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Apple's 'Planet of the Apps' Reality Show Is 'Bland, Tepid, Barely Competent Knock-off of 'Shark Tank' (variety.com)
On Tuesday, Apple made its debut into the world of original television programming with "Planet of the Apps," a reality show that brings app developers in a competition to try to get mentoring and assistance from hosts Jessica Alba, will.i.am, Gwyneth Paltrow and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. Contestants describe their proposals as they ride an escalator down onto a stage where the judges sit, and then fire questions at the app developer. The problem? Critics aren't pleased. An anonymous reader shares a Variety report: Apple's first offering, "Planet of the Apps," feels like something that was developed at a cocktail party, and not given much more rigorous thought or attention after the pitcher of mojitos was drained. It's not terrible, but essentially, it's a bland, tepid, barely competent knock-off of " Shark Tank." Apple made its name on game-changing innovations, but this show is decidedly not one of them. The program's one slick innovation is the escalator pitch. You read that right; I didn't mistype "elevator pitch." The show begins with an overly brief set-up segment, which doesn't spend much time explaining the rules of the show, and which also assumes that a viewer will know who host Zane Lowe is, though a reasonably large chunk of the audience won't. Soon enough, app developers step into a pitch room with a very long escalator in the middle of it. As the four judges listen (often with looks of glacial boredom on their faces), the aspiring creators have one minute of escalator time to tout the product they want funding for. After the app makers get to the bottom of the conveyance, the judges (or "advisors") vote yea or nay. As long as one judge has given the developers a green light, they can continue making their pitch.
Meanwhile, butthurt Slashdot users will continue to whine about Mark Cuban because he's far more successful than they ever will be. Slashdot users pretty much hate anyone who's successful enough to escape the banal world of IT by actually doing something worthwhile that people want.
Hardly surprising considering most of their products are also bland, tepid, barely competent knock offs. With rounded corners.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Shark Tank is just a piss poor rip off of The Dragon's Den. And the name is terrible. Shark Tank, is that supposed to be intimidating?
Planet of the Apps, ha ha I get it.
You can skip the rest of it.
...you're likely not watching "reality shows". At if you are, you're not watching them on broadcast or cable TV. I think the design flaw started at the demographic.
Jessica Alba,
Hot actress. What does she know about apps.
will.i.am,
O.K.AY.
Gwyneth Paltrow
It's not the 90s anymore. And she doesn't have those gorgeous legs anymore.
and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk
OK. Nice job on what he did with the store he inherited from his dad. But the rest of what he did? Mark Cuban lite.
Sorry Apple, you had this crazy wacky visionary guy who co-founded you and when he died, so did your mojo.
Have you guys thought of IT services and offshoring the actual work to India? I heard it's the thing to do these days!
TV networks like reality TV because it's low-cost filler compared to scripted drama or comedy. The problem is that it's low-cost filler, and often edited or (poorly) scripted to make up loads of fake drama. It was one of the main reasons I cut the cord and gave up cable, the amount I was shelling out each month for cable wasn't really producing a good amount of value. I found that many of the decent programming I liked was also available on places like Amazon, where I could pay just for the series I liked and still save a pile of money. The irony here is that Apple revived a lagging music singles market with iTunes, and in turn electronic album sales. They did miss the boat with streaming for a very long while but have been able to make up the lost time because of their control of the phone market. Apple also has a history of selling as a premium brand. I'm wondering what logic went into starting with the low cost commodity filler of screen entertainment instead of going for something of higher quality. HBO, Amazon and Netflix have already demonstrated that people will shell out for quality entertainment. Heck, they could have picked up some sort of sports programming, they have the cash and the market share to get major sports league attention, and people will spend money to watch sports.
If you're more subtle with the squeeze you can really get paid. Like how Jesse Jackson packaged up Chicago's 1990's racial strife and cashed it on a beer distributorship for his kids. (http://articles.latimes.com/1998/nov/21/news/nc-46240)
Jobs would never have been so stupid.
Go look up critic reviews for any movie/show/anything on Metacritic. Anything at all. Even top-rated critics-darling indie films that get standing ovations at Cannes. I guarantee there will be at least one critic who panned it, using similar superlatives. Quoting one critic doesn't say anything about consensus about a show.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
so, very much like their product line.
Managements (MBAs and Marketing people) are now clearly in charge at Apple. All inovation has ground to a halt and they will work on "synergistic" ideas like this that "extract value for shareholders." We're fucked.
Not The Wire. Less blood than NCIS. Lame.
My avocation is economic history - yeah, there's a reason it's an avocation.
There are folks in the USA's past that were real innovative geniuses. Vanderbilt (steamships,Railroads, finance), Henry Kaiser (he's also the guy who created our screwed up employer supplied health insurance), Howard Hughes (aviation), Andrew Carnegie (steel), JP Morgan (corporate structures and monetary policy), Henry Ford (D'uh!) and a few others.
Yes, most of them were mean assholes. BUT - These guys made their own luck. And some of them were pinned to the wall and got out of it.
Getting bought out for billions during a bubble is just winning the lottery - being at the right place at the right time.
The people I mentioned were many times at the wrong place at the wrong time and STILL succeeded - multiple times.
So forgive me when I think that Cuban, Musk, or whoever got rich quick during the 90s boom just won the dot.bomb lottery.
When your are doing reality shows or rehashing business ideas that have been around for over a 150 years - like electric cars - and and losing billions for years; uh, sorry, the people I am comparing you with make you look like a buffoon.
...get mentoring and assistance from hosts Jessica Alba, will.i.am, Gwyneth Paltrow...
So, Jessica, which container class do you think would work best in this situation? I was thinking about a hash map, but since I need ordered traversal, perhaps a red-black tree would work better. I'd fall back to O(log(n)) on the accesses, but get fast traversal. Or, do you think I should consider parallel structures with a pointer to the same data in two container types, to allow both fast access and fast ordered traversal, at the expense of more time and complexity to keep them in sync?
So, Gwyneth, I'm getting a compilation error on this line, and I'm not seeing the root cause yet. Any advice for me?
Presumably, since they are offering mentoring, you can ask them programming questions?
If Apple wants this to be successful, they shouldn't limit it to apps.
Shark Tank began during the 2008 recession with the premise of helping struggling small business owners. They have a wide range of products, and a lot of viewers can relate to or have interest in at least something on the show. There's broad appeal that just isn't there for apps. At least expand it to other tech and not limit it to apps.
Also, Shark Tank works because the casting of the sharks was done well. There's a reason that Kevin Harrington was replaced with Mark Cuban after two seasons. Although he's portrayed as harsh, rude, and greedy, there's also a very good reason why Kevin O'Leary was on Dragons Den for several seasons and has been on Shark Tank from the beginning. Cuban and O'Leary have strong personalities but they make the show really entertaining. There are plenty of tech entrepreneurs who could make that work. I'd be more interested if Apple could have attracted people like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Steve Wozniak to their panel.
Also, the escalator pitch is too gimmicky and really doesn't add anything to the show. Not every pitch on Shark Tank is actually used on TV, and a really boring pitch just wouldn't make it on the show. Only about 50% of the pitches actually make it to TV. They show some epic fails because those are entertaining. But a pitch that lost interest in the first minute probably would never make it to TV. That's a stupid gimmick.
Why didn't Apple just follow the format that's worked with Dragons Den (the original) and Shark Tank?
pretty much describes apple itself.
Is it enough to buy an imacpod and SDK fees ?
They make TV like they make everything else they do? Why is this news and why would Apple, of all personality-cult idiot-tier things, be on a site containing the subheader "News for Nerds?"
"Contestants describe their proposals as they ride an escalator down onto a stage where the judges sit, and then fire questions at the app developer. The problem? LUDDITE Critics aren't pleased. An anonymous reader shares a Variety report"
*Fixed!
PS. Where you are App guy? We need you!
This is the appiest app show on appy app devices! Only LUDDITES hate Planet of the Apps because they're too stupid to figure out how to app it!
Apps!
If you have stock in Apple I highly recommend selling your stock...because that company has just jump the shark, HA!
shark tank and dragons den were both shows about entrepaneurs who pitched business ideas to people who had a good amount of experience in actually running a business.
Why would anyone want to pitch an product or in this case app to people who at best have experience in running a brand. the two concepts are not compatible. Not a single one of those hosts has ever developed an actual app or even really knows about producing one..
I think this really goes to show how out of touch apple it... Maybe it really is true: "you either die the hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villan"
You'd think the mentors would be top app developers. How are these people even able to help in any way? You're going to wind up with a typical "know-nothing" bean counter of a manager. Your app will then crash and burn.
I'm pretty sure I've seen a few pitches on Shark Tank where an app was a *component* of what they were pitching. So. Apple is producing a Tank-like show restricted to a component of a Tank-like pitch. I don't even have a "smart" phone, so it's DOA; but I've become an old Slashfart so there's that. Even if I were young though, the show is inherently limited to one manufacturer's ecosystem. No Android apps, probably, so that cuts out a big part of the viewers for this kind of thing.
Shutup APK.
We know it's you.
At least you seem to have given up on moose wang so that is good.
"This app is going to revolutionize the fart app industry."
Apple is producing a Planet of the Apes TV Show? I loved that ... oh sorry. Disregard.
n/t
Only after reading a 3rd time I finally noticed that it's not a reality show based on the movie "Planet of the Apes" :-)
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.