The Revolution Has Been Televised

Avanti comrades! How Apple’s “hobby” went from zero to hero and revolutionized TV along the way

Read all about how Apple’s “hobby” evolved into the TV giant it is today — and how Apple changed the industry.

APPLE IS A computer company; Apple is a gadget company; Apple is a lifestyle company — and Apple is now solidly a TV company, too. Apple TV+ is quickly growing from an also–ran to a serious contender in the streaming game, and Apple’s own studios are producing world–leading content. The days of the Videos app and iTunes rentals seem long behind us. This is the way things are done, and Apple is doing it well.

Confusing nomenclature aside — you do not need an Apple TV to watch Apple TV+, or indeed to use the Apple TV app, which is a way to connect to various TV services through Apple but on non–Apple TV devices. Cupertino’s own TV streamer is one of the absolute best on the market today, with the ability and the operating system to cover the next few years, too.

But it wasn’t always that way. The story of Apple TV sees the company getting things spectacularly wrong on the way to getting them right, treating the Apple TV like an afterthought before making it core to its business, and generally sitting a little way behind others in the streaming world before making its play for the top. Whether you see this as a typically Apple trait is on you (and if you’ve watched the early growth of some of its other products, you just might), but there’s no doubt that Apple TV is now one of the very best streamers on the market, with value far beyond just putting movies on your TV.