Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Kicking off the Planet of the Apps reality series on a Tuesday night at 11:30 p.m. — and without fanfare or even an announcement — doesn’t make a lot of sense for Apple unless you consider the platform and the audience.
Apple Music, which Apple announced this week has reached 27 million paying customers, is a destination service. You pay $10 a month, you get lots of music, and you frequently find a surprise like a Kendrick Lamar album that shows up one day with no advance press. If you see something interesting, you check it out.
The audience for the surprise premiere of Planet of the Apps were the tens of thousands of app developers attending Apple’s annual World Wide Developer’s Conference who saw it Tuesday night during the conference. In the series, which is about iOS developers trying to raise capital to take their apps to the next level, the developers are the stars and the viewers.
You can watch it too, though you may not like what you see if you’re not an app developer.
The first episode of Planet of the Apps is available now on the PlanetOfTheApps.com website, and on Apple Music for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and iTunes for Mac and PC under the new “TV and Movies” tab. Subsequent episodes, which will premiere on Tuesdays, will be available only to Apple Music subscribers.
The format for the competitive reality series is a combination of the high-stress product pitches of ABC’s Shark Tank and the celebrity mentoring of NBC’s The Voice. For the initial pitch, each developer describes why his app is the next big thing during — and I’m completely serious here — a 60-second ride down an escalator to the area where the celebrity mentors are sitting. The gimmick is a bad idea made worse by the specter of Donald Trump’s silly, memed-to-death escalator arrival for his 2015 presidential announcement, and it makes Planet of the Apps hard to take seriously.
Speaking of things that make Planet of the Apps hard to take seriously, the mentors are Jessica Alba, Gwyneth Paltrow, will.i.am — celebrities with (supposed) tech bonafides — and app guru Gary Vaynerchuk, who’s a legit startup investor. (Advice for future contestants: Pick Vaynerchuk as your mentor. He didn’t win an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love, but he did invest in Facebook pre-IPO.)
Planet of the Apps is best when it leaves its cavernous escalator set and Shark Tank theatrics and gets down to the business of helping developers refine and focus their apps. Why is this app new and different, and how can it face down Google? Unfortunately, when the developers are ready to meet with the venture capital firm, they have to come back to the silly, made-for-TV set to deliver their pitches.
Despite the quiet launch, Planet of the Apps should get a heavy sampling over the next few weeks from Apples’s worldwide promotion on iTunes, Apple Music, apple.com and social media. Already this morning, the series is the first thing you see when you launch Apple Music and is the first recommended show on Apple’s TV app for Apple TV, iPhone and iPad. Unless you’re an iOS developer or Jessica Alba completist, though, Planet Off the Apps is no more essential viewing than whatever’s on CNBC tonight.
Carpool Karaoke: The Series, a spinoff of the James Corden viral videos that’s set to premiere in August, appears to be having a lot more fun than Planet of the Apps and will almost certainly have broader appeal.
Scott Porch writes about the streaming-media industry for Decider and is also a contributing writer for Playboy. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.
