Apple’s Video Service Will Succeed Where Microsoft Failed (Premium)

I was reading yet another article about what we can expect from the streaming video service that Apple will announce next week and my mind suddenly jumped to an uncomfortable place. What Apple is attempting here is not really all that unique. In fact, aggregating content from multiple sources and presenting it to the user in a clean, singular interface is arguably the dream of the modern age. It is nothing less than the refutation of the “whack-a-mole” interaction model that Apple first championed with the iPhone in 2007.

And maybe Apple, of all companies, will be the one that actually succeeds in breaking past that simplistic and unscalable interface. Ironic.

It certainly isn’t the first to try to do so. (And, this isn’t even Apple’s first attempt at trying to do so, but let’s stay focused for a moment.) When Microsoft launched its internal efforts to replace Windows Mobile with a new platform that could be more competitive with the iPhone, the firm, to its credit, really thought outside the box. Unlike Google, with Android, Microsoft sought to be both different and better than iPhone, and to do that broadly across the new system, called Windows Phone.

We all know how this story ends. And that Microsoft’s good intentions did not amount to anything more than a distant third place finish in a mobile market that was destined to conclude with only two major players.

But Windows Phone should be remembered for its ideas, and fondly, because Microsoft really tried to rethink the way that users interacted with their phones. It started a people-centric user experience push that continues to this day in Microsoft’s other products and services. And It contained unique user experiences that, on the surface, appeared to solve real problems.

Key among them was the concept of the hub, a special kind of panoramic app that would aggregate a user’s content from multiple services and present it as a cohesive, single view. There would be a Pictures hub, for example, where you could view, share, and edit all of your pictures across multiple services. A Music + Videos hub that would do the same for digital music, TV shows, movies, and other videos. A Games hub. Even the Messaging app, which wasn’t technically a hub, was designed to aggregate conversations from across SMS, MMS, Windows Live Messenger, Skype, and third-party messaging apps.

That was the dream. Hubs were great for users because they eliminated the “whack-a-mole” interaction that Apple popularized with the iPhone and iOS’s simplistic grid of icons. In that model, every photo service you use needs its own app and on-screen icon. So when you want to find a photo to share, or whatever, you need to first think which service/app it’s in, and then remember where it is on-screen, both the position of the app icon and which home screen it’s on. And if you get it wrong, you go back out again to the home screen, think some more—where is that damn thing?—and then jump back in again.

In reality, hubs never lived up to their promise because the owners of those services and apps are not at all interested in you accessing your content from outside of their brand. Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Google Photos (then called Google Picasa), whatever—they all have the same brand imperatives. They want you to think about their brand. To make a connection in your brain with the colors and designs of their app icons. They want to access you directly, and they only want you to access them directly as well.

So hubs failed. There were a few brief interaction connections, like the ability to access Facebook via the Photos hub, and so. But that was about it. And over time, those few connections that were available just disappeared as the brands behind them reasserted control.

Flash forward to 2019 and Apple’s coming video service is attempting to do exactly the same thing: Aggregate multiple video services into a single user experience for its users. (Apple is likewise attempting to do the same via an upgrade to its News app/service, but I’ll just focus on video for now.) In doing so, it faces the same hurdles that Microsoft faced with Windows Phone hubs: Content creators like HBO, Hulu, and Netflix want to interact directly with their own users and they want those users to be invested in their brands. Netflix, for example, wants you to associate House of Cards and Narcos with Netflix, not with Apple.

Despite this, and despite the fact that many major video services, like Netflix, are boycotting Apple’s coming service for very obvious reasons, I feel like Apple may actually succeed where Microsoft failed. No, its video service won’t truly offer a one-stop-shop for all of one’s video services, that dream will likewise always remain unfulfilled. But it will offer enough aggregation for enough users to be literally successful.

The question, of course, is why? Why can Apple potentially succeed in attracting enough third-party services to its video service where Microsoft was unable to do so with hubs in Windows Phone?

Sadly, for Microsoft, the answer is obvious. And it can be expressed in numbers. Big numbers.

Numbers like 1.4 billion, which is the number of actively-used Apple devices out in the world. And like 900 million, the number of iPhones in active use worldwide. Apple has a scale that makes service aggregation attractive to both its users and those third-party services, at least some of them. Only the very biggest, like Netflix, have enough muscle and influence to resist.

How big is Netflix, you ask? It has 60 million users in the United States. And 139 million worldwide.

But Apple already has 50 million Apple Music subscribers. So it is very possible that it could attract a similar number of Apple TV (or Apple Video or whatever they call it) subscribers within a few years. That would put this service in a distant second place behind Netflix, but ahead of Hulu (25 million users), HBO Now (5 million), and other services. And it would mimic Apple’s position in music, where Apple Music is in second place behind Spotify.

Just like iOS and the iPhone are in second place behind Android. Huh.

In these cases, second place does not mean that Apple is an also-ran. If anything, it is probably really the market leader in each case because it has an iPhone-based economic engine powering its services expansion. Meanwhile, Netflix, Spotify, and others must go it alone. They must compete only on the merits of their services, and they have high costs and razor thin, often negative, margins. Apple has no such worries. It can milk its massive user base with confidence.

Whether Apple’s ability to enter new markets like this is illegal is open for debate. But it’s certainly unfair. And it is the key difference between what it is doing now and what Microsoft innovated a decade ago. Once again, Apple is slowly coming around to ideas that were first offered elsewhere, yes. But is likewise getting it right when it finally does so. This conforms to what Apple users expect and want.

So while I (and others) may complain about outdated “whack-a-mole” user interfaces and Apple’s continued slowness and lack of innovation, one could argue that what Apple is doing is right. Both for it and its users.

And on that note, I think Apple’s coming video service is going to succeed.

For someone who enthusiastically cheered Microsoft’s people-centric approach in Windows Phone and then endured the ensuing decade of defeats, Apple’s coming success is bittersweet. I see any attempt to make life easier for people as a good thing. But it’s coming from Apple, which has its own insular agenda aimed at keeping those people in its own ecosystem.

And that is decidedly not a good thing.