In 2019, Apple unveiled its grand plan to enter the streaming wars. Apple TV Plus is still a baby, having not even completed a year of its life, however the hopes the company has put on the baby are high. Apple has been building a portfolio of services that will help turn its “not always upgrading” customers to paying customers by charging them a monthly fee for the use of its services.
Apple is getting serious about pushing Apple TV Plus as a platform that people will actually look for TV shows and movies. The company has poached a top engineer from the creator of video streaming service Netflix – Ruslan Meshenberg.
Ruslan Meshenberg, who helped build out Netflix’s platform and was involved in key initiatives to create a speedier, more consistent service for viewers, joined Apple’s internet-services organization this week, according to people familiar with the hire and his social-media accounts. He joins Apple at the same time it is expanding its $4.99-a-month TV+ service with other new hires, additional shows and movies—a complex undertaking that has tripped up other entrants into the video-streaming business.
WSJ
Apple needs to build a reliable system for its video streaming service to actually take off. Disney Plus suffered from major issues at its launch. However, Apple TV Plus did not see a lot of people stream content from its service as the catalogue is very limited at the moment.
Mr. Meshenberg has the experience to help Apple address technical challenges. At Netflix, he ran much of the infrastructure that guaranteed television shows and movies played reliably, even as the company expanded to more than 50 countries and streaming increased to more than one billion hours of programming weekly.
WSJ
Apple TV Plus is extremely inexpensive at the moment, especially in countries like India. Also, as it’s a new service, Apple is giving away one year free subscription with the purchase of an Apple device.
