4 burning questions we have about Apple TV+

Oprah, Tim Cook, and plenty of celebs gathered in Cupertino on Monday to reveal the new Apple TV+ streaming service.

Some of its biggest titles? The Morning Show starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, and Little America from Kumail Nanjiani. We also learned that Apple will make the subscription service available on its revamped Apple TV app, which is coming to Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices.

While we learned a lot about Apple TV+, there is still a lot we don’t know. Like, a lot. 

1. How much will it cost?

Hands-down the biggest Apple TV+ question everyone wants answered is: How much is it going to cost per month? Apple didn’t say and instead promised to share pricing details “later this fall,” presumably closer to its launch.

If you total up all the streaming services you likely already pay for (including Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, HBO, etc.), adding TV+ could significantly push you over your monthly budget. Without any pricing information, it’s impossible to make a decision on whether the hundreds of original shows Apple is promising for TV+ will be worth paying for. 

Sure, Apple’s wrangled some big names like Steven Spielberg and Oprah, and in a perfect world, we’d all be able to pay for TV+ in addition to, say, Netflix which starts at $12.99, Prime Video which costs $9.99 per month, and Hulu, which starts at $5.99 per month. 

If Apple TV+ costs $6, people might make room for it. But asking someone to pay another $15 could be too much to ask. 

2. Will entire seasons be released at once, or will new episodes come weekly?

Binge-watching TV has become synonymous with streaming services since Netflix released the first full season of House of Cards back in 2013. Later, services like Hulu hopped on the original content bandwagon but chose instead to release their shows weekly, as if they had an appointed cable time slot. 

Releasing weekly would indicate that Apple intends its shows to become week-to-week conversation pieces, and could mean lots of episodes that end with big reveals and cliffhangers. Season dumping, on the other hand, would indicate Apple wants people to spend large chunks of time engaged with their product just to keep up with the zeitgeist.

3. What’s the resolution of the videos?

It’s 2019 and you simply can’t offer a crappy video or audio experience. In typical Apple fashion, the company glossed over details on the quality of its original programming.

Is it going to be 4K resolution? HDR with Dolby Vision or HDR10? Support Dolby Atmos surround sound? Is it the same for downloads and how large will the average file size be? 

If it’s not streaming in the highest image and audio fidelity, will there be a less pretty (but still pretty enough) HD-resolution plan that costs less per month, like Netflix offers? 

Presumably, TV+ content will be available in 4K, HDR, and with Dolby Atmos the way some iTunes films and TV shows are, but until Apple shares details, we just don’t know. Hard to imagine Apple would make its content available in anything less than HD.

4. Will Apple buy licensed content or only produce originals?

Right now, all of the shows announced for Apple TV+ are made for and originally produced by Apple, for Apple. It’s a great way to make sure Apple can control everything about its shows during the opening months of service, but it’s also a hugely expensive effort that may become unsustainable as Apple TV+ ages. 

If Apple sticks to only putting its own content on Apple TV+, it will have to carefully analyze and weigh each show’s worth as an attraction for people to remain subscribed to the service; if they start distributing the work of other studios, they’d have less of an initial investment to recoup in each show. Apple would then also enter direct competition with Netflix, which is the premiere streaming destination for many production studios.