Apple will unveil a “paid” (there you have it) video-streaming service at a press event on March 25 and has invited a bunch of Hollywood celebrities to attend, including director JJ Abrams as well as actresses Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Garner.
JJ Abrams is directing some of the science-fiction focused programming for Apple’s service. Aniston, Witherspoon and Garner are starring in the television shows Apple has purchased.
Bloomberg has the story:
The video service is similar to Amazon’s Prime Video and Netflix products and will include TV shows and movies either acquired or funded by Apple.
The company has created dozens of original programs so far, but hasn’t wrapped them in a paid subscription yet. The paid service will launch by the summer, sources said.
BuzzFeed earlier reported that Apple’s news subscription service would launch on March 25 but it was unclear if the event might include the yet-to-be-named video-streaming service.
ROUNDUP: Apple’s original TV shows and movies
According to CNBC, the service will launch in April or May, but Netflix, Hulu and HBO won’t participate at launch due to disagreements over revenue sharing and customer data.
The content from the participating partners will likely be integrated into Apple’s TV app. The service is said to provide a mixture of original content free for Apple device owners and videos from other digital media services along with a platform to subscribe to them.
In other words, users will be able to pay to access shows from over-the-top providers, such as Starz, as is possible with Amazon’s video service.
As for the magazine subscription service:
That service has been in testing with Apple employees for months and will launch as part of an iOS 12.2 update scheduled for release this spring. The updated News app will include a Magazines tab similar to the app Texture, which Apple acquired last year.
Who’s looking forward to these new Apple services?
Let us know in the comments!