Apple TV Plus and the new Apple TV app, explained – AppleTV 4 Jailbreak (appletv4jailbreak.com)
Here are some takeaways from today’s loaded, software-focused Apple event: Apple TV Plus is a subscription service with only Apple originals. Unlike Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, you don’t get access to a back catalog of licensed shows or movies.
Apple TV Plus is not a separate, standalone app. Instead, you’ll get to it using Apple’s TV app, which is expanding to many more devices over the coming months.
Starting in May, the Apple TV app will offer add-on paid subscriptions and will be able to stream some shows and movies from Apple’s partners like HBO without bouncing you out to a third-party video service.
All of this is separate from Apple TV the product, which is a streaming set-top box you can buy in stores today and important to Apple’s living room ambitions. The company would tell you that the Apple TV is the best way to experience all of this art and content.
Confused? It was easy to miss some of this or get mixed up, especially when Apple lumped these announcements together with a new credit card and magazine subscription service.
How does all the new TV stuff fit together? Let me do my best to lay it out in a way that makes sense.
What is Apple TV Plus?
Apple TV Plus is a video subscription service that will feature Apple’s growing list of original TV shows and movies. When it launches this fall, Apple TV Plus will be the exclusive way to watch that content. And Apple has poured money into forming a star-studded roster of talent working to produce programming that can hopefully stand equal with Netflix’s best shows. Even Oprah’s on board.
But Apple TV Plus is not its own app or a separate experience. It will actually be accessible through the Apple TV app on iOS, Mac, and other platforms. It will likely have its own dedicated tab or section of the TV app, but Apple didn’t go into the specifics on that at today’s event — and the website on Apple TV Plus is extremely light on details. The best we got was a short glimpse of an Apple TV Plus row with flashy animations during today’s keynote.
The service will be ad-free (since you’ll be paying for it) and Apple plans to launch in over 100 countries.
What is Apple TV Plus not?
- A true Netflix or Amazon Prime Video competitor: As Peter Kafka correctly predicted at Recode, Apple is not (yet) building a full streaming service that mixes originals and licensed programming like its rivals. Instead, the Apple TV Plus service focuses exclusively on Apple’s own original programming. There’s no older stuff to endlessly scroll through as we tend to do on Netflix or Prime Video. No Hollywood movies or past TV hits to speak of. Not yet, anyway.
- On Android or Windows: Though it announced a TV app for several platforms (even including Fire TV), Apple gave no…
