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I doubt it's about price gouging -- Apple makes most of its money selling phones, tablets, and computers, not adapters and accessories. Sure, you could argue th
by lh7777 10y ago
I doubt it's about price gouging -- Apple makes most of its money selling phones, tablets, and computers, not adapters and accessories. Sure, you could argue that they're trying to lock their customers in by getting them to invest in tons of adapters and accessories that would need to be replaced if they switch to another ecosystem, but I think iOS and the App Store ecosystem are much better at that. Besides, why would they keep changing port designs every few years if lock-in was the goal? There's no better time than a port redesign to switch to someone else's hardware if you need a new device and have to buy new accessories anyway.
USB C seems like the future for basically _all_ ports on all devices, so I do think it's a shame that Apple's going to stick with Lightning for iOS devices. It's hard to blame them for this -- Lightning is quite a bit thinner[1]. But I also don't share their obsession with device thinness.
[1] http://josh-ua.co/blog/2015/3/15/usb-c-dimensions-size-comparison-with-the-lightning-port-and-usb-type-a http://josh-ua.co/blog/2015/3/15/usb-c-dimensions-size-compa...
- moogly 10y agoSo why did they buy Beats Audio?
- lh7777 10y agoBeats Music -> Apple Music Apple does care about its service business revenues, and I think they felt they needed to compete with Spotify, etc. instead of letting others slowly erode iTunes' share. This isn't about lock-in to iDevices -- Apple Music is also available on Windows, Android.
- 20yrs_no_equity 10y agoFor Apple Beats Audio was a talent acquisition (eg: they got the founders, Trent Reznor and the like) for Apple Music, and a technology Acquisition (Beats streaming service and content is powering Apple Music) as well as buying a profitable accessories business. Apple has great gross margins on computers because they have such operational excellence in building them, but still a Mac makes much less margin than headphones- at any price point along the quality curve. Accessories are just generally really profitable.