I Can’t Think of an Apple vs Wolfs pun, sorry

Okay, for everyone who manages their information diet better than I do, here’s the short, short version: As part of Apple’s expanding TV&Movie ambitions, they made a movie called Wolfs starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, directed by Jon Watts (the guy who did the Tom Holland Spider-Mans. Spider-Men?) Apparently, at the last second, Apple changed their mind about doing a real theatrical release despite earlier promises, and now Jon Watts is going all scorched earth on the promo circuit.

For more:

Director Explains "Wolfs 2" Cancellation - Dark Horizons

Michael Tsai - Blog - Apple’s Movie Theater Beef With Hollywood

My initial reaction was, well, could have been worse, we all could have woken up with a copy of Wolfs on our phones we can never delete.

But my real reaction to all this is: Aaahhhhh, Hollywood is learning why there aren’t any exclusive video games on Macs. Because man, whatever else, it is so funny to watch Apple treat literally George Clooney and Brad Pitt like they were independent iOS devs.

It feels really clarifying, though. Turns out that old thing about “Apple is number 1, Users are Number 2, Devs are Number 3” applies to everyone. And that’s the thing about Apple, is they just can’t do “partners”. They just institutionally can’t handle doing something that might make them less money than they could just so their partner will be happy. They just can’t do it. There’s no spreadsheet column for “this option will lose us less money but make two of the biggest movie stars in the world mad.”

So the stuff they do well are things they can do completely on their own, and things that require an actual partner, as opposed to a vendor, always fail.

I don’t have a snappy conclusion here, but I do expect a lot of sixcolors apple report cards next year to include a phrase along the lines of “but they didn’t even treat George Clooney right, so I don’t know what I expected.”