I used to be thrilled this week when Apple issued a press launch asserting that its unique movie, F1 The Movie, starring Brad Pitt, would make its streaming debut on the corporate’s video service December 12. However it wasn’t the information concerning the film that excited me. Relatively, it was a small line on the end of the press release that quietly introduced one thing else: “Apple TV+ is now merely Apple TV, with a vibrant new identification.”
The “+” branding on Apple TV+ at all times bugged me. At any time when I checked out it, I assumed, “Apple TV plus what?” Apple Information presents a free base model and a paid model that will get you extra content material, known as “Apple Information+,” which is smart. However there’s by no means been a free model of Apple’s video streaming service, so what was the “+” signifying? The “+” branding had additionally grown more and more tiresome through the years, as practically each streaming service added the mathematical operator onto its identify.
Mercifully, Apple has now determined to subtract the plus. Right here’s the why, and the way the corporate might go additional towards to ending branding’s most tiresome scourge.
The corporate didn’t invent the “+”, however it embraced it like no different
Till this week, Apple had been leaning laborious into the “+” branding for years—practically as laborious because it did to the rather more iconic “i” branding within the early 2000s.
Apple debuted its first “+” branding all the best way again in October 2011 with its AppleCare+ prolonged guarantee program, which coated unintended injury to a consumer’s iPhone. It used an alphabetic model of the nomenclature with the iPhone 6 “Plus” mannequin in 2014. However it wasn’t till 2019 that Apple started to go hog wild on “+”.
That yr, Apple debuted the Apple News+ news subscription service and the Apple TV+ video streaming service. A yr later, in 2020, Apple debuted the Apple Fitness+ workout streaming service, and a yr after that, the corporate added its newest “+” service, iCloud+.
But Apple wasn’t the primary tech or media firm to tack “+” onto a product. The earliest I can keep in mind is NBC Common’s and Information Corp’s “Hulu Plus” again in 2010, after which, a number of months earlier than Apple debuted AppleCare+ in 2011, Google got here out with its now-defunct social network Google+. The following main firm to embrace the “+” was Disney, with ESPN+ in 2018.
Nonetheless, the “+” actually went viral within the closing months of 2019. In September of that yr, BET launched BET+. Two months later, Apple TV+ and the streaming big Disney+ arrived. Within the years that adopted, we bought extra: Discovery+, Paramount+, AMC+, the short-lived CNN+, and extra.
However it was Apple, with its no fewer than 5 “+” merchandise, that was the clear cross-bearer—sorry, plus-bearer—for the techno-media industries.
Apple explains why it killed off the Apple TV “+”
Apple’s announcement to drop the “+” from Apple TV+ this week got here out of the blue. Nonetheless, shortly after the abrupt identify change, the corporate defined its reasoning.
In an look on The Town podcast (via 9to5Mac), Apple’s senior vice chairman of Companies, Eddy Cue, who oversees merchandise together with Apple Music, Apple Information, and the newly named Apple TV, spoke concerning the subtraction of the “+”. Cue revealed that the corporate initially named its streaming service “Apple TV+” just because Apple had used the “+” mark in its different subscription companies, equivalent to Apple Information+ and iCloud+.
“However we do this when we now have a free service after which there’s a paid model,” Cue acknowledged, noting the excellence between Apple TV and the corporate’s different paid companies.
“We stayed constant due to it,” Cue continued, admitting, “however all of us known as it Apple TV, and we stated, given the place we’re right now [with the service’s brand awareness], it’s a good time to [ditch the “+”], so let’s simply do it.”
Apple exhibits no indicators of totally abandoning the “+”
My colleague, Grace Snelling, spoke to a number of branding consultants the wake of the Apple TV service rebrand. All of them appear to agree that Apple made the right move in dropping the +.
As Snelling famous, within the early days of the streaming wars that started in 2019, the “+” addendum hooked up to a reputation served as a straightforward identifier, indicating that the product being bought was a streaming service. Nonetheless, now that the image has change into ubiquitous, it has misplaced a few of its branding energy. As Cue identified, the Apple TV streaming service model is now sturdy sufficient that the “+” is not wanted.
But whereas Apple has now subtracted the “+” from Apple TV, the corporate stays firmly on the “+” facet of the equation. 4 of its merchandise nonetheless carry the mathematical moniker: Apple Information+, iCloud+, Apple Health+, and AppleCare+. Right here, the + makes extra sense than it ever did on Apple TV, because it signifies further options. Cue’s feedback counsel that Apple has no intention of eliminating the “+” from the remainder of this product lineup.
Nonetheless, it’s price noting that the removing of “+” from Apple TV’s identify isn’t the primary time in 2025 that Apple has eradicated the image from certainly one of its merchandise. In September, Apple changed the iPhone Plus mannequin in its smartphone lineup with the new iPhone Air.
