Apple Hires Amazon Fire TV Head to Spearhead Apple TV Business
Apple has hired Timothy D. Twerdahl, the general manager and director of Amazon's Fire TV business, to be the vice president in charge of Apple TV product marketing, reports Bloomberg. Twerdahl joined Apple earlier this month.
Twerdahl has been in charge of Fire TV since 2013, overseeing two generations of the product and its rise as one of the more popular internet-connected set-top boxes. At Apple, Twerdahl will report to Greg Joswiak, VP of iOS and iPhone Product Marketing.
The move will allow Pete Distad, the former head of Apple TV product marketing, to concentrate on helping Apple land content deals, which are headed by Eddy Cue. Before joining Apple in 2013, Distad was senior vice president of content distribution at Hulu.
Having Distad join content negotiations is intended to shore up content for Apple TV, according to Bloomberg, as efforts to secure exclusive content deals for Apple TV have stalled in the past due to failed negotiations.
With the fourth-generation Apple TV, Apple was originally aiming to provide a full a la carte television service that could replace traditional cable and satellite packages, similar to Sony's PlayStation Vue service. However, Apple unsurprisingly saw pushback from both content and cable companies after using negotiating tactics described as "assertive" and "hard-nosed," declining to back down from the terms the company wanted. Apple scaled back its TV ambitions in the past couple of years, though it considered both a slimmed-down subscription service and purchasing Time Warner.
In addition to leading product marketing for the Fire TV, Twerdahl was also the senior director of internet TV at Netflix and a vice president of consumer devices at Roku, according to his LinkedIn.
Popular Stories
Apple released iOS 18.2 in the second week of December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. Apple has added a handful of new non-AI related feature controls as...
Wednesday December 18, 2024 11:39 am PST by
Juli CloverApple is no longer planning to launch a hardware subscription service that would let customers "subscribe" to get a new iPhone each year, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman first shared rumors about Apple's work on a hardware subscription service back in 2022, and at the time, he said that Apple wanted to develop a simple system that would allow customers to pay a monthly fee to gain...
Contrary to recent reports, the iPhone 17 Pro will not feature a horizontal camera layout, according to the leaker known as "Instant Digital."
In a new post on Weibo, the leaker said that a source has confirmed that while the appearance of the back of the iPhone 17 Pro has indeed changed, the layout of the three cameras is "still triangular," rather than the "horizontal bar spread on the...
Wednesday December 18, 2024 10:05 am PST by
Juli CloverElevation Lab today announced the launch of TimeCapsule, an innovative and simple solution for increasing the battery life of Apple's AirTag.
Priced at $20, TimeCapsule is an AirTag enclosure that houses two AA batteries that offer 14x more battery capacity than the CR2032 battery that the AirTag runs on. It works by attaching the AirTag's upper housing to the built-in custom contact in the...
The current Apple TV 4K was released more than two years ago, so the streaming device is becoming due for a hardware upgrade soon. Fortunately, it was recently rumored that a new Apple TV will launch at some point next year.
Below, we recap rumors about the next-generation Apple TV.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman last week reported that Apple has been working on its own combined Wi-Fi and...
Blackmagic today announced that its URSA Cine Immersive camera is now available for pre-order, with deliveries set to start late in the first quarter of 2025. Blackmagic says that this is the world's first commercial camera system designed to capture 3D content for the Vision Pro.
The URSA Cine Immersive camera was first introduced in June, but it has not been available for purchase until...
Apple launched the controversial "trashcan" Mac Pro eleven years ago today, introducing one of its most criticized designs that persisted through a period of widespread discontentment with the Mac lineup.
The redesign took the Mac Pro in an entirely new direction, spearheaded by a polished aluminum cylindrical design that became unofficially dubbed the "trashcan" in the Mac community. All of ...
Apple is planning a series of "major design" and "format changes" for iPhones over the next few years, according to The Wall Street Journal's Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie.
The paywalled report published today corroborated the widely-rumored "iPhone 17 Air" with an "ultrathin" design that is thinner than current iPhone models. The report did not mention a specific measurement, but previous...
