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Apple on Monday announced a raft of new services, including original TV programming and news and magazine offerings, at an event held at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California.

The Apple TV+ service, which will launch in the fall, already has a number of high-profile shows in its lineup:

Amazing Stories, a science fiction anthology produced by Steven Spielberg;
Morning Show, a series about a fictional TV morning show, with Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell;
See, set in a post-apocalypse world where everyone is blind following a holocaust, starring Aquaman's Jason Momoa;
Little America, an anthology about new American immigrants, produced by Kumail Nanjiani;
Little Voice, a series about a musician played by Sara Bereilles, who is a songwriter, author and actress in real life, produced by J.J. Abrams; and
Helpsters, a children's show that combines muppets and computer coding.

Oprah Winfrey appeared at the Apple announcement event and revealed that she has been working on two documentaries for TV+ -- one about the toll of sexual harassment, assault and violation in the workplace, with the working title, "Toxic Labor," and another that will be a multipart series about mental health.

She also said she intends to build "the biggest, the most vibrant, the most stimulating book club on the planet" on the platform.

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An Apple First

Along with Apple TV+, the company announced Apple TV Channels, an aggregation service for offerings from cable and satellite networks, as well as HBO, Hulu and others.

"Acting as an aggregator may be a way for Apple to hedge against its original content not doing well," said Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research, a consumer technology advisory firm in New York City.

Pricing for the new services was not announced.

In a departure from its business model, Apple is offering Channels and TV+ content on devices not made by the company.

"We know you're going to want this great experience on every screen in your home, so we're doing something we've never done before," Peter Stern, Apple vice president for cloud services, told the audience on Monday. "We're bringing the Apple TV app to smart TVs."

The app will be included on smart TVs made by Samsung, LG, Sony and Vizio, he said. In addition, it will be available on Roku and Amazon.

All the News Fit to Curate

Data collection is another hangup newspapers have with services like News+.

"When you turn your content over to this other platform, it gets most of the benefits that can be data mined for readers," Carroll explained. "That loss of control by the Times and the Post would also be a deterrent to joining News+, especially since the newspapers are already doing well selling digital subscriptions on their own."

All You Can Eat Gaming

Apple also announced a new credit card and a subscription game offering at its event on Monday.

The Apple Card lives in the iPhone, although you can get a physical card if you want one. The card, backed by MasterCard and Goldman Sachs, offers low interest rates, no late fees and daily cash-back rewards.

The card is an admission by Apple that adoption of its Pay product isn't growing as fast or as widely as hoped, observed Pund-IT's King.

"Tim Cook emphasized the point that Pay transactions have passed 10 billion annually. "While that seems like a big number, it's a tiny fraction of the total number of credit and debit card transactions conducted every year," he noted.

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