Apple TV is a hidden gem

There is a large chance that you’ve not even heard of The new streaming service from the fruit company. 

Apple TV+ (or Apple TV because I don’t care) is the latest thing that nobody cares about to be shoved in your face by The Fruit Company.

You probably found it because you got a free trial of it with your latest iPhone or MacBook upgrade

Apple TV has many ‘hidden gems’, from Severance™, a jarring criticism of workplace culture, corporatism, and late stage capitalism, to SILO™, an eye opening masterpiece questioning reality. 

Let’s start with Severance™.

Severance ™ follows Mark, Helley, Irving, and Bert as they navigate working for Lumon Industries on the severed floor.

The procedure of severance is a fictional surgery where one's brain is divided into two halves, one that is awoken during work, one that is awoken when they leave.

For your ‘outie’ you wake up, walk into an elevator, blink, and walk back out.

However, for your ‘innie’ you walk into an elevator at the end of the day, blink, and wake back up at work.

Your innie’s entire existence is the severed floor, no sunlight, no fresh air, no outside… ever.

The show describes the cult-like worship of the founder, even going as far as to replace commonly used phrases like ‘thank god’ with ‘thank keir’.

There are no other books allowed besides the handbook.

Bert is a stereotypical over-invested coworker, whose life revolves around office perks, finger traps, waffle parties, there are even some strange perks, like spending a night in the replica of the founders house, and experiencing the sound of music.

The group works in a department called Macro-Data Refinement (MDR).

What exactly they do in MDR is “mysterious and important.”

In the final episode of season one, the team decides to exploit the “over time contingency” (OTC).

The OTC is a protocol that allows Lumon to wake employees on the outside.

They all take the place of their outings at the same time. 

I don’t want to spoil too much because you really should watch it.

Now let’s talk about SILO.

SILO follows two characters who live in the silo, which was built to save humanity from a nuclear apocalypse

The silo has all of the amenities to restart society when the world is safe: farms, water, food, dictators.

There is a camera in the cafeteria, this camera shows the outside.

When a character commits a ‘severe crime’ the punishment is to clean the camera. 

Season 1 ends on a character stepping out into a green, lush environment.

Again, I don’t want to say too much because you really should go watch it.

Now, why aren’t these kinds of shows on any other streaming service?

Well, Apple TV is a very niche service, it only has around 75 million users. 

Now, that may sound like a lot, but NETFLIX currently has ~302.7 million.

Apple TV is able to experiment more, they have less to lose.

Now, I have been singing Apple’s praises here, but I, and this ‘company’ are staunchly anti corporate, the kinds of business practices the fruit corporation engages in are not condonable.

Apple is a massive corporation, known for its grotesquely expensive, I’m not going to say overpriced, as they are a good value for money and don’t price their products far from the competition, apple’s pricing is not as much a product of apple’s greed, but a norm set by the tech industry, but that’s a different article.

Apple TV is a shockingly cheap product form them, a subscription is 9.99 a month (USD), you do, however, need an apple account (Apple ID, formerly)

It has no kinds of ad tiers (cough, hulu) or paying 25 dollars for 4K and allowing other accounts (cough, netflix).

Apple TV is allowed to platform these kinds of shows and be this cheap because it doesn’t need subscribers, it’s already on your phone or laptop and you probably have a free trial waiting around.

It doesn’t really need a subscriber base anyway, streaming is not apple’s main business, they don’t need to care about subscription numbers and other things, they’re not netflix!