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I mean, it's abundantly clear where their priorities are right now...and that's Services. I suppose Services make more money and please the stockholders, but da

• jeromegv 8y ago
  Your argument would make sense if services were not something paid by.... that same user base. If customers don’t buy into the services, you think this will bring money?
  • fetus8 8y ago
    If users don't pay for a service, the service provider doesn't make money...What's your point? Enough of Apple's user-base subscribe to their current service offerings, and will possibly subscribe to at least one of the new services as well. Unless the entire user-base protests and unsubscribes to every service on offer, they're most likely going to continue to make a profit off of these services, hence the focus on them. (The HN crowd is definitely not the target audience for these services, I am well aware.)
  • threeseed 8y ago
    Except consumers are buying these services. Apple isn't stupid you know. They wouldn't double down on this space if there wasn't money to be made. And given their huge success with Apple Music it's not unreasonable to assume they can do well in other areas.
• beams_of_light 8y ago
  Everyone's trying to get away from their niches, and into anything involving MRR or ad revenue with software & services. It's a sad state of affairs.
  • chrischen 8y ago
    Yea turning everything into a subscription is the hot stuff now, even if it makes no sense to be a subscription. My git client, password manager, have all become subscriptions! Why??
    • dwighttk 8y ago
      yeah, I'm never paying monthly for my password manager. Thankfully 1Password let me roll back, but I need to find a new way forward at some point. The funny thing is I'd probably be fine paying more every year or so than I would with a monthly fee.
      • macintux 8y ago
        You know 1Password offers a yearly subscription, right? I too didn’t think I’d switch to a subscription model for it, but it’s such useful software for so many purposes, and I’m very happy if it makes the company more sustainable. It’s hard to make money with software. I don’t begrudge them at all.
        • Dylan16807 8y ago
          It's not "I want the term to be yearly" it's "I would pay for permanent upgrades so they could still get money from me repeatedly without a subscription model" Subscriptions are fine as an offer for software that's getting significant new features all the time. But a password manager is the kind of code that barely needs any devs to keep going once it's already in a good state. And it's the kind of code where integrating an online killswitch is extremely dangerous. There's good reason to stay away from that combination.
          • chrischen 8y ago
            LastPass is also a subscription, but they technically have a free option as well which is not a subscription. At this point I'd buy any password manager that isn't a subscription, but in all likeliness I"ll just start using Apple keychain as it improves.
  • dwighttk 8y ago
    after a while it's hard to grow your niche... gotta jump into some other place you think you can grow... like cancer.