[HN Gopher] Apple's next big thing: A business model change
___________________________________________________________________
Apple's next big thing: A business model change
Author : tosh
Score : 105 points
Date : 2022-09-12 14:50 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mondaynote.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mondaynote.com)
| superdug wrote:
| Am I a realist on Apple Apologist?
|
| My primary credit card is an apple card, primary dev machine is a
| mbp, primary work machine iPad, phone iPhone, watch Apple, and I
| have air tags attached to my dogs and wallet.
|
| In this ecosystem, I can reference _ANY_ of my screens for
| necessary and current relevant information whether it be curated
| or automated without breaking a glance to whatever primary device
| the content came from.
|
| I can air drop to my screens and other people in my family
| whenever I want to share anything from any of my devices.
|
| It's a walled garden sure, but the toys in here are fantastic.
|
| I also have Apple One service because of the iCloud storage alone
| between devices and Apple Music/News is actually a nice service.
|
| So I guess I understand the "Oh no big company taking over more
| of my stuff that I think I should diversify because it seems like
| the right thing to do", but I guess I'm just too used to things
| just functioning well that I get over how "limited" I am.
| joshmanders wrote:
| I'm in the same boat, the walled garden is too good to ignore.
| oezi wrote:
| As a Android user who is lured by the appeal of the Apple Watch
| and the long update availability, I have recently found that
| the wall of the garden has gotten so high that it is harder to
| get in than thought:
|
| - there is no way to migrate messages from Signal messenger
| from Android to iOS
|
| - there is no way to synchronize Opera bookmarks from Android
| to iOS
|
| - SwiftKey keyboard can't sync my Android settings to iOS
|
| I might have to buy another Pixel I guess...
| count wrote:
| The first rule of the walled garden is you play with Tim
| apples toys only.
|
| Signal, Opera and SwiftKey are 'guest' species inside the
| garden.
|
| (no, really, the apple experience is BY FAR better when you
| just use apple's stuff).
| solarkraft wrote:
| ... and that's where antitrust should come in at some
| point. I like that Apple stuff works so well. I don't like
| that they very intentionally cripple other vendors.
| jmathai wrote:
| It may seem intentional. I think that Apple only cares
| about integrating Apple products. This means they launch
| features which competitors cannot participate in.
|
| Can you blame them? Enabling third parties to act as 1st
| class citizens means big sacrifices in UX.
|
| Apple believes that great UX is more important than
| interoperability. Seems like there's a large enough
| market that agrees for them to meet their business goals
| - because at the end of the day that's what all of this
| is about.
| AnonHP wrote:
| > there is no way to migrate messages from Signal messenger
| from Android to iOS
|
| Talking only about iOS and Signal here. What you describe is
| entirely Signal's decision not to allow backups and restores
| (on iOS Signal made an explicit decision not to allow any
| sort of backup and restore). Signal only allows transfer of
| chats from one iOS device to another when both devices are in
| close proximity. If Signal wanted to, it could've asked the
| user to enter a strong password, use that to encrypt backups
| and store them anywhere (iCloud or Dropbox or on a Mac/PC).
|
| Many apps provide backup and restore. Heck, WhatsApp, which
| uses the Signal protocol, recently implemented cross platform
| backup and restore for chats. So it's not technology that's
| stopping anyone. Signal is just adamant on not doing it
| because security.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| Thats is how they get you eventually, once all alternatives
| have vanished.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I understand airtagging a dog, but how do you fit one in your
| wallet? Are you worried about misplacing it in your home,
| leaving it behind somewhere else, or theft? I like airtags and
| use them myself, but never considered using it with a wallet.
| CharlesW wrote:
| In my case, first I used https://www.amazon.com/TagVault-
| Standard-Flexible-Pending-El..., and now I use
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0975HFFMM/.
|
| It has alerted me to the wallet being left behind, and a few
| times I've used the AirTag to find the wallet in the house.
|
| The big downside to AirTags right now is missing family
| support. We hid AirTags on the kids' bikes, but only my wife
| can see them.
| trh0awayman wrote:
| You hide tracking devices on your children and you think
| the big downside is that Apple doesn't support that?
|
| There's zero intersection between people who should be
| tracked and people who are able to ride bikes.
| CharlesW wrote:
| * In fact, the children suggested AirTags -- ebikes are
| expensive. Their only _hidden_ tracking devices are their
| "LoJack&Jill"-brand subdermal cellular GPS implants for
| kids, installed while they were under heavy sedation.
|
| * They had phones^H^H^H^H^H tracking devices already,
| so...
| trh0awayman wrote:
| My bad, I misinterpreted your comment.
| yurishimo wrote:
| I put an AirTag inside the little pouch/sleeve on the inside
| of my wallet (behind the cards).
|
| It was a little awkward at first to get used to my wallet not
| sitting as flat anymore but I got over it. Luckily, I'm not a
| person who stores months worth of receipts and 20 cards in my
| wallet like my father, so there's plenty of space.
|
| It's definitely come in handy a few times!
| dwaite wrote:
| There are third party solutions too, like
| https://chipolo.net/en-us/products/chipolo-card-spot
| matt-attack wrote:
| See the link elsewhere for Chipolo. It's killer. I've used it
| so many times now to find my lost wallet that I'd gladly pay
| twice the cost.
|
| I was recently existing an airplane, and realized I didn't
| have my wallet in my pocket. Folks were packing up behind me,
| and I was getting pressure from my family to start existing
| down the aisle. I wasn't sure if the wallet was somewhere in
| my carryon or on the floor of the plane. I was scrambling
| checking pockets of various carry on bags, etc. The I
| remembered I could ping it. Within seconds, I could hear the
| chirp and very quickly found it.
|
| Highly recommend!
| pathartl wrote:
| I use Tile's Slim tracker. It has the footprint of two credit
| cards. Sucks the battery is not replaceable, but it's helped
| more often than I can count.
| superdug wrote:
| It's just a wallet with a bubble on the outside shell that
| holds the air-tag in it ... doesn't stick out too far and
| fits fine in my pocket
| anotherOneSound wrote:
| > The numbers aren't directly disclosed but reliable sources
| estimate tens of billions of dollars in net revenue
|
| apple is the source[1] no estimating required. all publicly
| traded companies, required by law. some math is required, many
| videos on youtube detailing the process. it can be automated,
| JSON is available. they are called balance sheets, M.shkreli
| actually has a video series going through these
| [1]https://sec.report/CIK/0000320193
|
| look for 10-Q, 10-K; quarterly, annual
| [deleted]
| traceroute66 wrote:
| Honestly, for anyone who watches Apple close enough, this isn't
| news.
|
| Its clear Apple are heading down the disruptive disintermediation
| route.
|
| Look at the Air Tag. Effectively killing off competitors by
| making use of the global network of Apple devices.
|
| Look at their recent BNPL (buy now, pay later) announcement for
| example. Managing the whole caboodle, including the finance
| itself, entirely internally.
|
| Or look at the fact they _still_ haven 't rolled out Apple card
| internationally. My uninformed guess is that it is more to do
| with "something's brewing" rather than the US cards not working.
|
| Their recent satphone announcement. Clearly that's just the
| start. I think most people are guessing the endgame will be
| carrier disintermediation. And frankly, given how shit most cell
| carriers are, I can't wait for Apple to come along and give the
| incumbents a run for their money.
| packetlost wrote:
| Apple is really uniquely positions to just decide to make a
| (crypto)currency. Push the app to every iPhone, give everyone
| with an Apple device X amount, and strong support for business
| + peer-to-peer transactions and you have the best easiest path
| to mass adoption possible.
| dehrmann wrote:
| You're falling for the standard crypto trap of being a
| solution in search of a problem. The user experience you're
| describing is Venmo. Making it use CookCoin instead of USD
| doesn't make it easier to build, and it isn't really a
| selling point.
| packetlost wrote:
| What I'm describing is Venmo + Square. Neither of those 2
| things completely implement what I'm describing on their
| own. Regardless, I didn't say that it had to be crypto. My
| entire point was they have a the easiest path of any
| company to critical mass adoption of a service because they
| directly control the software of half the phones in the US.
| CharlesW wrote:
| How is what you want different than Apple Cash?
| lupire wrote:
| Watching close enough?
|
| This has been Appple's business model and advertising for
| _decades_ : your digital lifestyle hardware and software
| solution.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Their new weather forecasting service is also intriguing. They
| will soon have millions of thermometer-equipped Apple Watches
| in the world (IIRC the Series 8 and AWU will have these),
| allowing them to create an incredibly detailed mapping of
| temperatures around the world (or at least places where people
| can afford expensive watches...).
| gumby wrote:
| Those watches measure the temperature at the underside of the
| device, i.e. the temperature of the _wearer_ not the _air_.
| And that data they claim stays on your phone, not in their
| cloud.
| anotherOneSound wrote:
| why would THEY pay to store YOUR biometric data when YOU
| could store it for THEM!
| dpicco wrote:
| jamie_ca wrote:
| They called out in the presentation that it's also got an
| ambient temperature sensor just underneath the display, to
| help calibrate body-temp vs room-temp for the overnight
| "difference from baseline" temperature measurements.
|
| Agreed on the local-storage-for-health-data bit, but I'm
| sure they could argue that the ambient sensor isn't
| privacy-relevant.
| aaomidi wrote:
| It's also very easily anonymizable
| nicce wrote:
| They claimed that data is encrypted on device and Apple
| never sees it.
| cookingrobot wrote:
| The temperature inside a winter coat though, not outside
| in the freezing air right?
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The barometers combined with GPS and temp is an incredibly
| powerful sensor network.
|
| Its a shame that it is locked up inside of apple.
| tash9 wrote:
| It's not that much better than the normal network of AMS
| sensors. For one, it doesn't give you wind speeds at
| various levels (critical for predicting weather).
|
| Second, it doesn't give you any additional readings over
| oceans, which is where the data is lacking in the current
| network of data.
|
| It does give you more robust surface temperature readings
| in cloudy areas but that doesn't really help you predict
| the weather significantly better.
|
| Source: degree in atmospheric sciences
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I glide quite a bit, so I'm VERY interested in low level
| micro climate.
|
| Is there a really no use in having higher resolution for
| modeling the boundary layer?
|
| It seems like having a mountain covered in tiny
| barometric and temp sensors could at least validate a lot
| of what we think we know about the boundary layer.
|
| I personally would love to be able to see what the
| temperature at the bottom and top of a given topographic
| feature is, as well as how atmospheric pressure is
| deviating from pure altitude differences.
|
| I build instruments for gliders so I know that the
| sensors in our phones are capable of incredibly fine
| resolution. Is there really no use for billions of high
| resolution data points in climate science?
| labster wrote:
| Yeah, but maybe Apple will take all of this private data,
| and then build their own GCM, and solve data assimilation
| for their new model ... yeah right.
|
| Let's pretend that data from user portable devices isn't
| garbage (it is): then what do you even do with it? In
| cities you'll have thousands of readings per voxel none
| of which are more valuable. Then you have to clean your
| data, excluding data from inside or vehicles or hot
| pavement or heated patios and so on. Apple won't go to
| the expense of running their own GCM, and I doubt even
| mesoscale models. All I could see is some sort of
| correlative AI, doing microscale adjustments to
| government sponsored models. So all of this work, and
| maybe you get one degree better at forecasts and a bit of
| nowcasting. And because it isn't physics-based, you might
| occasionally get something very wrong happening.
|
| The oceans are a data hole (technical term, really) as
| you mentioned, but the real missing data is above the
| surface. It's too bad about Project Loon, because that
| would have been much more helpful to forecasting than a
| million monkeys wearing watches.
| b3morales wrote:
| Not so sure about this. There's going to be a ton of noise in
| this data from an outsider POV. At an absolute minimum, for
| this to be usable as _weather_ data they will have to
| determine when it 's measuring the actual outside weather, as
| opposed to the indoor, or in-car/-bus/-train temperature.
| com2kid wrote:
| > At an absolute minimum, for this to be usable as weather
| data they will have to determine when it's measuring the
| actual outside weather,
|
| Does Apple Watch have a light sensor for an auto dimming
| display? If so, that can be used as a proxy for
| indoor/outdoor. It isn't great, shade and such. Throw
| barometer in there, and you can do a decent job.
|
| Microsoft Band had a UV sensor, so we were able to get
| pretty accurate detection of indoor/outdoor when combined
| with all the other sensors, at least during the day. I'm
| sad UV sensors didn't take off on smart watches in general,
| it is a super useful sensor to have, but they are rather
| large and even the lens material to go over them is
| different than what is otherwise required for a wearable.
| labcomputer wrote:
| I don't see this working effectively. A UV sensor is
| great during daytime, but what about at night?
|
| Then, you still have to account for the fact that your
| thermometer is located right next to a variable ~100W
| heater, vs. normal weather stations that are normally
| located away from heat sources. Also, the thermometer and
| heater are occasionally placed inside a tight-fitting
| insulated container.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Good point! During times when AC or heat is running a lot,
| there might be a bimodal distribution of reported
| temperatures. I wonder if they could use the ambient light
| sensor to determine if the person is inside or outside, or
| if they could use location data to figure out that 'this
| Apple Watch is in the middle of a large field, so he must
| be outside'. Then they could just ignore other data in that
| microclimate area, and create a weather mapping based on
| watches located in known open areas.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > I wonder if they could use the ambient light sensor to
| determine if the person is inside or outside
|
| Maybe they are they next to a window or under a sky
| light.
|
| > or if they could use location data to figure out that
| 'this Apple Watch is in the middle of a large field, so
| he must be outside'.
|
| Could be in a tent or other temporary structure.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Please tell me it is called "Genysis"!
| mwint wrote:
| Aren't those thermometers pointing the wrong way (towards the
| wrist)?
| [deleted]
| ryeguy_24 wrote:
| I would bet that the internal sensor is used in a model
| with the skin sensor to remove the effects of the internal
| temperature of the watch and get a more accurate skin temp
| reading.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| No, they have two thermometers, one for ambient temperature
| and one for body temp.
| gnicholas wrote:
| The new Apple Watches will actually have two thermometers,
| one facing inward and one facing outwards.
| frankthedog wrote:
| There are two, one inward and one outward facing. This was
| highlighted when talking about taking water temp readings
| when swimming or diving.
| anamexis wrote:
| Wouldn't they only be able to make a detailed mapping of the
| temperatures of people's wrists?
| gnicholas wrote:
| It would be hilarious: the temperature worldwide is roughly
| 98.6deg F, except in NYC where the marathon is being run
| and it is somewhat warmer. /s
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > except in NYC
|
| Or, ahem.... "cold winter evenings". ;-)
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > Wouldn't they only be able to make a detailed mapping of
| the temperatures of people's wrists?
|
| Unless you're sick, most people's body temperature is
| within a fairly tight range.
|
| So they could compensate for that ...
| anamexis wrote:
| Is there any correlation between your body temperature
| and the outdoor temperature?
| egman_ekki wrote:
| Depends on if you're a lizard or a bird :)
| [deleted]
| lupire wrote:
| Everything old is new again: PressureNET
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PressureNET
| robszumski wrote:
| I'm not sure what happened but Dark Sky went from awesome to
| awful in recent months after the Apple acquisition. Is it
| just me? Going from "no rain all day" to actively raining
| with a huge storm 2 hours later. The app does update with
| this info, but very close to the actual storm.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| This has been happening across nearly every weather source
| I've been using. My hypothesis is either:
|
| * Climate change is causing problems with forecasting
| models
|
| * Forecasting models changed, which has introduce
| unexpected edge cases
| Applejinx wrote:
| The former is going to be literally true on the grounds
| that climate change is increasing chaos in the system,
| hence unpredictability increases strikingly.
|
| I'm not sure this happens on the time scale of 'app got
| acquired', though. It's absolutely going to increase year
| by year, and if you'd got used to how it was three years
| ago and didn't notice some of the outlier events, you
| might be shocked at the new normal.
|
| Climate change absolutely will cause problems with any
| conceivable forecasting model because you can't
| encapsulate chaos, only map its expected potential
| outcomes: and the nasty truth is that energy is fed into
| the system, those potential outcomes blow up
| exponentially. Not even slightly linear. So that's what
| we're seeing.
| bombcar wrote:
| I've noticed that the "rain starting in your area" alerts
| are close to correct - and spot-on for the local airport.
|
| So I'd not be surprised if they somehow switched their
| data source to be not as granular as it once was.
| msmith wrote:
| This study claims that there was a decrease in weather
| prediction accuracy caused by the reduction in commercial
| flights due to Covid. Maybe there are still some
| lingering effects from that?
|
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/20071710102
| 6.h...
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Wow! This is extremely interesting!
|
| While this is confirmation bias, this reflects almost
| identically with the timeframe in which the forecasts
| became significantly worse in my area.
| verisimilitude wrote:
| I too have noticed this. I believe the Dark Sky website and
| app will continue to become less accurate... I think the
| explanation is (somebody who knows more please correct me):
| Dark Sky's technology was acquired by Apple and integrated
| into the Apple Weather built-in app... and the decision was
| made that any improvements/updates/maintenance on the Dark
| Sky service itself are accessible exclusively through that
| Apple Weather app now. As a user of the Dark Sky website, I
| feel sad.
| Larrikin wrote:
| As an Android user, it used to be a fun party trick at the
| bar, to show everyone the alert on my phone from dark sky
| that it was going to start raining in X minutes or that it
| was going to stop raining in Y minutes and then everyone
| checking later and it being basically down to the second
| accurate.
|
| As a former paid user of Dark Sky that lost that
| information when Apple bought them I feel no sympathy for
| iOS users that Dark Sky has gone to crap
|
| I am sad such an amazing tool for the world was destroyed
| by a corporation trying to deprive another corporation so
| they could maybe make a little more money.
| awinder wrote:
| The integration of dark sky was definitely rocky but
| apple is running dark sky as a data api now, this android
| app is apparently using it as it's weather data source
| now:
|
| https://www.boondogglelabs.com/projects/forecaster.html
| mc32 wrote:
| How does the watch differentiate ambient temp from wearer's
| temp?
| lupire wrote:
| Calibration and ML. Like an infrared forehead thermometer.
| mc32 wrote:
| Maybe, but the watch can be enclosed up a sleeve, in a
| car, in an office, house, direct sunlight, in the
| shade... Good if it takes all that into account.
| anotherOneSound wrote:
| there is a lot of money [1] in harvesting location data from
| weather apps. apple wants that revenue
| [1]https://themarkup.org/privacy/2021/09/30/theres-a-
| multibilli...
| arcticbull wrote:
| > Look at their recent BNPL (buy now, pay later) announcement
| for example. Managing the whole caboodle, including the finance
| itself, entirely internally.
|
| For what it's worth I think BNPL is simply an attempt by Apple
| to get some yield on their insane cash pile. Last year they had
| over $0.2T on hand. [1] They're making it faster than they seem
| to be able to return it to shareholders.
|
| BNPL is a pretty bad business - margins are low, buyers are
| generally not qualified in the same way as other lending,
| ticket sizes are low, and collections aren't worth it (you
| really gonna repossess my $20 gently-used socks?). However, if
| Apple has a better way to qualify the customers (a big if)...
|
| They can take ~3-4% of the transaction, net like 0.5% for a 6
| week loan, which is like a 4.5% APR. Their margins may be
| better than peers since they can use their own cash instead of
| raising debt. Maybe 6-7% APR. It's also short-term debt that
| turns over fast so it's highly liquid.
|
| My wholly uninformed opinion is that this is more of a cash
| management product that happens to be built on their data for
| Apple than a data product per se. After all you can't just roll
| up at BofA with a $0.2T check and get that kind of APR.
|
| [1] https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-
| funds/sectors/sp500-every...
| pwinnski wrote:
| > They can take ~3-4% of the transaction, net like 0.5% for a
| 6 week loan, which is like a 4.5% APR. Their margins may be
| better than peers since they can use their own cash instead
| of raising debt. Maybe 6-7% APR. It's also short-term debt
| that turns over fast so it's highly liquid.
|
| Apple has said they'll be charging zero interest and zero
| fees for this service, including zero late fees, so where the
| yield will be coming from is unclear. That said, I confess
| that I don't have a deep understanding of the BNPL market.
| whatshisface wrote:
| If they don't collect from buyers, they can collect from
| sellers. If you look back to when credit cards were new,
| you had them making shops agree not to charge credit card
| users more, despite the fees. That put cash users at a
| newfound disadvantage, and shops had to put up with it
| because card users were numerous enough.
| arcticbull wrote:
| That's exactly right. BNPLs generally charge more than
| credit card acquirers do, something in the 3-4% range,
| but the breakdown of these numbers tend to be closely
| guarded and that reflects outside estimates. One has to
| imagine Apple thinks they can command a premium here too.
|
| With respect to cards: cards have a number of advantages
| for both merchants and customers. Cash is not free to
| handle and carries risk (theft, etc) and it's really
| slow. Credit card buyers tend to have larger average
| ticket sizes (20% larger was the last one I saw) and card
| buyers have more confidence buying from smaller shops
| knowing that they can always charge back the merchant if
| something goes terribly wrong. In a real way chargebacks
| are a big part of how we got e-commerce.
|
| Merchant agreements generally precluded credit
| _surcharges_ but they always allowed cash _discounts_.
| This is commonly seen at US gas stations to this day.
| They also prohibited credit card minimum purchase
| amounts. To my knowledge both of these are no longer
| true.
|
| Shops aren't _putting up_ with cards so much as embracing
| them because that 's how their customers want to pay, and
| they don't want to miss out on a sale.
| convolvatron wrote:
| why do you call it disintermediation? apple is still the big
| intermediate here
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > why do you call it disintermediation?
|
| Because Apple want to control the quality of the user
| experience.
|
| Right now Apple Hardware and Apple Software are tightly
| interlinked. Apple can do things in software because they
| design 100% of the hardware, and vice-versa.
|
| There's a lot of stuff Apple do in terms of quality of
| experience that's only possible because of that tight
| integration. Stuff that would be impossible to do with
| generic hardware and generic software.
|
| But equally Apple know that if you buy an iPhone, you are
| dependent on a carrier for service. Like the rest of the
| world, it has probably not escaped Apple's attention that the
| quality of service you get from the carriers is becoming
| rapidly worse by the day. As a result, an Apple user's poor
| experience with an iPhone might have nothing to do with Apple
| but everything to do with the carrier.
|
| Having carrier level integration with iPhone could also open
| up further user experience improvements (e.g. maybe they
| could do clever stuff at carrier level to help preserve
| battery).
| kennend3 wrote:
| > Because Apple want to control the quality of the user
| experience.
|
| you nailed it.. they are concerned about the "quality of
| the user experience" and not the billions of dollars at
| stake?
|
| Is this why Apple artificially limits which machines can be
| updated to MacOS as well, to ensure the quality of the user
| experience and not to drive sales?
| turndown wrote:
| As I sit here on an iPad Pro that refused to correctly
| highlight and copy a piece of your post so I could directly
| reply to it, I just want you to know that nobody views the
| whole "Apple can do unique things because they own the
| hardware/software stack" in a positive light. Apple is
| _very bad_ at software and I will always stand by that...
| it is very sad that such nice pieces of hardware are
| married to some of the worst software.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Like the rest of the world, it has probably not escaped
| Apple's attention that the quality of service you get from
| the carriers is becoming rapidly worse by the day.
|
| In my experience, mobile connectivity just keeps getting
| better and better. I have lived on both US coasts and
| traveled to multiple developing countries, and even in
| places like Zimbabwe I had pretty great connectivity
| considering where I was.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > In my experience, mobile connectivity just keeps
| getting better and better.
|
| To clarify ....
|
| When I spoke of "quality of service" above, I didn't mean
| technical service (although for some carriers it can be a
| factor), I meant customer service.
|
| I think you'll struggle to find anyone who will say their
| carrier's customer service has improved in recent years.
| Carrier customer service, irrespective of what country
| you live in, is generally globally accepted to only be in
| the "awful to non-existent" range.
| r00fus wrote:
| My experience with T-mobile US is one of the things I'll
| rarely gush over. They are hands-down the best customer
| service I've ever gotten from a carrier.
|
| Even with several friends/family on our 10-line plan (to
| share costs) - it's been a breeze to maintain.
| efaref wrote:
| The real word here is "monopolisation".
| arcticbull wrote:
| A monopoly would require they control the entire market for
| a given product or service. Apple isn't a monopoly in any
| area - but they are a strong competitor in many areas.
| They're more like a western take on a chaebol [1] in my
| opinion.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol
| lr1970 wrote:
| > Apple isn't a monopoly in any area - but they are a
| strong competitor in many areas.
|
| New term: "Vertical Monopoly"
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Intermediate to what? They own the software, hardware, and
| are moving toward owning the network and billing
| relationship.. Intermediate between consumers and app
| builders maybe, but as they build more features into their
| own devices (e.g. Apple Maps), even those relationships are
| being brought into the ecosystem.
| Hamcha wrote:
| Competition is great, especially when it breaks oligopolies, I
| just hope stuff like the Digital Markets Act will manage to
| stop them from abusing their positions to make their solution a
| monopoly
| guywithahat wrote:
| Kind of like how the only thing net neutrality did was
| prevent t-mobile from creating Netflix unlimited fast lanes?
| Or how all those bills states signed into law to encourage
| high speed networks not only didn't create high speed
| networks, but legally preventing other companies from
| competing?
|
| The more this gets legislated the harder it will be for
| someone to enter the market later on, Apple (among other tech
| giants) aren't going to sit back while you write the laws,
| it'll be the other way around.
| dsr_ wrote:
| "the only thing {the threat of} net neutrality"
|
| Note that net neutrality has never been passed as a Federal
| regulation.
| SnowingXIV wrote:
| This would be an absolute dream, dealing with carriers has been
| hell since the beginning. I often do upgrade my phone, but it's
| been a huge hassle. Sometimes the promos don't work well and
| they basically wrap you into a contract anyways. I'm honestly
| just going to pay extra cash and upgrade directly through Apple
| even though the carrier offers a bigger credit.
|
| If I could cut them out all together and buy an iPhone and cell
| service with Apple. Done.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > dealing with carriers has been hell since the beginning.
|
| Are you American by any chance ?
|
| This has been solves in other places through regulations
| CodeSgt wrote:
| No it hasn't. There wasn't a specific grevience listed so
| you really dont know if European regulations have solved it
| or not. I'm an American but have spent years living in
| Europe and dealing with carriers there has its own
| frustrations.
|
| These sorts of comments are common but always strike me as
| having been made by someone with little to no real world
| experience on the specific issue being discussed.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > you really dont know if European regulations have
| solved it or not
|
| Ask anybody who has lived in the UK long enough about
| Vodafone.
|
| The story normally goes something like this:
| - 90s = Dogs bollocks, nobody came close - 00s =
| Started to smell a bit, but still the most robust
| technical service - early 10s = Really starting
| to rest on their laurels now - late 10s - today =
| Shit, godawful shit.
| Melatonic wrote:
| We are going to see satphone use on most handsets I think
| fairly soon (starting with low badwith options). The idea of
| Apple operating their own carrier is interesting but also sort
| of terrifying - they are already all about keeping everything
| in their own ecosystem and making interoperability with other
| brands a huge PIA - are we going to see the day when Apple
| devices intentionally barely function with other carriers /
| brands / OS?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > And frankly, given how shit most cell carriers are, I can't
| wait for Apple to come along and give the incumbents a run for
| their money.
|
| Why would the most profitable company in the world want to get
| into one of the worst businesses in the world?
|
| It's absurdly capital intensive.
|
| Sure, Apple has an abundance of capital, but their shareholders
| are unlikely to approve this over ever more share buybacks...
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Loss leader, maybe. Traditionally not Apple's style, but if
| they are indeed changing up their business model, then who
| knows.
| twoodfin wrote:
| So is semiconductor fabrication, and Apple has been
| ridiculously successful as a middle-man there in both
| directions: Customers get the most advanced chips available
| at consumer prices. TSMC gets whatever capital they need,
| either advanced or in guaranteed order contracts.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > one of the worst businesses in the world
|
| But is mobile telecoms really one of the worst businesses in
| the world ?
|
| I would argue that its one of the worst executed businesses
| in the world, but not the worst business.
|
| Travel and hospitality would likely be fairer examples of
| "worst businesses", perhaps especially the airline business.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| People say this because accountants don't like capital
| spending.
|
| Carriers have 50-60% gross margins. They are critical
| enough to get special tax treatments to deal with the
| capital expenses. If the goal is to make money, what would
| be the "best" business? Drug cartel?
| specialist wrote:
| Having done some contracting work for telecoms (seen how
| some of the sausage is made)...
|
| My hunch is they print pallets of cash, then use some
| large fraction for bonfires.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Who cares about gross margin? EBITDA, Free Cash-flow, and
| Net Margin are what people care about - especially for a
| utility...
|
| What are good businesses?
|
| Apple... Saudi Aramco... Google... AWS...
| anotherOneSound wrote:
| nobody actually cares about margin. you can be entirely
| unprofitable so long as you show growth quarter after
| quarter. amazons margins are razor thin if not negative.
| tesla wasn't profitable at all until EV legislation, and
| still struggles to be so
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Apple's cell service network is pretty much tapped out at
| the total active iPhone MAUs...
|
| Sure, Apple's theoretical cell subscribers could grow a
| lot - but no one is going to care...
|
| It would be such a small part of the profits compared to
| hardware sales and other services - with a MASSIVE
| capital cost - probably much higher than phone R&D.
|
| It would be less capital intensive and possibly more
| profitable for Apple to manufacture their own phones than
| start their own carrier business... And that's a horrible
| idea, too...
|
| The idea of starting your own carrier business that isn't
| an MVNe is almost absurd.
|
| Why doesn't Tesla build their own roads while we're at
| it?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| They thought about it! Remember the boring company?
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > Carriers have 50-60% gross margins
|
| Indeed. Many people don't realise how amazingly robust
| margins have remained.
|
| A lot of it is because its such a closed shop which is
| why they can get away with many things.
| abudabi123 wrote:
| The Apple Watch and Augmented Reality facemask for extreme sports
| wayfinding and monitoring other complications in deep dark cave
| dive rescue mission are challenging usecases for marketing in the
| style of Rolex.
| 8jef wrote:
| Apple never invented anything. They always took something that
| already was nichely popular (Nokia's smartphones, Creative's MP3
| players, PCs), then improved upon those things just enough to
| make them palatable to the masses, logo included. It's not a
| mystery why they've recently invested heavily in AR and electric
| transportation: these are two newish hardware things that still
| badly need to be improved upon. Unfortunately, all the money in
| the world cannot replace Steve Job's balls, wild flair and
| decisiveness. Sadly, lawyers and MBAs have taken over Apple since
| he departed. Other products and things newly invented are just
| not quite niche enough to mandate an Apple R&D budget. At any
| rate, Apple's still massively selling to post modern urban
| peasants, so fear not, they'll be around until the rise of the
| next great ballsy marketer.
| gigel82 wrote:
| The next big thing for Apple (which they've actually been working
| on for a while) is ads. They plan on taking down Google and
| Facebook in one fell swoop. They are the most heinous,
| disingenuous, evil empire ever.
|
| I always get downvoted when making this comment, I just hope that
| the "blind believers" of today will remember their mistake a few
| years down the line when the "privacy" house of cards comes
| tumbling down.
| pwinnski wrote:
| You might get downvoted because your comment is evidence-free,
| filled with hyperbolic value judgments, and runs counter to
| general observation.
|
| It is difficult to imagine what Apple could do to top Google,
| Facebook, or even Microsoft on a list of evil empires, ever.
| klelatti wrote:
| Apple has never been a 'pure' hardware builder. It's always been
| a systems integrator: hardware, software on your device, closely
| integrating open source in some cases (Unix / Webkit) then moving
| to link other devices (iTunes).
|
| It's just extending that integration more widely into the cloud
| and other services. In some ways its surprising they haven't done
| more of it already.
| intrasight wrote:
| > The unacknowledged Apple Car (the "Titan" project), Augmented
| Reality (AR) devices, and forays into the healthcare market, none
| of which is a feasible candidate
|
| So wrong. PDAs were replaced by smartphones. Smartphones will be
| replaced by AR glasses. It is the next big thing hardware-wise.
| Many new services will be built upon glasses and watches, and
| many will be health related. You'll still buy a phone - it'll
| have the battery and the supercomputer powering the other two. I
| doubt that it will even have a display.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| While I'm sure AR glasses are coming and will be popular, the
| notion that they'll be so popular that smart phones won't even
| have screens is particularly bold.
|
| Smartphones didn't replace PDAs, most people didn't have a PDA
| to replace. Smart phones replaced whole categories of devices
| and bundled them into one: cameras, camera phones, PDAs, MP3
| players, watches, timers, alarm clocks etc.
|
| People keep looking for "the next big thing" and it just isn't
| coming. The smartphone was a singular event in the history of
| computing and it wont be replicated within our lifetimes. At
| most it will be unbundled again, unevenly (eg, smart watches,
| and glasses)
| dehrmann wrote:
| There was definitely a long-term trend of computer shrinking.
| Room->closet->desk->lap->pocket, but I agree that future
| interaction models look completely different, and there isn't
| an obvious next step.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| I agree, from the perspective of what industry creates, but
| keep in mind that the effect on the consumer space varied
| throughout that history significantly. There was no
| consumer room sized computer.
|
| Realistically I think the future is already here with a
| proliferation of specialized mobile devices. This is why
| Apple took away the headphone jack: so they could sell
| AirPods. OP was right in the sense that glasses will be
| coming into this model, I just differ as to how central
| they'll be to the future computing environment.
|
| I'm hoping that there will be a bit of a backlash to the
| Saasification of consumer tech, with its implications on
| privacy/control. Though I have to say I'm not very
| optimistic.
| intrasight wrote:
| "Saasification" is just one aspect of this risk. The
| broader category of risk, and one that is harder to
| ameliorate, is that consumer technology is complex to the
| degree of approaching - from the user's perspective -
| magic. Who else besides Apple and a couple of other
| companies can create this magic technology? The answer, I
| believe, is "none". Apple fully understands this. They
| will talk up "privacy" etc. to distract us from the fact
| that they may become a monopoly provider of magic. I use
| Apple products and I like those products and in fact I am
| invested in the company (is there a better moat than
| magic?). But from a long-term perspective, I see a lot of
| risk here.
| intrasight wrote:
| > won't even have screens is particularly bold
|
| I know that. But I've seen this tech evolve now for 40 years,
| and I am confident that that's where it's headed.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| My response isn't based on the tech itself, it's based off
| of society/culture/consumer behavior.
|
| I'm skeptical that glasses will become ubiquitous from a
| consumer purchasing standpoint.
| intrasight wrote:
| I think they'll be sold on the compelling features and
| services.
| mojuba wrote:
| > People keep looking for "the next big thing" and it just
| isn't coming.
|
| Or... what if the next big thing is the phone becomes _the_
| computer, i.e. there will be no laptops? Imagine a device
| that you can connect to some peripherals including a monitor
| (possibly with its own GPU), then you undock it, put it in
| your pocket and move on to the next place - your home or your
| work with peripherals ready to use.
|
| Today it seems impossible or hard to build but I think the
| bottleneck here is not even the hardware as much as it's
| software. But that's a long conversation. Just an idea (kind
| of an obvious one) I wanted to share.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Convergence is something that's been talked about for a
| long time, but I don't see it being something the large
| consumer companies want to actually drive forward.
|
| Looking at the direction of Apple/Microsoft/Google, they'd
| much rather sell you more devices and keep your data synced
| in cloud services than let you own in all in one unit
| locally, so that'll probably be the main direction we go
| in.
|
| The main exception will be in the indie/enthusiast/hacker
| space with devices like the pine phone/purism units.
| ccouzens wrote:
| > Imagine a device that you can connect to some peripherals
| including a monitor (possibly with its own GPU), then you
| undock it, put it in your pocket and move on to the next
| place - your home or your work with peripherals ready to
| use.
|
| You can do that with Dex on the higher end Samsung phones.
|
| My brief review of it is close, but lacking some finess
| with the browsers compared to other desktop operating
| systems.
| dehrmann wrote:
| The problem you'll run into with this is a mobile CPU is
| $150 (at most), and the display panel and GPU will each
| cost more than a dedicated CPU. What you really want is a
| cross-platform roaming profile, but don't hold your breath
| for that.
| int_19h wrote:
| This kind of thing has been around for a while, e.g.
| https://nexdock.com/ these days, or
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G 10 years
| ago.
| EricE wrote:
| AR Glasses? Pshaw - behold the Eye Phone:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctiSz7CUIgY
| stragio wrote:
| Agree to this. Aan Apple fan acquaintance of mine recently said
| he might put away his phone because he could achieve everything
| with his watch and earpods and wanted to increase his
| concentration. He said he'd do his WhatsApp with voice messages
| and also call like that. He was fine with no display.
| jliptzin wrote:
| I wish huge companies like Apple would just be happy with being
| #1 in their category, collecting their enormous profits and
| paying out dividends to shareholders, instead of feeling the need
| to take over the world.
| naet wrote:
| I think some of this will be the eventual undoing of some large
| companies. Take for example facebook; it early on came into a
| huge market dominance as a relatively simple social media site.
| Now it's hugely overblown with algorithms trying to wring a
| couple extra ad dollars out of existing users, at the cost of
| making the whole platform (imo) a lot worse, and this may be
| speculation but I think we've reached peak Meta and they will
| start to lose massive amounts of users and be replaced in the
| same way they replaced Myspace.
| jliptzin wrote:
| I agree. I wish myspace were still around, it was so much
| more fun than facebook. Everyone having their own unique
| profiles infinitely customizable is something I miss.
| Facebook came around and replaced everyone's cool, unique
| clothes at the party with boring uniforms.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| unfortunately the ceo's only job is to increase share price and
| they can only do that with unlimited growth.
| shapefrog wrote:
| So no itunes, no ipod, no iphones, no apps, no watch, no
| airpods, no M1 chips, nada...
| jliptzin wrote:
| Those are all improvements to their main product lines. I'm
| talking about apple car or credit cards or whatever else
| they're going to do. If people at apple want to build a car
| they should form a new company to do it. I don't want my
| phone, computer, car, and credit card all issued by the same
| company.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Ads are the next big thing for Apple. You can see it in their job
| postings and their attempts at increasing ad real estate across
| their products.
| arkitaip wrote:
| I hope they go down that route and get utterly demolished by
| the courts for disabling the competition in favor of their own
| ad network.
| nojito wrote:
| Not possible without being a monopoly.
| pjerem wrote:
| It never happened in a decade of App Store. Why would it
| happen with an ad network?
| stale2002 wrote:
| The reason why it would happen is because there has been a
| massive legal push to sue Apple, or pass new laws that make
| their behavior illegal.
|
| And these laws have passed, and are going to go into effect
| soon, and there is little Apple can do to stop it.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Never happened? Every search I can think of had an ad
| covering half or more of my screen (full with the keyboard
| still enabled). Mostly of terrible low-quality apps you'd
| rather expect on the Microsoft store too. There's a whole
| tab for "curated" content.
|
| The whole App Store is one big "ew" experience. It's what
| you'd expect from _other companies_.
|
| ... and the rest of iOS already shows similar elements.
| Setting up an iPhone recently I think I saw 3 _full screen_
| ads for Apple services. From what I remember it would be a
| lot more if I used more first-party apps.
|
| What a disappointing way to ruin an otherwise pretty nice
| experience!
| pwinnski wrote:
| You get that ads can exist without invasive personal
| targeting, right? Ads used to be based on the _location_ in
| which they were shown, rather than the _person_ to whom they
| were shown. That 's still an option for Facebook and Google,
| and there's no evidence Apple plans to do anything else.
| ccouzens wrote:
| > Refine your audience.
|
| > Reach new customers or reengage the customers who know
| you. You can also refine your audience by gender, age, and
| location.
|
| https://searchads.apple.com/advanced
| gigel82 wrote:
| No, no, don't say the thing out loud. Apple can do no
| evil!
| lucasyvas wrote:
| The steps they took to squash Facebook and the like (good
| riddance, fuck them honestly) all of a sudden have _terrible_
| optics if they push their own first-party ad platform.
|
| I'm not sure even the most devoted Apple fan could fail to
| see past that bullshit maneuver. It's one thing to stomp out
| little players, but when you can crush other giants under
| your thumb, the monopoly is clear.
|
| The operating system is all that matters, and whoever
| controls the leading operating systems wins. All the products
| some of us work on are absolutely useless compared to what
| the OS can deliver - we're all just services waiting to be
| swallowed up, ripped off, or pushed out.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Note that a (the?) primary use case for this is supporting
| developers who want to create free, ad-supported products using
| a privacy-first ad network. Is there even another solution for
| this?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Ad supported apps advertising ad supported apps advertising
| ad supported apps...
| gfodor wrote:
| Apple is going to have everyone wearing a passthrough AR visor by
| 2025.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Agreed. I think that the Watch is part of that - get people
| used to the idea of wearables as luxury items, not dorky like
| Google Glasses. Then you get a design house to create the
| frames, use iPhone for computation and extend interactions to
| the watch.
|
| I agree that we'll see some huge new product by 2025 - not sure
| if it's a visor or spectacles though.
| Wherecombinator wrote:
| I think the same. When they do AR I believe they'll do it much
| better than anyone else. They'll be some really cool feature
| that will make people flock to it, like apps on the iPhone.
| nottorp wrote:
| I was hoping that will happen with the apple watch, but so
| far it just brings the notification spam to your wrist and
| does fitness/health monitoring if you care about that.
|
| What will the AR glasses do, bring the notifications that I
| have turned off anyway in my face?
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| The notification thing really made my despise the Apple
| Watch, caused me way too much anxiety had to turn all those
| features off.
|
| I'd wear a screenless Apple band with just the health
| sensors but I wont wear a notification distraction on my
| wrist again.
| specialist wrote:
| Gassee (and others) misunderstands Apple's health strategy wrt
| wearables (watch, earbuds).
|
| Rosalind Picard's (and others) work on affective computing shows
| the potential. Here's her interview w/ Lex Fridman.
|
| https://lexfridman.com/rosalind-picard/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affective_computing#Physiologi...
|
| I have no idea if "quantified self" is Apple's NBT, a $1T market.
| I do know that affective computing will be a game changer. And
| currently Apple's watch is running away with that emerging
| market.
| alexb_ wrote:
| The moment that apple announced "privacy" as their focus I knew
| this was going to happen. They don't actually care about user
| privacy, but rather want exclusive rights to all of your data so
| that they can sell it for a markup. If you want to sell targeted
| ads to anyone using an Apple device, you'll have to let Apple do
| the targeting (and take their cut). Get customers locked into the
| apple ecosystem, "protect" them from non-apple marketers, and
| then sell access to the giant Apple userbase at a big cost.
|
| What's really worrying is that having Apple gatekeep advertisers
| gives them the power to dictate what platforms can get ads vs
| what platforms can't. Letting Apple decide what
| platforms/services get their potential ad revenue cut in half is
| not a good thing.
| rvnx wrote:
| Isn't it the business model of Google that you are describing
| in some way instead ?
|
| "We don't sell or share your data so we can be the only ones
| who have access to it for advertising purposes"
| alexb_ wrote:
| Correct, and Google makes gigantic fuckloads of money doing
| that. It's no wonder Apple wants to do it as well. Apple
| having direct hardware access and aggressively locking in
| their customers makes this an extra degree worse for the
| consumer/better for Apple. At least with Google, it's easier
| to stop using it.
| joshmanders wrote:
| Why would Apple see what Google is doing in ads and want to
| do that too... Google's marketcap is half of what Apple's
| is... If anything Apple should keep what they're doing up,
| because they're clearly doing better than Google.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| >They don't actually care about user privacy, but rather want
| exclusive rights to all of your data so that they can sell it
| for a markup.
|
| Of course not, in the same way that a Bently manufacture
| doesn't care that I own the car everybody envy, but that
| doesn't mean he won't make a car the everybody envies, because
| he does care about selling me an expensive car.
| nojito wrote:
| This is absolute nonsense.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPogdNafgic
|
| Apple has the led the conversation on privacy far before anyone
| else was. I remember them get vilified from sharing their
| stance 10 years ago.
| alexb_ wrote:
| >Apple has the led the conversation on privacy far before
| anyone else was.
|
| So they can make more money by selling access to a userbase
| they withhold from all other advertisers. The notion that
| Apple cares about anything other than the money-printing
| ability of their phone users is clearly and obviously wrong.
| pwinnski wrote:
| They've faced down several angry groups of shareholders
| that demonstrate you are incorrect. Apple as a company has
| a few values that reduce potential profits, and refuse to
| violate them.
|
| They should probably have _more_ such values, but they
| definitely "care" about some things other than printing
| money.
|
| I'm all on board the Cynicism Express, but you've gotten on
| the wrong track here. Apple can be a monster for many, many
| reasons while still operating based on principles of user
| privacy.
| kennend3 wrote:
| This would disagree with you:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/06/technology/apple-
| ads.html
|
| Why does Apple want to sell more ads?
|
| Because money.
|
| It's incredibly profitable for Apple to sell ads when
| people search the iPhone App Store for fitness apps or
| read articles in the Apple News app.
| pwinnski wrote:
| I am not seeing where I suggested that Apple doesn't want
| to sell more ads, or that they don't care about money.
|
| Yes, it's profitable for Apple to sell ads. They tried
| once before and failed because they refused to violate
| personal privacy for ad targeting. It is possible to sell
| fitness ads when people search for fitness apps, or
| health ads on articles about health subjects, without
| violating personal privacy. People are concerned about
| whether Apple will compromise long-held values because
| Facebook and Google have worked to pretend there's no
| difference between selling context-aware ads and selling
| privacy-invading user-tracking ads. There _is_ a
| difference, though.
| cruano wrote:
| Yes, but they care about the long-term money-printing
| ability of the whole ecosystem, and reputation can very
| clearly hurt that e.g. Facebook
| lioeters wrote:
| > Apple spies on its users, and helps others spy on them.
|
| https://stallman.org/apple.html#spying
| jshier wrote:
| Assertions without evidence can be rejected out of hand.
| jdlshore wrote:
| > They don't actually care about user privacy, but rather want
| exclusive rights to all of your data so that they can sell it
| for a markup.
|
| I don't believe this is what's happening now. Do you have any
| evidence that it will happen in the future, or is this just
| anticipatory anxiety?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > so that they can sell it for a markup
|
| If they start selling your data, they'll quickly eliminate the
| very market share that gives them such power. And why would
| they want to give up that data anyway? Better to use it
| themselves. A lot of people will accept the data collection as
| long as it doesn't go to third-party companies, we have ample
| evidence for that already.
| alexb_ wrote:
| >If they start selling your data, they'll quickly eliminate
| the very market share that gives them such power.
|
| No they absolutely will not. 99% of Apple users do not care
| about privacy. And when Apple does this, those users will
| find excuses to why it's okay.
| lrhegeba wrote:
| Au contraire, see 96% of apple users who decided they do
| not want to be tracked if given the choice. You still may
| be right about apples behaviour later on, who knows, but
| your 99% feels somewhat, lets say, unsubstantiated
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I share your cynicism in general but not your degree of
| cynicism. Apparently, when prompted by the new iOS, 96%
| have opted out of tracking, not 1% as your comment would
| suggest.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-
| opt-o...
| ayewo wrote:
| Interesting. From your link 4% opted out of tracking in
| iOS 14.5 in the US, while globally that number is higher
| at 12%.
| alexb_ wrote:
| Of course! They do opt out of tracking _by other
| companies_. Doing so is free, easy, and Apple encourages
| you to do it. That does not mean it will translate to
| opting out of Apple tracking you via the hardware. When
| it comes to hardware, privacy is far down the list of
| most people 's priorities.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Having a prompt that says "Do you want X to do this scary
| sounding thing? Or not, and have 0 impact on you?" is
| worst possible way to do any kind of informed choice.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Not giving the user a choice is of course the _worst_
| possible way. If Apple makes it sound scary, maybe
| because it is? Certainly, the opposite is no better:
| "Hey, we just want to tailor ads to your lifestyle, mmm,
| good?"
| jen20 wrote:
| Absolutely false. Some may not care, but some care
| immensely - far more than 1%.
|
| If iPhone started reneging on privacy guarantees, I for one
| would switch to a dumb feature phone the same day.
|
| The fact that Facebook got decimated by the controls added
| indicate the level of concern people have when offered a
| choice.
| alexb_ wrote:
| >I for one would switch to a dumb feature phone
|
| The fact that you would even consider this means you are
| a part of that 1%.
| pwinnski wrote:
| > They don't actually care about user privacy, but rather want
| exclusive rights to all of your data so that they can sell it
| for a markup.
|
| This flies in the face of everything Apple has ever done.
|
| I'm more cynical than most, but I also pay attention, and I
| find it more plausible that a company run by a very private gay
| man actually holds privacy as a company principle. That fits
| the facts much better than the conspiracy view.
|
| Apple has already struck out once in the ad industry because
| they refused to violate user privacy to compete with Google and
| Facebook. This time around they've acted to bring Google and
| Facebook down onto a level playing field.
|
| Since Google acquired DoubleClick, it's like we've forgotten
| that it's possible to sell targeted ads based on target
| _locations_ , rather than based on personalized demographic
| profiles of target _users_. Being able to target _locations_
| impersonally is what initially drew ad dollars to the internet,
| as the targeting could be more specific than general TV spots
| or roadside billboards.
|
| There's no evidence that Apple intends to use any personal
| information at all in their ad targeting, and plenty of
| evidence that they don't. If it is "gatekeeping," it's a gate
| that they seem unwilling to cross themselves.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > They don't actually care about user privacy, but rather want
| exclusive rights to all of your data so that they can sell it
| for a markup.
|
| Anyone who seriously thinks Apple are going to turn into
| another Google or Facebook needs to give their head a wobble.
|
| Look at, for example, their recent pro-privacy improvements to
| the App Store where developers are now forced to state in black
| and white what data their Apps collect.
|
| Look at, for example, how pissed off Facebook were with recent
| privacy improvements in iOS. If Zuck is pissed off about a
| privacy improvement, then it must be a good thing !
|
| If Apple didn't give a shit about user privacy and wanted to
| sell all your data, they would have done so a long time ago.
|
| Fact is that Apple has many moats. One of their biggest moats
| is their stance on the privacy of their user's data. They know
| that if they backtrack on that, many people (including myself)
| would vote with their feet.
| kipchak wrote:
| Where would people move to? I think there's a fair bit of
| room for Apple to get worse on privacy while still being
| preferable to Android/Windows. "At least they don't sell my
| data as much as ____".
| matt-attack wrote:
| Look at how they constantly go out of their way to engineer a
| solution that results in better privacy. Like analyzing your
| photo library using AI for object and face recognition. Any
| normal company (read: Google) would just run all that AI in
| their datacenter. Apple goes the extra mile, to actually run
| all that analysis on-device, while it's charging. I assure
| you there's no other reason to go through that effort other
| than privacy.
| cageface wrote:
| What good is privacy if a single corporation has your health
| data, finance information, contact lists, shopping habits,
| address, friends and family, movies, music etc etc etc and
| then want so sell ad space targeted at you?
|
| It's hardly any different than what Google or Facebook do
| except it's even more encompassing.
| justapassenger wrote:
| > If Apple didn't give a shit about user privacy and wanted
| to sell all your data, they would have done so a long time
| ago.
|
| They already do "sell", in a very similar way as Google and
| Facebook does - look at their app store ads for example. Only
| real difference between Google/FB and Apple is that they
| process data on device, not on their servers. Sure, it's a
| huge technical difference, but not that much in terms of
| business and end users.
|
| Google and Facebook don't sell your data directly, as it's
| bad business - you want to sell access to customers as a
| subscription to get big bucks. They have all the initiative
| to protect data they gather on their servers. Same as Apple
| has to do that on devices.
|
| There're details to it, but just moving where you process
| user data isn't that much of a difference to end users -
| you're still a corporation selling other people ability to
| show me ads for cribs, when you discover that I'm expecting a
| baby.
| AnonHP wrote:
| > Google and Facebook don't sell your data directly, as
| it's bad business
|
| You may want to check on this belief more thoroughly, at
| least with Meta/Facebook as a start.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Can you point me to their checkout page?
| nerdponx wrote:
| To be clear, it's totally possible for Apple's closed
| ecosystem to be objectively better for consumer privacy and
| also a kind of "ad reach" silo for which access is sold at
| a premium.
|
| And honestly, I'll take it. I have always been OK looking
| at ads if it funds the tools I use and the media I consume.
| I have always been OK with some amount of demographic and
| history-based ad targeting. I have no moral objection to
| some company gatekeeping advertiser access to my eyeballs
| and selling that access at a premium, especially if I'm
| already going to see ads everywhere anyway unless I go off-
| grid. I have no moral objection to using my demographics
| and general interests to show me ads for hiking boots
| instead of kung fu lessons.
|
| I am not OK with companies storing, collecting, selling,
| etc. my data without my knowledge, consent, or legitimate
| ability to opt out. If the data doesn't leave my phone and
| all of the "targeting" happens on my own device, I can
| think of much worse compromise outcomes.
| Cipater wrote:
| I would never have this kind of confidence in a corporation.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > I would never have this kind of confidence in a
| corporation.
|
| Meanwhile back on Planet Earth .....
|
| Going by your argument you should not own any electronic
| device.
|
| Because you should not be trusting Intel/AMD to make your
| CPU because they might have put spyware in it ....
|
| Because you should not trust your keyboard manufacturer
| because they might have embedded a keylogger in it....
|
| Because you should not trust your choice of OS because you
| haven't personally reviewed 100% of the source code and all
| subsequent patches for spyware ...
|
| In the end, its about balancing risk vs reward. And
| frankly, especially in terms of privacy, Apple are far more
| trustworthy than the vast majority of other options out
| there.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| I don't think "this is a problem for everyone" really
| precludes both informing people about the problem and
| hoping there is a solution to the problem. Just because
| Apple it "better", doesn't make it "good".
|
| I personally feel some sort of regulatory framework
| around data collection and sales is not too much to ask.
| joshmanders wrote:
| My question is why is it always in discussions about
| Apple that people come out of the woodworks "worried
| about their privacy stance changing" and how we need
| regulatory stuff in place in the event Apple STARTS to be
| like Google, but nobody is ever in the Android stuff
| talking about how absolutely terrible Google is on this
| front?
| stinkytaco wrote:
| Because everyone knows this about Google already. With
| Apple there seems to be some associated belief that it's
| better, when there's nothing really special about Apple.
| It's a publicly traded company and just because no one
| let the cow out of the barn yet, doesn't mean it couldn't
| in the future. Props to Apple for not doing a Google yet,
| but like someone said, I would never trust a corporation
| to put me above shareholder value.
| joshmanders wrote:
| > I would never trust a corporation to put me above
| shareholder value.
|
| Normally I'd agree with you, but I think Steve Jobs has a
| long history of not giving a shit about what shareholders
| say because he was more concerned with delivering the
| perfect product to customers, so I'd like to think that
| Tim Cook has also carried this torch too.
|
| Yes they are a for-profit company, I still get that...
| But everyone has been shouting "Just wait, Apple will
| become just like Google once they realize how juicy that
| data is to their bottom line!!" for literally decades,
| yet... Nothing.
| go_prodev wrote:
| They are nothing like Google and have proven that over
| time. But they don't need to be because people trust
| them.
|
| Many moons ago I worked for a large online gambling
| provider. They worked tirelessly to make their company
| trustworthy, make their games entertaining, and build
| relationships with their high rollers. Internally, they
| had strategies to squeeze as much money from every user
| as possible without causing distress. It was quite eye
| opening and I can't help but draw parallels between them
| and Apple.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| > so I'd like to think that Tim Cook has also carried
| this torch too.
|
| You'd like to think that. I would too. But even if it's
| true, Tim Cook will not be there forever either. Publicly
| traded companies are owned by shareholders who can and
| will do what they want. The last half century of business
| is littered with the corpses of once vaunted corporate
| bodies stripped by investors.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| I truly believe the privacy mission is personal to Tim Cook: it
| was a much smaller deal under Jobs, and Tim Cook was bullied
| for being gay in Mobile. It makes sense as a lens to view some
| of their other choices, too.
|
| I think that's absolutely beautiful and very human.
| criddell wrote:
| > Letting Apple decide what platforms/services get their
| potential ad revenue cut in half is not a good thing.
|
| Shouldn't you really say "letting Apple _users_ decide... "?
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > They don't actually care about user privacy, but rather want
| exclusive rights to all of your data so that they can sell it
| for a markup
|
| So Google was evil from the start, back when they were just
| selling ads based on your search terms and not yet spying on
| your entire life online and offline?
| theplumber wrote:
| Long story short: the next big thing is milking/squeezing the
| existing customers through services. I guess the next next big
| thing would be charging customers for existing/free features(i.e
| pay more for privacy, no more on-device storage etc)
| skc wrote:
| Is it still milking if customers are paying willingly?
| sgmoore wrote:
| Yes. I guess you have never been near a dairy farm at milking
| time and seen the cows queue up, or hear the noise they make
| if they are not milked.
| theplumber wrote:
| Thank you! You've just made my day!
| ibn_khaldun wrote:
| That depends on what you consider "willingly" to mean in this
| matter.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Is Apple holding a gun to every person's head saying "pay
| for Apple One or else"?
| stale2002 wrote:
| What they are doing is using anti-competitive practices,
| that go against the purpose of anti-trust laws and pro-
| competition laws.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| How, exactly? Apple One is a subscription like any other.
| People can choose to get it or not.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Through the process of using dominant market power, to
| anti-competitively harm competitors in various
| industries.
|
| The most common one, that is in the news, is the App
| Store situation, where literal laws are being passed to
| ban Apple's behavior.
|
| But it also applies to other parts of their business,
| such as ads. There could be a push to pass laws to make
| Apple's behavior illegal in those spaces as well.
| theplumber wrote:
| Yea, just like Intel has been milking existing customers. For
| monopolistic companies milking is their main business.
| sem000 wrote:
| Gotta love HN... always acting like Apple is holding a gun to
| consumers heads.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Gotta love HN... always acting like Apple is holding a gun
| to consumers heads.
|
| Well they are. Because the only alternative is Android. We're
| into a duopoly situation on mobile and it's almost as bad as
| a proper monopoly.
| janef0421 wrote:
| Apple devices have strong, intentional vendor lock-in, which
| is coercive.
| belval wrote:
| Realistically (and I am not singling out Apple here), we are
| more and more captive of an ecosystem. My Android phone is
| needed to login to most online service through 2FA, I can pay
| with it, have my calendar and emails on it.
|
| Losing my phone at this point is worse than losing my wallet
| and Apple is pushing for even tighter integrations with their
| customer's life which will ultimately centralize all that
| information.
| sem000 wrote:
| >Realistically (and I am not singling out Apple here), we
| are more and more captive of an ecosystem.
|
| Yes, we definitely are. But I am not so sure that is a bad
| thing? And it's nothing new... how many businesses had
| their entire operations tied to Blackberry, Microsoft,
| Lotus, etc. for so long? The market might be a little slow,
| but it's not stupid.
|
| I personally like Apple products and services. I like the
| integration. I like that I don't have to go out and find
| third party apps for certain things and hope for the best.
|
| > Losing my phone at this point is worse than losing my
| wallet and Apple is pushing for even tighter integrations
| with their customer's life which will ultimately centralize
| all that information.
|
| The great thing about this is a replacement phone can be
| loaded almost instantaneously with all your info again. How
| long would it take to have every credit card company and
| the DMV send you replacements?
| stale2002 wrote:
| > Yes, we definitely are. But I am not so sure that is a
| bad thing?
|
| Well, it is the basis of anti-trust law and pro-
| competition law, that the legal system supports
| competition and opposes anti-competitive effects.
| whatarethembits wrote:
| If I lost my iPhone (and the FindMy network wasn't able to
| locate it), the watch can get me by just fine as if nothing
| even happened. Oh and this was all setup in a couple of
| minutes when first buying the watch, so unlikely to be in a
| situation where the watch can't adequately take over phone
| duties because I didn't dedicate a semester to set
| everything up and keep it in sync on a regular basis. It's
| all automatic. Integrated devices > non-integrated devices
| all day long. Back to the lost phone; I would then walk
| into an Apple store when time permits, and get or buy a
| replacement (depending on Apple care coverage status)
| phone, enter my Apple ID on the new phone and voila its in
| the exact state as the old one before leaving the store.
| End of saga, I go meetup with mates as planned in the
| evening.
|
| Try to do the same with non-Apple ecosystem or with
| physical cards and keys. I wish there were (dependable)
| options, but other large organisations have proven to be
| utterly incompetent in this area. They have no vision
| and/or ability to pull off something like this. Or their
| own actions have made their reputation unpalatable even if
| they somehow offered it in the future.
|
| Also I hate having to remember to carry five different
| things every time I leave the house, and feel the sensation
| of those bulky items moving around in my pocket while
| walking (Europe, we walk a lot) or running. And I hate
| having to be limited to trousers/joggers/shorts that have
| deep enough pockets to fit all those items in, and them
| falling out while out for a run etc etc etc.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| >the next big thing is milking/squeezing the existing customers
| through services
|
| i am NOT a subscriber to netflix et al. never have been and
| actively avoid signing up to "trial services" because it could
| potentially hook me up good.
|
| maybe these people are gullible enough to be convinced enough
| to be parted with their money, that's fine.
|
| you see, there is "EVIDENCE" in support of cigarettes causing
| cancer but instead of banning the sales, governments milk it
| for taxes, the companies say "if someone is willing to pay, why
| not us" and the blame is on the user.....
|
| the same thing with alcohol and weed and stuff like that. Most
| of the world has grown around alcohol and even when EVERYONE
| knows its not healthy for the body, people still consume it,
| "its traditional".
|
| if people want to not own stuff, want netflix style monthly
| payments to have their whole life managed by apple, good for
| these people because then they dont have to pay individually
| for a bank, for a cable tv, for a cell phone company, for
| internet, for transport, for education, for security, for
| netflix, disney, hbo, prime and all that.
| theplumber wrote:
| Big companies can excert influence and change behaviours.
| Consider this as a drug dealer who gives you a free trial.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| yes, that is what i am saying. there are people who avoid
| smoking cigarettes or take alcohol for all their lives even
| in the face of freebies. they aren't swayed by them but
| then there are people who are swayed.
|
| if cigarette makers and breweries can continue and expand
| their business, so can apple and it would be just the same
| thing imo
| ibn_khaldun wrote:
| This was a nice, brief informative and insightful blog post.
|
| As a business model I understand what Apple is doing and can
| register the strategy as calculated. As an Apple consumer, I am
| not that interested.
|
| Sometime after inheriting a pair of AirPod Pros and an Apple
| Watch I started to feel strange. Then I booted OpenBSD on my own
| hardware for the first time the other day, straight into the
| shell and I feel changed by how brutal (as in architecture,
| aesthetics) the experience was. I find it distracting even to use
| my MacBook now. The colors, the textures, etc. I just feel
| different now.
|
| Apple is offering a lot of convenience, apparently. The watch is
| convenient. The AirPods that dig into my ear canals and make me
| mistake audiobooks and podcasts for my own thoughts
| are...disturbing...but convenient as a Bluetooth headset?
|
| As a consumer and user of these devices I just feel somewhere
| between recognizing these new conveniences but being disturbed by
| them and distracted even after some time.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _The AirPods that dig into my ear canals and make me mistake
| audiobooks and podcasts for my own thoughts..._
|
| Neat, is that an iOS 16 feature?
|
| But seriously, there are things you can do to reclaim your
| attention span. Here are a few:
|
| https://medium.com/make-time/six-years-with-a-distraction-fr...
|
| https://hulry.com/ios-15-focus-mode/
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/grayscale-ios-android-smartphone...
| ibn_khaldun wrote:
| I've actually been in the process of doing something similar
| to what's described in the Medium article. I've tried to
| grayscale thing out before too but I switch back after some
| time.
|
| I think what I'm getting out for myself is more so a UX
| issue? I'm not sure. It's not a matter of attention span with
| me _specifically_. But the look and feel of certain Apple
| devices as a whole makes me feel like someone who I'd hate to
| become. I could still see myself using an iPad or a Mac mini
| or something like that, because I've taking a liking for some
| of the things those devices have to offer for specific tasks.
|
| But I would love for my phone to just be a concrete brick
| that can spit out thermal printed slips of paper with
| messages on it as text messaging and emails. And if only
| voice calls were a distributed mesh of Solo cups and strings.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Apple devices as a whole makes me feel like someone who
| I'd hate to become._
|
| Definitely reason enough to avoid them. I sometimes feel
| nostalgic for the look/sound/vibe of early personal
| computing. Yesterday I watched this and briefly
| contemplated how it would be if computing today looked more
| like AppleWorks and chonky keyboards instead of black
| mirrors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xtBspMixHk
|
| > _But I would love for my phone to just be a concrete
| brick that can spit out thermal printed slips of paper with
| messages on it as text messaging and emails. And if only
| voice calls were a distributed mesh of Solo cups and
| strings._
|
| Not quite what you're describing, but this brings _Brazil_
| to mind for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xNnRBksvOU
| Aperocky wrote:
| > looked at possible candidates for Apple's NBT (Next Big Thing),
| a product category that could launch an iPhone-like growth wave
|
| Is this what drove Facebook, a slowing but otherwise perfectly
| healthy cash cow into the disaster that is Metaverse?
|
| If Apple is going to do the same, my popcorn is ready.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Maybe the difference was that Facebook was a one-trick pony
| that, unlike Apple, soiled their brand rather than bolstered
| it?
| [deleted]
| Aperocky wrote:
| hindsight is 2020.
|
| What I'm referring to is instead of coming up with something
| that could be a game changer organically, forcing it because
| "We need a big idea now". That has a much higher chance to
| fail.
| yurishimo wrote:
| I think this is why it's taken so long to release the VR
| headset. It's obviously been functional for years at this
| point and there are tons of other headsets on the market
| proving there is at least some demand.
|
| But I think apple is taking it slow and waiting for the
| right opportunity rather than shoehorn it in at the last
| second of Q4 to bolster EOY earnings.
|
| Same with the car. I'm more skeptical of that project ever
| seeing the light of day, but there is no doubt that apple
| has the resources to bring that product to market if they
| wanted to, but they're also smart enough to read the room.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I'm not sure it's obvious there is demand. You say "tons
| off other headsets" but it still feels very niche to me.
| yurishimo wrote:
| Apologies for the typo, I'm on mobile and editing is more
| tedious than it's worth sometimes.
|
| My point was to say that there is a market that is
| actively being developed and growing every year. No doubt
| that VR is still niche, but so were Palm Pilots and MP3
| players!
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I agree with you -- forcing a new thing because you need
| one, will likely always fail. I suspect though that
| Facebook and Apple both feel pressure from shareholders to
| show constant growth (although Apple has tempered that
| expectation somewhat by offering dividends to
| shareholders). I think Apple has a broader base upon which
| to find the more organic areas to grow. Facebook instead
| had a large, but non-paying user base ... perhaps fewer
| options.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Nonetheless, I still want to see an Apple Car and see the
| company's still working on that bet as a potential head against
| incrementalism.
|
| Perhaps me meant a "hedge" against incrementalism.
|
| Am I the only one that does _not_ want to see an Apple car? We
| already have Tesla, I would rather see more inexpensive
| (electric, I assume) cars.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| They oughta work on an Apple train
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