Prepare yourself for Apple’s first teaser trailer for Planet of the Apps, because it’s a total cringe-fest.
Billing Jessica Alba and Gwyneth Paltrow as some of “the world’s most culturally influential entrepreneurs,” the Shark Tank ripoff pairs budding app developers with tech luminaries and venture capitalists who can help make their App Store dreams a reality.
Planet of the Apps really is a Shark Tank for apps. Developers stand in front of four “advisers” — Alba, Paltrow, will.i.am and Gary Vaynerchuk — and pitch their ideas in a bid to secure support, funding and App Store promotion.
Planet of the Apps: Good idea, lame execution?
If you can see past the cheese and pretentious Silicon Valley speak — which is earning Planet of the Apps heaps of scorn the morning after the trailer’s release — it’s actually a great idea.
If you have big visions for your app, it’s not easy to get it off the ground. And even if you do manage it on your own and without bags of funding, there’s a good chance your precious app will go unnoticed in the unkempt sprawl of the App Store and die a miserably premature death.
It’s great that Apple is giving developers a platform to get the funding and support they need. It’s just a shame that Planet of the Apps seems excruciatingly pompous, at least from the looks of this first trailer.
The show appears to be filled with big egos, false drama and lame pitches like “eBay for the Snapchat generation.” If Planet of the Apps turns out to be anything like the trailer, it’s going to be unwatchable.
I mean, Gwyneth Paltrow? A culturally influential entrepreneur? This is the same woman who is now loathed for her ridiculously conceited diets and strange obsessions with things like vaginal steaming and bee sting beauty treatments.
Anyway. Planet of the Apps is coming to Apple Music “soon.”
