Two surprise hits stole the show at Sunday night’s Oscars—one with actual implications for the tech world.

As social media buzzed about the slap heard ‘round-the-world, Apple TV+ became the first streaming service to win the Oscars’ top prize, taking home the best picture award for the poignant coming-of-age story CODA.

The victory offers yet more evidence that the traditional walls between theatrical releases and streaming debuts are quickly crumbling, setting off a new era in the medium. But it also provides a moment to reflect on a question that has been lingering over Hollywood for nearly three years: What is the raison d’être for Apple TV+?

Launched in late 2019, Apple TV+ arrived to the streaming wars fashionably late. Skeptics fairly pointed out that Apple lacked any kind of content library or promising intellectual property. Industry insiders questioned whether Apple understood the production landscape.

Those concerns still bedevil Apple to some degree. Apple doesn’t report subscriber numbers, but available estimates suggest the service totals roughly 20 million to 25 million paid subscribers globally, well behind Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and HBO Max. It lacks a massive hit with franchise potential (like Disney’s Star Wars or Netflix’s Stranger Things ) and older, rewatchable shows (HBO Max’s Friends or Peacock’s The Office ).

And yet, Apple seems perfectly content with its current approach: methodically building a platform with really goodhighbrow movies and TV. With CODA, Apple earned the buzz that comes with winning three high-visibility Oscars (for picture, adapted screenplay, and supporting actor). On the silver screen, the winsomeTed Lasso earned seven Emmy awards in 2021, including best comedy. Several other Apple shows and movies drew rave reviews over the past few years: the insightful political documentary Boys State ; the dystopian workplace thriller Severance ; the charming workplace dramedy Acapulco ; and Joel Coen’s black-and-white Shakespearean take The Tragedy of Macbeth . Even series with the potential to skew traditional, such as the video game-office comedy Mythic Quest and the murder whodunit The Afterparty , take ambitious swings that defy convention.

These plaudits, of course, don’t add up to mainstream commercial success. As an old Teamster used to tell my dad on the loading dock: “You can’t eat that sonofabitch.” (Translation: titles and compliments don’t pay the bills.)

While Apple doesn’t report the financials of its streaming service, available media reports

suggest Apple TV+ has lost at least a couple billion dollars since launching. Apple can withstand such losses given its $95 billion in fiscal 2021 net income, largely thanks to iPhone sales and App Store revenues. For now, Apple CEO Tim Cook seems nonplussed about his streaming service’s bottom line.

“We don’t make purely financial decisions about the content,” Cook said in a January earnings call. “We try to find great content that has a reason for being. And we love shows like Ted Lasso and several of the other shows, as well, that have a reason for existing and may have a good message and may make people feel better at the end of it.”

Perhaps Cook and company are satisfied with their streaming service as a vanity project of sorts, using it as a way to build customer loyalty. The prestigious tenor of its shows and movies fits snugly within the company’s high-end brand.

Or maybe the folks in Cupertino are simply playing a long game, betting that their meticulously assembled platform will slowly overtake rivals struggling under the weight of shareholder-driven pressure for immediate profits (looking at you, Netflix ). Interestingly,The Information reported in September that Apple “sees its video entertainment service as a stand-alone business, not as a way to peddle more Apple hardware, according to a person familiar with the situation.” (Apple TV+ is part of the company’s service bundle, Apple One, which also includes fitness, games, and cloud storage products.)

True to form, the notoriously secret Apple isn’t divulging its ultimate ambitions for Apple TV+. Instead, the company’s actions over the next several years—corporate acquisitions, intellectual property purchases, investment in original content and marketing—will show Apple’s true appetite for streaming.