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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.
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.
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.
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?
And The Dragon's Den was just a piss poor rip off of Money Tigers.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
What's this "we" shit?
Apple and its shareholders may be in for a wild ride, but they're not offering anything that isn't available in some form or another from someone else.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
"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!
If you have stock in Apple I highly recommend selling your stock...because that company has just jump the shark, HA!
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.
Apple is producing a Planet of the Apes TV Show? I loved that ... oh sorry. Disregard.
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.
Until Xcode runs on iPad, or until Swift Playgrounds expands into domains other than those that Logo used to occupy (graphics and robotics), apps can't app apps on iOS. Sorry, app guy.