Apple should shutdown its streaming business, All-IN Podcast's Bias & 100 Days of AI (Edition #48)

Happy New Year 2024. Let’s get down to the business.

1/ Apple should shutdown its streaming business

Apple has no business being in streaming. It’s move in to streaming was possibly a ZIRP era decision. Streaming as a business is hard even if you have 100 years worth media library, ask David Zazlov. Infront of Netflix the traditional media businesses continue to struggle. They zig when its time to zag and zag when its time to Zig.

But for a tech company to be in streaming business, its makes sense for Amazon to be in this business. Amazon has the prime membership which can rationalize their spending in content creation across the world. Now with Amazon Ads which is turning out to be a massive business is going to compound that effect.

For Apple streaming business doesn’t make sense.

• They have not been successful in getting enough subscribers to make it a profitable business.

• They cannot produce cutting edge content because they are constantly worried about the brand Apple.

• They keep acquiring content for the sake of creator brands that are not relevant. Example, they spent $290M+ which made less than $60M at the box office world wide. On paper this is a bad decision to fund such projects where movie lengths are 3+ hours.

• There are bigger fish for Apple to fry. Apple has other massive opportunities to pursue like AR/VR and AI. Streaming business at its most bull case is still not big enough for Apple and they do not have a bundle like Amazon Prime to bundle it with.

I can go on, but I think I made my point. Its time to kill this business even though they produced one of my favorite shows, Foundations.

2/ The Blind Spot of the All-IN Podcast

If you are in Tech or VC and if you listen to podcasts on a weekly basis, then you know what All-In podcast is and who the co-hosts are.

All In is funny, interesting because of the world view the hosts have and has become a part of the tech sub culture to follow.

But All-In also has a blind spot when it come to talking about Elon. And I think it comes from the fact that they are friendly with Elon and don’t want to publicly give opinions that Elon might not like.

I have no problem with this as a regular listener. But I am not sure how many listeners identify this bias.

If I am talking about my friend on my podcast I would be biased too. But acknowledging it is important when that friend is the richest person in the world and is a constant newsmaker and when you accuse all types of media for having blind spots. And complain that neither media nor does the current Biden administration give Elon his fair share of respect.

I agree that Biden administration is biased against Elon just like All-In is biased towards Elon. The All-In pod conveniently only talks about the positives around Elon while ignoring any bad tweets or bad decisions he makes.

This bias is expected but its you the listener should be aware of the incentives the hosts have.

3/ 100 Days of AI

AI is going to impact us all, so as part of 2024’s first 100 days I am going to spend 1-2 hrs a day learning, experimenting, reading & tinkering with the latest AI models, products & content. You can follow along by following me on Twitter or here on my blog. My perspective in this 100 days will be focused on what new things we can build using AI and what to expect from AI in future.

Till Next Time, Stay Above Average.

Nataraj