19 ms·

Megacompany sounds intimidating, but I perceive Apple to be quite tame. They mostly just make hardware. It's Facebook, Google and all the others sitting on mou

• cm2187 8y ago
  The app ecosystem and unwillingness of users to relearn how to use their phone regularly are strong lock ins. Ask Microsoft! But Apple is making enough user hostiles moves (raising prices, suppressing features, nagging for paid services, etc) that I beliebe in the long term their margin and market share will erode.
• willtim 8y ago
  Apple are engaged in collecting and holding data, they hold personal files, emails, photos, calendars, location data etc. There is a financial incentive for them to make it difficult for people to move away. Apple have also led the trend for 1000+ dollar disposable electronics, with glued and soldered components that cannot be easily repaired or upgraded.
  • keymone 8y ago
    the ultimate way of making it difficult to move away is to make a better product. so far it looks like apple is executing that strategy quite well (judging from the stock price).
    • SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
      Apple's stock price is based on its ability to make money, it has very little to do with the quality of its products.
      • scarface74 8y ago
        So exactly how do they make money? Unlike Google and Facebook thier business model is very simple, they make stuff people want and people give them money.
        • IMTDb 8y ago
          Google and Facebook models are pretty simple too: they make stuff people want and companies give them money to put inject their ads in the service.
          • scarface74 8y ago
            How many people know that a third party can for instance give Facebook a list of emails then FB matches that list up to thier subscribers for ads? How many people know that Google records every time you open any app on Android and logs the activity? I found out when I logged into my dad’s account. How many people knew that third parties can get information about you if your friends sign up to something?
            • chosenbreed 8y ago
              Okay...in this particular instance you can find and you can opt out of certain things but not a lot though. Something that rarely gets mentioned in the discourse is that Facebook is offering a product to 1billion+ people for free. At somepoint you have to think that there is a cost someone where. Very few people work for free...I fail to see how they don't realise that companies produces products at a cost and they must make the money somehow. In the case of Facebook it is from data. As an aside I wonder if people knew what goes on restaurant kitchens, processed supermarket foods, they'd still buy it. My guess is yes...:-)
              • scarface74 8y ago
                Yes. Everyone knows that Facebook makes money from advertising. I’m sure most people know that they make money by targeting advertising based on your expressed interest and the profile you create. But how many people know that FB follows you around the web?
  • tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    There are plenty of people fixing Apple hardware and it's worth doing because the residual value is so high.
    • willtim 8y ago
      I can replace the keyboard in my Thinkpad myself. Who apart from Apple can replace the (flawed) keyboard in new the MacBook Pro?
      • tonyedgecombe 8y ago
        That may make it inconvenient for you but it isn't necessarily an environmental problem. Most people don't take their hardware apart, they take it back to the store.
        • willtim 8y ago
          It becomes an environmental problem when Apple stop offering to fix it, or make the cost of repair uneconomical. I can still buy a replacement keyboard for a 20 year old Thinkpad for ten dollars and pay someone to install it. Granted, there are some aspects of Apple hardware that can still be repaired/replaced by third-parties, but their trend is away from this.
          • tonyedgecombe 8y ago
            I have a fifteen year old iMac on my desk right now.
            • willtim 8y ago
              That's great! But it's unlikely that today's MacBook Pro will last anywhere near 15 years.
              • lev99 8y ago
                That's apple's and oranges. Laptops move a lot, which opens them up to damage. I fully suspect an iMac to last 15 years.
  • scarface74 8y ago
    Personal files - install iCloud Drive on your computer and copy the files. You don't even have to do that. You can log on to iCloud.com and download your files. Emails, Calendars - they use standard protocols. You can use any email client to get the data off Photos - you just plug your phone into your computer and copy the files. Disposable electronics - seeing that Apple is releasing iOS 12 for the iPhone 5s released in 2012, how do you figure? How many Android phones from 2015 let alone 2012 are still getting updates? Sure the phone is easy to repair - I just take it to the Apple Store.
    • willtim 8y ago
      Have you actually tried using an alternative email client with iCloud mail? You might get lucky, but for sure it is only tested with Apple Mail as a client. They might claim standard protocol adherence, but are they actually testing for it? Likewise, your assessment of how easy it is to get ones photos exported with metadata intact is not true in practice. Android phones are indeed as bad or worse than Apple with regard to lifespan, but this was a trend that Apple started. A Nokia 3310 purchased in 2000 would still work fine today. Apple would even like to see something as simple and universal as a headphone jack disappear in order to regularly sell new headphones (!)
      • scarface74 8y ago
        How hard is it to plug a phone up to your computer and drag files from it? A Nokia 3310 would be a 2G GSM phone. Both GSM carriers in the US have turned off 2G support. If you wanted, there is nothing stopping you from using an iPhone 3G released in 2008. In fact, I have a first gen iPad. You can still download older versions of Netflix, Hulu, Spotify etc and they still work. Seeing that you can still buy standard Bluetooth headphones from anywhere and an adapter comes in the box. There is nothing stopping you from using third party headphones.
        • willtim 8y ago
          > How hard is it to plug a phone up to your computer and drag files from it? The internal filesystem layout used by photos is not intended to be manually browsed, it is non-trivial and undocumented. I might be able to recover the original jpg files, but any metadata such as organisation structure, tags, albums is locked up in proprietary closed formats. They offer an export function which gets you the jpgs, but not much else. > there is nothing stopping you from using an iPhone 3G released in 2008 Security for one. Apple and Google have both built an extremely complex phone OS that needs constant patching to even remain "reasonably secure". > you can still buy standard Bluetooth headphones My concern is longevity, simplicity and sound quality. I would not want to use bluetooth.
• jgh 8y ago
  I agree with you. Apple, while being an enormous company, will likely be unseated if (or perhaps when) the iPhone ceases being as popular as it is. Google, Facebook, Amazon (maybe to a lesser extent, maybe not) seem to have become more like vines clinging to the fabric of society. They have their fingers in everything and know everything about us.
  • mark_l_watson 8y ago
    I have thought about the same thing: if a company like Samsung came out with an even more beautiful phone and did not install crapware and didn’t allow phone companies to load crapware - and halved the cost of a similar iPhone, that could really scoop out Apple’s profits. But, loading crapware will go on, and nice phones will always be expensive so I think Apple is in great shape long term.
    • fhood 8y ago
      Also if Android wasn't a security and privacy nightmare.
    • jclardy 8y ago
      I think the problem is that doing what you said is insanely difficult. Look at the Essential phone for a recent example.
    • mulletbum 8y ago
      Not to mention, I don't think Samsung dislikes the margins. Apple's phones being more expensive helps push Samsung's device costs up too, so they can make more margin. I doubt they want Apple to fully leave, they are potentially making more money just by getting to sell their phones at a higher cost when they can potentially make them even cheaper than Apple makes the iPhone.
• HNNewer 8y ago
  Apple has also user data..as for Facebook and Google..you just don't know it
  • cmsj 8y ago
    Of course Apple has data, we know that, but there are at least two key differences: 1) Apple tries a lot harder to not collect data at all, and when they have to, they try to aggressively anonymise it. 2) Apple doesn't leverage your data as a product. The furthest you could go would be to say that they leverage your data to make more of their products seem attractive to you.
• edpichler 8y ago
  But Apple also has our minds. They are inside us, they changed our behaviour and minds towards their products. It's not to just make a hardware to compete with them, it's an entire ecosystem.
• sneak 8y ago
  It’s not Facebook, Google, and the others that worry me; they mostly just want to sell you ads and make your products more convenient. It’s the national military of the place in which those companies (and troves of data) reside, which is known to suspend due process and human rights (including without limitation torturing people, summary executions without trial (google “al awlaki”), and imprisoning people indefinitely without trial) whenever they feel like it, for whatever reason they wish (including simply embarassing them in the media). It’s abso-fucking-lutely terrifying. I don’t fear Google one bit. I fear the out-of-control US military which has access, at will, to all of Google’s data, with or without a court order, should they ever desire it strongly enough.
• Bombthecat 8y ago
  Only with a super efficient or interesting architecture for example in AI. But by then I guess they just sell it to Google or Facebook. So nope. No way that they go away...
• kraig911 8y ago
  Maybe so. I am in the frame of mind now though that perhaps data doesn't mean much anymore. Literally everywhere I've worked, every application I've worked on people are fine just giving it. Sure there is value in it but I think the book is still being wrote on how much.
• simonsarris 8y ago
  I agree with you. How much you should worry about a company is relative to how that company makes their revenue. Here's a breakdown for Apple I made for a friend: https://imgur.com/a/uujaLjS https://imgur.com/a/uujaLjS Even with the growth in services (this doesn't reflect the recent quarters numbers), the hardware sales just dominate their numbers by so much.
  • s3r3nity 8y ago
    Thanks for the chart - surprising to see that "Services" is now #2! Can't sleep on that iCloud / Apple Music growth
  • asdfman123 8y ago
    That kind of puts things into perspective. That giant slice of blue is composed of people who say, "But Android phones are for poor people! Of course I'll spend $1000 on a phone I'll use 1-2 years!"
    • tortasaur 8y ago
      No need to start a flame war. Also, considering the pie chart is Apple-only rather than having anything to do with market share, I don't get what Android has to do with anything.
    • PopsiclePete 8y ago
      I have 2 Android phones and a couple of IPhones lying around as well. One of the Androids, using sweet-cookie-icecream-sundae whatever version, has the camera app crash on startup pretty regularly. I'm sure "I'm a fool" for using the vendor-supplied crapware and not doing a fresh reinstall and rebuild with this one custom kernel XXX_sw33tH4x_69 put on that forum that uses gcc -03 optimizations, but no, I don't think Androids are for poor people per se, they're just for the same people who thought buying a Wintel laptop in '08 was a good decision. Yeah, it might work out of the box, and you might get "support" from your vendor for the next 6 months, but only if you're lucky. You also might get spyware, adware, and shitware that crashes and makes your CPU's heat up your living room 24/7/365. You never know. Androids are either for people who don't care, or for people who really really know what they're doing and can wipe/clean the OS - same people who bother with Linux at home because they like to tinker. I'm a tinkerer, so I get it, and it's why I have Androids - I'd just never depend on one. Otherwise - I have no idea why anyone would bother. I'll take that new IPhone for $1000 now, thanks.
• shmerl 8y ago
  > Megacompany sounds intimidating, but I perceive Apple to be quite tame. They mostly just make hardware. They cause enough damage to the industry by being crazy bent on lock-in. They are even worse than MS in this. And with more money, that damage will be only worse.
  • chosenbreed 8y ago
    Okay...but presumably people can just opt out of their products. They make an amazing amount of margin on the devices. A lot people know that and are more than happy to buy their products :-)
    • shmerl 8y ago
      > Okay...but presumably people can just opt out of their products. The damage will be simply passed to other users in the form of lock-in tax that developers will need to compensate. It's all interdependent.
• njarboe 8y ago
  Maybe congress could pass a bill to allow small companies/individuals to use the NSA data store. Sort of like how SBA grants work.
• gf263 8y ago
  You could make an iPhone clone, sure, but Apple is a fashion brand as well as a technology company
• monkeynotes 8y ago
  > If you could copy Apple's tech, you could (theoretically) make an iPhone-clone Apple's competitive edge isn't just its hardware, just as Google's competitive edge isn't just its software. Apple has decades of user research, hoards of talent, piles and piles of IP (patents etc.), mountains of cash and, yep, you bet they have data, huge warehouses of it. We haven't even mentioned the app-store ecosystem. You are about as able to compete with Apple as you are with Google et al. It's a different kind game, but make no mistake, taking on Apple isn't as simple as cloning their hardware.
  • jamra 8y ago
    The point is that the data google and Facebook carry are more frightening in scope of what control they have over your life.