Steve Jobs’ much-ballyhooed movie rental service looks all fine and dandy, but the question in my mind is: “How long will it be before the service offers a single decent movie to rent?”
At present, the movies on offer are even shittier than the local video store, or those available on-demand from my cable providor, Comcast, which utterly stinks.
It’d be depressing if all Apple offered was popcorn garbage. Surely the service is serving the wrong demographic. Early adopters, the kind that run out to buy an AppleTV box, are surely more interested in less mainstream fare. How long will it be before there’s some independent movies, classics, artsy fartsy foreign stuff, and genre titles?
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
34 responses to “Apple’s Movie Rentals Great In Theory, Sucks In Practice”
“How long will it be before there’s some independent movies, classics, artsy fartsy foreign stuff, and genre titles?”
Since many of those kinds of movies are handled by several dozen independent distributors, those will come in time. Getting all the major studios was the biggest hurdle.
So you don’t like Zoolander or Live Free or Die Hard? I’d like to see a baseline of the movies you consider good.
It Happened One Night, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Great Escape, The Lives of Others, The Magnificent Seven, House of Games…
That’s a pretty good start for me in the classic and artsy department Leander. I can’t find any of those on Comcast. Maybe it’s better where you live.
I think the main point is that people who use Apple TV or an online movie rental source do so because nothing that suits their taste is available at the local Blockbuster. Anything on the iTunes store is on the pirate bay 32 days earlier.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
West Side Story
The Magnificent Seven
War Games
Trading Places
How many more classics do you need ? ;-)
Seems like a decent start for day 1. I’m sure more will come. But I’d certainly hope they add a section showing only the movies available for rental. It’s disappointing when you find a movie you want to rent, but then see it’s only available for purchase.
Have you actually ever watched Zoolander before insulting it so prominently?
I love the fact that apple has now got round to renting movies as for what’s on offer well that’s down to the boys behind the big desks in movie land.
Only two gripes I have with it is you have to wait 30 days after it has been released on DVD before it shows up in iTunes second I live in the UK and when it does arrive over here we will as usual get a raw deal on pricing
Wow. The service is not even 24 hours old and you can already declare that it “sucks in practice.” When iTunes started it didn’t have anywhere near the 6 million song catalog to sell that it does now. These things take a little time. Good lord. I think the fact that a good majority of studios have signed on is a good indication that the service will offer a lot more in the near future.
Dude, give it time. The service hasn’t even been available for a day. Sheesh.
My exact sentiments. It’s been one day and your already slamming Apple for having a crappy selection of titles to pick from. Give me a break! Even the title of this article “Apple’s Movie Rentals Great In Theory, Sucks In Practice” is ridiculous. Apple said 1,000 titles by the end of February so until then, wait then review the iTunes Movie rental selection.
sucks in practice? no, it sucks in practice if you find it difficult to use. sucks in selection? thats a matter of opinion, and your opinion doesnt even relate to your title which is just taking a cheap shot to get you some attention.
I second that Alex.
Besides, Zoolander IS the greatest movie ever. I’ve always liked how when they show screen shots of the iTS (like when it started selling movies) Zoolander was always there, front and center.
It’s taught me that there’s more to life then being really, really, ridiculously good-looking.
^_^
I have to agree with Leander. The inventory of movies to date is like a “top 40” list, and I’ve already seen all the ones I care to see. Hopefully the indie distributors will come online soon. Right now iTunes looks like an online Blockbuster, but I hope it becomes more like that funky video store that carries foreign films and festival releases.
As a side note, the 30-day waiting period after DVD release is going will mean that a lot of potential customers (like me) will continue doing what they’ve been doing – pirating these movies via bitorrent. Hopefully this will change once the studio people clue in.
My question is why can’t I copy the rental movie to my iPod Video (5G)
What’s special about the newest rev of iPods? Could this have something to do with Apple changing the video out from being through the earphone jack to the dock connector?
The problem with the sort of niche fare that Leander is talking about is that it is niche fare; i.e., by definition its appeal is fairly narrow. Apple would have been foolish to rely too heavily on it at first. Start with the highest-percentage bets, then move to the margins once those have begun paying off.
They’ll definitely need a larger library than the 1k titles by the end of February that Jobs talked about, but it is way too soon to complain about it.
As far as Apple TV goes, those of us who are into niche stuff don’t necessarily need iTunes movie rentals to find it useful. I watch downloaded anime fansubs, and if I didn’t already have an iPod and an AV cable, AppleTV would be just the thing for me to store them and watch them on my TV.
I thought Zoolander was pretty clever, personally. And of course Live Free and Die Hard had to be in the mix; they couldn’t diss Justin Long, could they?
It probably won’t be in Canada for another four years, probably just before they launch the iphone. I don’t know what the deal is, if it has to do with the CRTC or what. This is a service I would actually use and I’m being denied it. Do they not think the market is large enough to make it worth while? Is it a question of CANCON? because most movies either star or were made by Canadians, or at the very least they were filmed in Canada.
Come on.
From the Wired story you link to ‘Apple says it plans to add more than 1,000 films by next month’
Kinda answers your first question dontcha think? Jobs also said that new releases would be available 30 days after the DVD release.
As for the artsy fartsy stuff, yep would be great to have diversity and choice, and I’m sure it will come. But it’s the blockbusters, like Zoolander, that pay the bills so why should we be surprised that they’re on there first?
By the time we get the features in Europe, the system will be grown up! Just be a bit patient, it is an honour for you guys in the US that you are the first to experience all this new cool Apple features. It was the same with the introduction of itunes and the iphone. We as Apple believers should always support our “Company”, don’t forget that the only alternative is the Bill Gates Maffia.