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The card is probably a good idea. No fee, simplicity, and convenience are good for the consumer. Only selling to Apple product users means a certain band of wea

The card is probably a good idea. No fee, simplicity, and convenience are good for the consumer. Only selling to Apple product users means a certain band of wealth and thereby lower default rates are implicitly targeted. It’s a good deal for both, especially for consumers who wouldn’t normally spend enough to earn something noteworthy or even positive against the card fee on better cards. News is also a pretty good deal if you like news... but yes, both are really boring. It seems like something interesting to apple investors, but not consumers. The games platform sounds both boring AND unlikely to do well

kristianc 8y ago
> The card is probably a good idea. No fee, simplicity, and convenience are good for the consumer. Only selling to Apple product users means a certain band of wealth and thereby lower default rates are implicitly targeted. The strategy may work in the US where the payments ecosystem is incredibly dated and backwards, but Apple Card is very much a me-too offering in nearly every other developed economy.
- servercobra 8y ago
  They have around 100 million iPhone users in the US, so that seems like a very reasonable market to target, even if no one outside the US ever uses it.
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
>The games platform sounds both boring AND unlikely to do well I'm not sure, the whole in-app purchase thing is a bit of a mess. I could imagine parents subscribing just to keep their kids out of that cesspit.
- kristianc 8y ago
  > I could imagine parents subscribing just to keep their kids out of that cesspit. I can see parents resenting subscribing just to keep their kids out of that cesspit.
- doctorpangloss 8y ago
  Apple hasn’t cared about games for a long time, and it hasn’t really started caring now. For example, virtual slot machines, which make up something like 9% of the top grossing charts, are the biggest IAP offenders. They’re bad for gaming, they’re like the virus of the industry. If Apple wanted to, it could just remove them from the store in an afternoon. The platforms that don’t run virtual slot machines tend to host the biggest achievements in gaming critically and financially. That would appear to be, in a narrow and uninteresting way, the Epic Games Launcher, or the PlayStation store hosting GTA. How does Apple have the store for devices as powerful as and more numerous than the Switch, and yet can’t host more than a few critical and financial successes a year? It’s the culture, duh. It’s not the business model. That’s why subscriptions are kind of stupid.
- hizanberg 8y ago
  I’m definitely one of them, I refuse to play any IAP games as I view them as a Trojan virus social engineering experiment (masquerading as a game) designed to trick you into maximizing their IAP revenue. An IAP-free game subscription is exactly what I’m looking for and the only thing I’ll be letting my kids play when they come of age.
- b_tterc_p 8y ago
  Is it confirmed that Apple will forbid in app purchases? Because otherwise I wouldn’t see any reason to expect this.
  - aaronbrager 8y ago
    Yes

kristianc 8y ago

> The card is probably a good idea. No fee, simplicity, and convenience are good for the consumer. Only selling to Apple product users means a certain band of wealth and thereby lower default rates are implicitly targeted. The strategy may work in the US where the payments ecosystem is incredibly dated and backwards, but Apple Card is very much a me-too offering in nearly every other developed economy.

servercobra 8y ago
They have around 100 million iPhone users in the US, so that seems like a very reasonable market to target, even if no one outside the US ever uses it.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago

>The games platform sounds both boring AND unlikely to do well I'm not sure, the whole in-app purchase thing is a bit of a mess. I could imagine parents subscribing just to keep their kids out of that cesspit.

kristianc 8y ago
> I could imagine parents subscribing just to keep their kids out of that cesspit. I can see parents resenting subscribing just to keep their kids out of that cesspit.
doctorpangloss 8y ago
Apple hasn’t cared about games for a long time, and it hasn’t really started caring now. For example, virtual slot machines, which make up something like 9% of the top grossing charts, are the biggest IAP offenders. They’re bad for gaming, they’re like the virus of the industry. If Apple wanted to, it could just remove them from the store in an afternoon. The platforms that don’t run virtual slot machines tend to host the biggest achievements in gaming critically and financially. That would appear to be, in a narrow and uninteresting way, the Epic Games Launcher, or the PlayStation store hosting GTA. How does Apple have the store for devices as powerful as and more numerous than the Switch, and yet can’t host more than a few critical and financial successes a year? It’s the culture, duh. It’s not the business model. That’s why subscriptions are kind of stupid.
hizanberg 8y ago
I’m definitely one of them, I refuse to play any IAP games as I view them as a Trojan virus social engineering experiment (masquerading as a game) designed to trick you into maximizing their IAP revenue. An IAP-free game subscription is exactly what I’m looking for and the only thing I’ll be letting my kids play when they come of age.
b_tterc_p 8y ago
Is it confirmed that Apple will forbid in app purchases? Because otherwise I wouldn’t see any reason to expect this.
- aaronbrager 8y ago
  Yes