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Apple's Reinvention as a Services Company Starts for Real Monday
- ilovecaching 8y agoI wonder if now is a good time to short some Netflix stock.
- elektor 8y agoYes, both Netflix and Spotify are in a tough position where their rivals (Apple and Amazon) have a much larger war chest to chip away at the market leaders of both movies and music streaming.
- scarface74 8y agoSpotify is in a much worse competitive position than Netflix. Nothing separates Spotify from Apple Music. Any competitor can license music from all of the music providers. There is no reason for most people to keep both Spotify and Apple Music. Netflix has spent years negotiating TV rights to third party content and releasing its own. Apple has a long way to go.
- com2kid 8y ago> Any competitor can license music from all of the music providers. There is no reason for most people to keep both Spotify and Apple Music. Android is 81% of the US market. Unless Apple Music comes to android, I don't see Spotify being threatened.
- jkestner 8y agoConsider them threatened. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.android.music https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.andr...
- scarface74 8y agoDone https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.android.music&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.andr... Android may be “81%” of the market but then you have to subtract China and you have to take into account where the paying customers are. Apple has more than half the number of paying customers with a much smaller phone market share (https://www.cultofmac.com/605166/spotify-now-has-96-million-paying-subscribers/ https://www.cultofmac.com/605166/spotify-now-has-96-million-...) It’s well known that Android users don’t spend nearly as much as iOS users.
- saagarjha 8y agoApple Music is available on Android and the web. It’s not a “walled” service like iMessage or FaceTime is.
- ValentineC 8y ago> It’s not a “walled” service like iMessage or FaceTime is. Steve Jobs promised that FaceTime would be open source… eventually: https://www.cnet.com/news/steve-jobs-promised-to-make-facetime-open-source-its-time/ https://www.cnet.com/news/steve-jobs-promised-to-make-faceti... Any time now.
- saagarjha 8y agoIt’s walled because of patent litigation with VirnetX, not because Apple wanted to keep it walled.
- joegahona 8y ago> _Nothing separates Spotify from Apple Music._ Does Apple Music have something similar (or as good as) Spotify Discover? That's a differentiator for sure.
- chipotle_coyote 8y agoI think Apple Music is good for discovery. Probably not as good, but for many of us it hits the "good enough" mark. I confess I'm an Apple Music subscriber mostly because I'm just in that ecosystem, and it's relatively low effort; I'm also a Tidal subscriber because it was the only service integrated with Roon (a music server package I use), although I'm still debating that one.
- scarface74 8y agoSomething similar. Yes. I’ve heard that it wasn’t as good. But is that something you would want to base your company on? It’s just like Facebook stopped the growth of Snapchat just by introducing Stories. There are literally almost two decades of failures in the streaming subscription music space. Like Jobs said about DropBox. Streaming music is becoming a feature not a product.
- Despegar 8y agoNo you should short the companies that can't hack it in a DTC world. Netflix isn't a good a target for that. Both Netflix and Apple's service will grow for a long time to come.
- kbenson 8y agoThat depends on whether you think Netflix has successfully transitioned into a network. They release a huge amount of original content now. If I had any apple devices, I would be more likely to drop HBONOW or Hulu than Netflix, and since I pay for all three I'm sort of the target audience (except for the whole no iPhone/iPad thing, which is also probably something they should think about).
- ilovecaching 8y agoA lot of my friends and family are ready to give up their Netflix subs. We've seen most of what interests us. Apple on the other hand has unlimited supplies of money and more power to make deals with content providers.
- kbenson 8y ago> We've seen most of what interests us. What about all the original content?
- ilovecaching 8y agoTBH a lot of it isn't that good. We also like watching a lot of reruns or series that we already care about.
- awad 8y agoAnecdote of one: I have all three as well. As the days go by, I find myself questioning if Netflix is still worth it as I'm not necessarily a big fan of a lot of their original content and think HBO seems to do a better job in licensing the movies I'm interested in (to say nothing of their amazing original content). I think at this point I only keep Netflix around out of habit as it's something I share with family and will myself occasionally indulge in some older licensed TV programs not on Hulu.
- kbenson 8y agoHBO has some big-ticket items, but Netflix is more consistent in dropping new series for me to try. It's still my go-to place for content since there's more than I have time to watch. I just looked up their list of original content[1] for refresh my mind, and quite a few were extremely good in my opinion. - House of Cards: I only got a little into the second season before I got busy, but what I saw was high quality and interesting. - Orange is the new Black: My wife still loves this series - Stranger Things: An honest to god phenomenon. The second season was weaker IMO, but I'm not sure how it could be as good as the first. That's a high bar to hit. - The Crown: I caught a lot of it as my wife watched. Pretty good, even if a blond Doctor Who was somewhat distracting. - A Series of Unfortunate Events: The kids liked this, as some of them are going through the books. - Altered Carbon: Refreshingly good science fiction. Main character casting a little odd, since it's more obvious now than it was when I was younger how odd and slightly off-putting it is to cast someone with the physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a science fiction lead. At the same time, it's now fitting (or a trope) because of all the science fiction he helmed in the 1990's. - Lost in Space: Interesting, but ultimately spoiled slightly by the contrived plot. Better writing and this would have been extremely good rather than worth watching, but slightly disappointing. - The Haunting: A nice interweaving of stories, and creepy series. I liked the ending. I have friends who didn't. That's just from the drama section of the list. There's plenty in the other sections too, such as Maniac and Russian Dolls which I watched recently that were good, and documentary section has a bunch of good things I've seen as well. Some of he Marvel series' were pretty good too (season one of Jessica Jones was excellent on so many levels). That's a small fraction of what they released. Looking at the list now, there's no way I would cancel Netflix before Hulu, and probably HBO also. There's things I want to watch on those (for different reasons), but now that I examine it, it's clear that I use and value what Netflix is giving me way more than the other two. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_distributed_by_Netflix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_dist...
- chx 8y agoDangerous. OTOH if someone did the "buy the day after the dip" and "sell the day after the next peak" then they'd bought Netflix stock on Dec 27, 2018 at 250.11 and sold at Jan 09, 2019 at 317.71 -- it's 25% in two weeks...
- prewett 8y agoHow would someone actually do that? The only way to identify the dips and peaks is N days afterwards, where larger N increase the confidence of that it really was the max/min.
- whatshisface 8y ago>This service will combine stories from newspapers, websites, and magazines into a new tab in the Apple News app on iPhones, iPads, and Macs. >Apple plans to charge about $10 a month. Is it just me, or is there no way this could possibly be worth it? Hacker News and Reddit already combine stories from newspapers and websites, and they do it for free. I have a hard time believing that a managed source selected from a few business partners could possibly be as valuable as a crowd-driven scan across the entire internet.
- Despegar 8y agoHacker News and Reddit don't license content from the WSJ, which is why every story has some guy in the comments with a link to outline.com that pirates the article.
- closeparen 8y agoIIRC It includes access to paywalled articles, at a substantial discount to buying a subscription to each paywall separately.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoBrilliant and the only thing left, short of another iPhone reinvention miracle (not likely for a while.) Many of us have 10 year old PCs that do 100% of the things we need, smartphones are going that way too. So milk the ecosystem.
- gisely 8y agoSo rent seeking is brilliant?
- merpnderp 8y agoThere’s no lockin, regulatory or otherwise. This is just plane old offering something people want in exchange for money.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoSo selling a phone that costs $200 for $800 is brilliant? --Yeah. Brilliant in the money making way. (Ethics we can debate tomorrow, until the cows come home.)
- tyfon 8y ago> The company would collect these monthly fees, then divide up the revenue between developers based on how much time users spend playing their games Sounds terrible for short indie games and good for long grindy games. That's not a future I want for my gaming. Not that I am an apple customer in the first place but hopefully this won't affect what is delivered on the other platforms.
- usaphp 8y agoWell technically it takes less time and tesources to develop a short indie game vs a long game, so it’s reasonable that they will get more money. Also If a long game is boring nobody will play it longer than it’s worth
- badsectoracula 8y agoI see you do not know about JRPGs :-P.
- zrm 8y agoThat's not true. It's trivial to create a game that will take arbitrarily long to win by just increasing the number of times the user has to perform the same task in order to advance. That is a trade off against being boring, but having developers optimize games to explicitly be as time consuming as possible and just not-boring enough that you don't quit them in disgust is not really a helpful incentive.
- seanwilson 8y ago> Sounds terrible for short indie games and good for long grindy games. What would be a good system to determine a fair amount between games when a user is paying a fixed amount per month for all games? You could ask for ratings (e.g. overall, originality) but these will be a lot more nuanced than time spent. You could ask users what split between games they think is fair (feels like a lot to ask especially if you're playing a lot of games).
- duncanawoods 8y ago
- msoad 8y agoif Apple combines Music, News and TV subscriptions into one payment that's competitive with sum of those subscriptions it's huge! I would probably drop Spotify and get Apple Music if I can save me money and give me more access to content. Uh, if it works with their Family Sharing plans it would be golden!
- joegahona 8y agoI think that’s the key to this thing’s success. There’s no way enough people are going to pay $120 per year for newspaper/magazine articles to make it worthwhile for publishers or for users.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoAFAIK Texture was doing quite well.
- joegahona 8y agoI’d be curious where you got that information. Everything I’ve read has sounded simliar to this: https://adage.com/article/digital/greedy-apple-half-publishing-subscription-sales/316619/ https://adage.com/article/digital/greedy-apple-half-publishi... > The skeptical publishers point to the original Texture—it didn't work--as proof the concept is shaky. The publishers say the revenue was meager, and the app itself sputtered through several incarnations before being sold off to Apple.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoWhich publishers? Texture was owned by publishers. In 2016 it was doing quite well (remember this is publishing money and not tech VC money. Success in publishing does not look the same in dollars as success does in SV tech): https://nypost.com/2016/06/21/the-netflix-of-magazines-is-about-to-get-a-lot-bigger/ https://nypost.com/2016/06/21/the-netflix-of-magazines-is-ab... Apple bought Texture this time last year and then it spread they had planned their own news platform. It's no surprise they were scaling back Texture as a company.
- ksec 8y agoI continue to wonder why they don't have or push iPhone as a Services ( The iPhone Upgrade Programme ) and continue to rely on mostly Carriers for Financing. By offering iPhone up to a 4 years terms and bundled with AppleCare+ Thief and Loss and iCloud Backup. With Optional Apple Music, Apple News Magazine, Apple TV and Apple Game. All paid via an Apple Branded Credit Card within Apple Pay backed by Goldman Sachs. You could have the iPhone Services starting at ~$35/Month even for an iPhone XS Max. If you add up all the other "Services" pack. That is roughly $75/month for the Full Apple Experience. ~$40 to even $100 a month is affordable to a lot of people. And my guess this could be part of the reason why Apple has been pushing the prices of iPhone. There is another advantage to Apple, this strategy requires huge cash flow and can not be easily copied by its competitor. Apple would be effectively trading its immediate return of cash from selling product for long term customer lock in.
- pmalynin 8y agoHuh, I dont know where you are, but here in the States I got my iPhone through 0% financing (amortized over 2 years) program that allows you to get a new phone every year and comes bundled with AppleCare+
- ksec 8y agoThe iPhone upgrade Programme which I presume is what you are referring to are not popular outside US, and Apple barely advertise about it. ( Which is why I said push in the original sentence ) And it is only available in selected countries and under some condition.
- toyg 8y agoI evaluated it here in UK and it just didn't make sense for me. It was very expensive -- slightly less than buying a phone every year, but much more than doing it every two-three years.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
- dfee 8y agoI might replace my FT sub with this. Only one datapoint though. But I’ll sub day 1.
- mrweasel 8y agoOn the other hand there no way that I'd cancel my subscription to The Economists paper edition for a digital only solution. I suppose I'm not the target audience for Apple. Reading the news is something I do away from digital device. It helps me practise focusing and it helps me to relax.
- joegahona 8y ago> Apple News: This service will combine stories from newspapers, websites, and magazines into a new tab in the Apple News app on iPhones, iPads, and Macs. I still don’t understand how this is any different from what’s happening in the Apple News app right now, other than it will cost $10 per month starting on Monday and is now free. Also, the Texture app requires that you _download_ issues of magazines, whereas magazines on Apple News are currently instantaneous.
- intopieces 8y agoAccess to paywalled content for a single fee.
- joegahona 8y agoMaybe... one other possibility here: https://venturebeat.com/2019/03/14/how-much-can-apple-charge-for-video-news-and-bundled-services/ https://venturebeat.com/2019/03/14/how-much-can-apple-charge... > But there’s always the possibility that Apple starts with an “all you can eat monthly magazines” tier, then adds a pricier “all you can eat monthly magazines plus daily paywalled news” tier. This could give newspapers a way to make more money from the service — a reported sticking point to participation from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.
- yuchi 8y agoI had the hardest time parsing the title. For a moment I thought it was talking about a new company, from apple, specialized in digital transformation or similar (“Reinvention as a Service”)
- mclightning 8y agoI felt the same thing, I thought Real Monday was like a service they are starting lol
- joegahona 8y agoWhich is why journalists and copy editors shouldn't remove "on" before every occurrence of a weekday.
- anongraddebt 8y agoPerhaps I'm overly critical, but I find most paywalled journalism (let alone non-paywalled) to be low-quality. I had a subscription to The Information, and while I initially found their journalism to be high-quality, I eventually realized this perception was strongly shaped by my experience of pervasive low-quality journalism elsewhere. I cancelled my subscription because while The Information was better than pretty much anything else, it still didn't seem high-quality (more moderate-quality). Is there anything that surpasses the quality of The Economist in this environment?* *(not that The Economist is clearly non-relatively high-quality)
- bnastic 8y agoI pay for The Times and find them quite good. I agree and disagree with their columnists in equal measure, but I see them as honest(ly trying). The Economist, on the other hand, I’ve ditched after many years. Not worth it anymore. Tech news I don’t pay for and don’t expect I ever will (LWN excluded, I’ve been a paying member for years). Majority have no idea what they are talking about anymore and are just holding on for dear life in this ever changing landscape (like most Apple bloggers, for example).
- pembrook 8y agoYea the information is probably the highest quality tech news out there (that publishes with volume), but I agree it often falls into regurgitating the same narratives everybody else is talking about with zero added value. I’ve come to realize the only journalism worth paying for comes from exceptional individual writers who are allowed to write about whatever they find interesting (and have something unique to say). Ben Thompson’s Stratechery fits into this category and is often the only person writing about tech who brings unique thinking and new perspective to whatever the topic of the day is.
- subdane 8y agoIf Apple's going to be a services company now, wouldn't it be great if they kept themselves honest (and their products great) by honoring a level playing field for the services they compete with e.g. Spotify? Imagine if services like iCloud, Pages and Mail were comparable to or better than the existing product landscape? Apple's been holding themselves to too low a standard for too long. Maps was a wakeup call for them, it'd be cool if they lit a fire like that across the board for their products.
- stcredzero 8y agoIf Apple's going to be a services company now, wouldn't it be great if they kept themselves honest (and their products great) by honoring a level playing field for the services they compete with e.g. Spotify? I think this sentence speaks for itself. Apple's record on whether they will discourage competitors on their own turf speaks for itself. Maps was a wakeup call for them, it'd be cool if they lit a fire like that across the board for their products. True, but the tendency is for people and companies to push it out of their minds as an "aberration" and refuse to learn a thing.
- on_and_off 8y agoThey have no incentive to keep themselves honest. I have worked on a music streaming service for a while and our iOS app was a big pain. We often had months long gaps where we were unable to get an update published. The good thing about Google being this unfocused is that they are unable to do even think about doing the same and favor Play Music or whatever they are calling it now .. again, they are not strong on focus. I kinda hope that at some point publishing an app will be considered an utility so it can't be so easily gamed by the platform owner.
- jelling 8y agoThey should, they won't, and either they won't be successful with services, or they will, and it will lead to an anti-trust lawsuit. But the company is just too big to move the needle any other way.
- minimaxir 8y agoOf all the potential announcements, the gaming service is the most curious. Like the just-announced Google Stadia, this 100% depends on the games offered, and the cost of the service itself. $10/month for $5 premium iOS games (which go on sale very frequently) is a hard value proposition to other services like Xbox Game Pass which have $60 games for the same monthly price. If they do bundle it with News/Music, now that would be interesting.
- jordache 8y agohaha stupid ass Apple's 2 factor authentication, provides the pin number on the same machine that I'm authenticating on. These people do not know services.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Apocryphon 8y ago> The service will focus on original content, including TV shows and movies from producers such as Damien Chazelle, M. Night Shyamalan, and Oprah. Makes one wonder if they will show a teaser for the Asimov's Foundation show.
- bsaul 8y agoFunny how an announcement looks different depending on the slope of your income. Apple reaching new markets vs apple « reinventing itself » is a complete different story. Apple makes great devices and can leverage that to conquer service subscription, but I don’t think anyone has been impressed by apple online services or technologies on their own merits...
- TheSoftwareGuy 8y ago>I don’t think anyone has been impressed by apple online services or technologies on their own merits... I disagree with that. iMessage is perhaps the best IM service out there. iCloud works seeessly across devices, in a way im not sure any other cloud storage solution does
- adamson 8y agoI imagine it’s a lot easier to integrate your storage service with devices when you have the freedom to change the storage APIs on said devices as you see fit
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoNever let it be said that vertical integration is without significant benefits :-)
- bsaul 8y agoiMessage is the only IM platform where i’m never sure if the person has actually received my message, if he’ll be able to respond to me, and where group conversation fork half the time into split conversations between members of the group. All this because they tried to transparently merge phone number and icloud account as well as SMS and internet messages. Between people that may or may not be using iOS , icloud, or imessage ( or any combination of the above). As for icloud, i suppose you’ve never ran out of space as a user, nor as a developer have you tried syncing a core data db or keychain custom data over that service. I’ve been developping on iOS since iOS 3 and i still can’t give you a good forecast on how syncing will work in practice.
- golemotron 8y agoGreat. We are the product now.
- bitxbit 8y agoThis is basically the cable TV model for the modern age, no?
- necubi 8y agoTo me, the clear indication that they're serious about this transition to services will be making them available on third-party devices. Android has ~55% market share in the US, and >80% globally. Roku has 35% of the smart TV market (through both their dedicated devices and TV integrations), Apple has ~15%. A video streaming service that's only available on iOS and Apple TV will be inevitably niche, and no real competition for Netflix. This also means they will likely have to pay a premium for content (and a _much_ larger amount per user) as creators will prefer to be on platforms where more people will see their work. But ultimately, supporting Android and 3rd party streaming devices goes against Apple's DNA. Apple still sees itself as a hardware company, and software and services exist to give people reasons to buy their hardware.
- andor 8y ago"To me, the clear indication that they're serious about this transition to services will be making them available on third-party devices" This just happened: "Apple is putting iTunes on Samsung TVs" - https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/6/18170797/samsung-2019-tvs-itunes-support-airplay-2 https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/6/18170797/samsung-2019-tvs-...
- CharlesW 8y ago> This just happened: Yep! Other examples include the Apple Music service and the AirPlay 2 protocol, both of which are available on multiple non-Apple platforms.
- AsyncAwait 8y agoAs far as I am aware AirPlay 2 is only licenseable for the receiver end of the protocol, not the transmitter part.
- chipotle_coyote 8y agoThat's a big—and new—step for Apple, and I'm sure it's connected to the video service. They don't want it to be "Apple product exclusive," even if I'm sure they'd rather you use Apple products to watch it. But Apple hasn't ever been quite as exclusive as they're painted to be when it comes to peripherals and services. They've had iTunes on Windows for a very long time (yes, it's kind of a trash fire, but it's still there), and that was mostly to support the iPod. They have iCloud for Windows. Apple Music has an Android app, is supported by Sonos and Amazon Alexa, and even has a web-based API (no official "cloud player," but there's an open source one out there which Apple knows about and is apparently okay with as long as it doesn't use the word "Apple" in its name). And, of course, a lot of non-Apple products can receive AirPlay, and they appear to have gotten fairly aggressive in the last few months at moving AirPlay 2 into the third-party market. So, Apple Services have been on third-party devices for years; they've just historically been a lot less enthusiastic about it than companies like Spotify and Amazon have been. I would expect to see them be way more enthusiastic from here on.
- gonyea 8y agoApple has completely lost its way under Cook that it’s now just rent seeking. They’re just scrambling to fill a $$$ hole for their investors at this point. Apple is incredibly bad at building services and has been for their entire existence. They cannot multi-task and things will languish for 2-3 years at a time.
- gonyea 8y agoLmao at every critical Apple comment getting downvotes. What Apple service routinely gets feature enhancements every year? Apple cannot walk and chew gum at the same time.
- true_tuna 8y agoService from a company that presents two options “yes” and “[nag] me again later” Fuck Apple. Any company that takes its users ability to say “no” is not worth our attention.
- Stratoscope 8y agoiPaas.
- zmmmmm 8y agoOne interesting question is how viable this can be if they continue their strategy of differentiation through privacy. Doing "services" for people intrinsically means knowing about them. What they watch, what they read, what they listen to, what they need, who they are. The more you know, the better you can "service" them. By pursuing this path they may quickly find themselves sucked into a slipperly slope that puts them into conflict with the primary identity they've tried to build up. You can see it already starting: > divide up the revenue between developers based on how much time users spend playing their games So they're going to spy on their users, huh? Of course, it's perfectly innocent, but they will quickly find that with deeper metrics they can better model what games to fund, etc etc. And before you know it they'll have a tab in their account page just like Google with a list as long as your arm of all the things they know about you.
- blihp 8y agoTake the marketing pitch with a grain of salt. They've been keeping track of aggregate usage data pretty much from the beginning. Also, they already have to keep track of things like which apps/music/movies you have bought for accounting purposes at the very least. For subscriptions they most likely also have to track consumption (i.e. per access data) for royalty/revenue share payments. I remember a story from the tail end of the Jobs era when they were trying to get their ad network going that their sales force was using as a selling point to advertisers the fact that they had metrics such as how many minutes a day users spent using various apps etc. They just don't share this data outside of Apple and also (according to their public statements) don't access the private data that you create.
- toufka 8y agoI think society is okay with some knowledge about individuals. And that information is valuable. But it's still unclear where the line gets drawn that becomes creepy and inverts its value. If you have the corporate structure and policies to be able to draw an arbitrary line, you're likely better suited to capture long-term value than if you have no line at all and willingly scrape all data just to have it (ie, Facebook/Google). So, Apple having aggregate data is interesting, because it's certainly a monetization, but if they're truly honest and statistically aggregate numbers, I think that might be a fantastic strategy.
- GeekyBear 8y agoApple has long provided free services to the people who buy Apple hardware while selling the content that they have to pay to license from other content owners (while taking a cut of the sale). So far, I'm not seeing a change in their business model so much as im seeing a change in how much focus is placed on the profitability of the latter. If the rumors prove true and the streaming video content they produce in house will be free to those with Apple devices, but content they license from others costs money (with Apple taking a cut), this will definitely be Apple remaining true to form.
- torstenvl 8y agoApple has almost always been a services company. It's deeply sad that its current leadership doesn't understand that. The only difference is that the service Apple used to provide was a friction-free experience on its platform. It feels like the current Apple doesn't think of product experience as a service, with amortized costs built into the purchase price. In their eyes, at least insofar as it seems from my perspective, the relationship stops as soon as you decide to buy the product. Maybe a limited relationship exists afterward, if you buy AppleCare. But they don't seem to care one whit if the experience on their product sucks. Increasingly, Apple software argues with you instead of adopting the philosophy of "it just works." I'm extremely unlikely to pay Apple for a content service, given its current track record of user-hostility.
- liquidify 8y agoTheir products are stagnating because they are less robust and more expensive. The value just isn't there compared to some of golden era hardware. Obviously services can help them grow, but as user of apple laptops, I've felt abandoned for quite a while now. Their growth in those fields are stagnating because their price / quality ratio has reduced significantly.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tyingq 8y agoArticle is paywalled for me. Are these streaming services going to be usable with non-Apple devices?
- gjvc 8y agoAlan Kay once remarked “I don't know what Silicon Valley will do when it runs out of Doug's ideas."
- projectileboy 8y ago+1 - feels like a once great product company is now taking its strategy cues from market analysts.
- pavs 8y agoLast I checked, Apple is still the biggest company in the world in market cap. They are also on the very top in terms of revenue and profit.
- wayneftw 8y agoBoth things can be true. Fortunes do rise and fall. Microsoft used to be the 800 pound Gorilla and now they're not. Personally, I hope they waste a huge amount of money on this push and fail miserably. I also hope they lose their anti-trust case and get forced to play fair because you certainly cannot hope to make any money in the smartphone app market while ignoring Apple/iOS. They do have a monopoly on paying customers as someone else in this thread pointed out.
- tanilama 8y agoBut if I am not an iOS device owner, what incentive do I have to use Apple's services? Currently I see none.
- amelius 8y agoIt would be fun if the EU enforced something like the browser ballot screen, giving users choice of content provider on Apple devices. It also makes sense from an environmental perspective: why have two different devices when you can view all content on one.
- gjvc 8y agoFrom the article "The company has only used the Steve Jobs Theater at its new headquarters twice since it opened two years ago." Something is in decline at Apple.
- spiralganglion 8y agoThey use it for internal events all the time.
- hartator 8y agoStill hoping for the ARM Macbook insteal of Netflix made by Apple.
- patrickg_zill 8y agoThey certainly haven't been focused on designing Macintosh hardware... Isn't the Pro level version of their desktop offering, essentially unchanged for the past 5 years?
- jedberg 8y agoThey're gonna need a huge internal cultural shift if this is going to work. Their entire company is built around hardware. Services are "just good enough". No one buys an iPhone because of the services offered -- you buy the services because you already have the iPhone and it works better than the third party services. But I don't know anyone who adores the Apple services. Or to put it another way, even if they offered the Apple services on non-apple devices, I doubt many people who don't already have an Apple device would sign up. Their services make money in spite of how they work, not because of it. If they want to compete on services, they actually have to make good services and prioritize them internally.
- hug 8y agoOn the other hand, if all of the services are “good enough” that they become the default option for every iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV, that’s a very healthy user base from which to progress. That said, Apple service excel in certain ways: Apple Music with Sound Check, for example, is easily the best sounding mobile music streaming. iCloud Drive is the most seamless internet storage account for mobile devices.
- tootie 8y agoDo they have any iconic software that wasn't appropriated from NeXT? Keynote is pretty good. Everything else is either awful or basic.
- verisimilidude 8y agoPages was excellent during the 00s. Then it wasn't. They removed much of its power in one of the annual updates. I think it happened in concert with the launch of their iOS version of Pages. Fortunately many of those discarded concepts found their way into LibreOffice. I know a lot of people feel the same way about Final Cut.
- jedberg 8y agoKeynote is fantastic. But it’s not an internet service.
- FailMore 8y agoI think Apple should have been bolder a long time ago. It should be the case that with Apple you get (near) global 4G/5G coverage on all their devices. So you take your laptop out in Spain and snap you’re online. Apples hardware is their bread and butter. I think they need to view it as their amazon prime... as in make a services ecosystem which means you want to stay using their hardware instead of just adding paid subscription services to their existing offering.
- mark_l_watson 8y agoI am reading a different Bloomberg article right now on this subject https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-22/apple-s-new-services-come-with-built-in-conflicts https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-22/apple-... I am 100% sure (infinitely sure!) that I will sign up for Apple’s service to try it out and I am ‘almost sure’ that Apple will face a lot of regulatory and legal challenges. By personal preference I would like to see more open platforms and, off topic for this conversation, a more distributed web. I don’t think we will get there though. Years ago author William Gibson probably ‘got it right’ in predicting what the future will be like: corporations become all-powerful, governments become a joke if they exist at all, and talented people align themself with a corporation as we self identify now as the citizen of a country.