Jessica Alba will be a star on Apple's upcoming reality show "Planet of the Apps" and some techies are furious about the decision. The news broke Tuesday in Variety that Alba will be involved in the show along with other celebrities like will.i.am and Gwyneth Paltrow.
TechCrunch's Romain Dillet summed up the Silicon Valley outrage in the tech world's blog of record:
But I don’t think any of these hosts are qualified to talk about design, engineering or even growth strategy when it comes to releasing a new app on the App Store. They’re no Whitney Wolfe, Evan Spiegel, Anne Wojcicki, Kevin Systrom, Julia Hartz, Dennis Crowley, Emily Weiss or Pavel Durov.
"Planet of the Apps," which will premiere in 2017, is designed as a mix of "Shark Tank" and "The Voice," where developers compete to come up with a killer app. A judge picks the most promising ideas and the developers are coached by a mentor like Paltrow or Alba.
But here's what Dillet doesn't understand. "Planet of the Apps" isn't going to be a show for techies and TechCrunch readers. It's for the average television viewer. Apple isn't trying to turn itself into a content studio (yet). It's making shows to entice more people to buy more digital stuff from Apple. And hiring a bunch of famous people to play the role of tech mentor to some nobodies hoping to be the next Mark Zuckerberg is an enticing concept in a world obsessed with the spectacle of reality TV.
It doesn't matter that the stars of the show have relatively little experience making apps. They're famous.
Techies will scoff, but there's a good chance plenty of people outside the Silicon Valley mind-bubble will eat it up. If Apple's lucky, they'll get more people downloading more apps.
That's also why Apple is making its own version of "Carpool Karaoke" from "The Late Late Show." It's not because James Corden is a talented singer and musician. (He's not.) It's because those videos of him driving around town singing with Michelle Obama or Lin Manuel Miranda or Brittney Spears immediately turn into viral hits.
And oh yeah, Apple happens to have the biggest digital music store with iTunes and a rapidly growing paid streaming service with Apple Music it would love for you to pay $10 per month for.
