Mikey Campbell
Apple is shaking up its Apple TV operating unit with the hire of Timothy D. Twerdahl, the former head of Amazon's Fire TV team who will fill a similar role in Cupertino, a report said Tuesday.
Citing sources familiar with Twerdahl's hire, Bloomberg reports the former Amazon executive joined Apple in February to head Apple TV product marketing, a position reporting to worldwide iOS marketing chief Greg Joswiak.
Twerdahl served as Amazon's general manager and director of Fire TV operations from 2013 to December of last year, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to that, he worked a brief stint on an Internet TV team at Netflix that ultimately became Roku. From 2009 to 2012, Twerdahl was VP of products at smartwatch startup WIMM Labs.
At Apple, Twerdahl is expected to take over product development while outgoing Apple TV product lead Pete Distad shifts focus to content deal efforts under SVP Eddy Cue. Apple has long been rumored to launch an over-the-top content bundle for its set-top box, but negotiations with content owners have in large part stymied those efforts.
Since the fourth-generation Apple TV launched in 2015, development of the platform has been slow going. Most recently, Apple took baby steps toward integrating a one-stop streaming solution with the debut of TV, an app that acts as a convenient hub for available content.
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25 Comments
What exactly does Eddy Cue do at Apple? Seems like everyone is take over his jobs little by little.
Apple TV team needs a fresh new leader. The new "TV app" is just OK (no wow-factor). I think shopping online via Apple TV can be a good experience. Apple TV needs to be the central hub of everything like in the movie "Minority Report". Apple TV has to beat Alexa before Amazon's next move. Apple TV seriously needs higher IQ AI. Right now Amazon has the upper hand in creating a combo of Alexa, Fire TV and Shopping experience all rolling into one set-top box device. We just wait and see.
AppleTV 4 -- its hardware, software, and ecosystem -- has to be one of the most mediocre product offerings from Apple. I have zero interest in it (I just bought another AppleTV 3).
Sad, considering Apple created the market for this product segment.