Every Apple event is met with such high expectations that it's impossible to ever call them a success. The pre-event rumors are always more exciting than the event itself. Earlier today the Apple event covered a few things, some memorable and some some meh, the best of which being Apple TV+.

Apple has been teasing this current TV offering for years. Each time there's an event and Apple TV is discussed, there has always been a sense that Apple would take TV in a cutting edge direction - the same way they did with phones, laptops and tablets. But they've always spent more time on the periphery, touching a toe in the water without ever fully diving in.

Today, we finally see that the Apple brand is expanding into content development and delivery. With Apple TV+, Apple is taking on the emerging content development market that Netflix has cornered, with Hulu and Amazon TV rounding out. But is this a great move for the Apple brand, or just another name in an increasingly crowded space?

It feels like an obvious choice for Apple. They've used story to sell devices since their inception, capitalizing on the creative community by selling their hardware as machines capable of capturing the deepest dreams and most compelling ideas from visionaries around the world. You'd be hard pressed to find the loyalty to any other machine pumping out screenplays, designs and editing films that you find with Apple hardware. So making the leap from the cpu screen to the small and large screen makes sense.

What was most interesting to me was how the initial content offerings seemed like an extension of the Apple ethos itself. Beautiful and diverse were reflected in Jennifer Aniston and Kumail Nanjiani, cool and current captured in Jason Mamoa, timeless and inventive in Spielberg himself.

And, oh yeah, Oprah.

They all felt classic and new at the same time even as the descriptions of their properties dragged on. If I had to describe the Apple brand promise captured in this cast of characters, it would be “Sure, you've seen us before, but never like this!”

That, ultimately, is where Apple is in its lifecycle. The same beautiful products doing things you've never seen beautiful products do before. They aren't the innovators they once were, but you still can't keep your eyes off of them.

Steven Spielberg described Apple as “The place where imagination and science join forces.” Although I feel like I've seen this movie before, I'll stick around to see where this leads now.