Apple device get this service for free for three months; otherwise Apple charges $4.99 per month in the US that’s about a third of the cost of streaming subscriptions from Netflix and HBO Max. to have more to watch.

Apple rarely explains why it’s doing anything, and the company isn’t clear on its TV+ goals. But the traditional view is that streaming video is part of Apple’s strategy to keep device owners loyal. and convince them to spend a little more money.

Does that justify the expenditure and energy Apple put into streaming video? Shrug. It’s also unclear whether Amazon’s video streaming service is a successful way to attract and retain Prime members.

Maybe running a Hollywood entertainment empire is just fun. Apple and Amazon are so successful that they could spend some money figuring out if they could one day get even richer by offering streaming video. But when companies decide their lavish spending is no longer a wise bet, it’s worth keeping in mind the potential disruption to the products and services we love.

Uber rides were mostly cheap until 2020, as the company had investor money to go after many drivers even if the rides weren’t profitable. Similar financial recklessness now subsidizes city dwellers who order Doritos and milk Delivery to your door in 15 minutes. Investor cash flows in the 2010s Activated US energy companies using new crushing methods to extract oil and gas from the ground.

In all these cases, money that didn’t need to be spent has completely reshaped our world in a logical way. We got cheaper gas and Uber rides and convenience services that wouldn’t exist without investors throwing money away and hoping for future payoffs. Irrational money has also made Netflix an entertainment giant, and now Amazon and Apple are scattering their money too.

We’d probably get better and cheaper streaming services than we would if there were fewer companies selling entertainment subscriptions. People engaged in entertainment have more potential buyers for their business. Beautiful.

But what if money suddenly has to be linked more directly to making a profit? Netflix needed investors to subsidize its service for a long time, and now the company has a healthy financial footing. But Uber remains unprofitable and rides are no longer cheap. The frackers burned their investors’ money so recklessly that they now wary of digging for more oil and gas even in an energy crisis because their investors no longer trust them.

Maybe Apple and Amazon have great success with streaming video. But what if one of these companies decides it’s no longer willing to put away billions of dollars on entertainment that doesn’t help profits? Would Netflix cost $40 a month because there’s less competition? Would screenwriters be like homeowners in Pennsylvania who rely on royalties from shale drilling? dried?

We can enjoy the money spent entertaining us while we ride. But know that a lot of money will run out, and that can be painful for the entertainers and us viewers.


  • Uber and taxis combine! Imagine Duke and University of North Carolina basketball fans holding hands and watching the Final Four together. (For non-athletes: No. These fans hate each other.) Something similar to what’s happening now as Uber and taxi agencies in multiple cities have started allowing people to order an Uber or taxi ride from the Uber app. My colleague Kellen Browning reports: Such a deal is coming in San Francisco.

  • The technology of this company made possible Russian surveillance: Internal documents reviewed by my colleagues detail the work of telecom equipment company Nokia. Played a key role in Russia’s system of surveillance of its citizens and dissidents. A fascinating article that gets me thinking about the role of technology that can be used in invasive ways and the responsibility of the companies that make it.

  • Fake LinkedIn people: Disinformation researchers identified 1000+ LinkedIn accounts using profile photos, which are computer-generated images, not real people. NPR found that this was essentially an aggressive tactic by salespeople.

This octopus is beautiful.


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