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I love backblaze too - but I don’t know why Apple haven’t copied their business out of existence (for apple users at least) The original backblaze was literall

I love backblaze too - but I don’t know why Apple haven’t copied their business out of existence (for apple users at least) The original backblaze was literally Time Machine in the cloud.

ahartmetz 5y ago
Presumably because Backblaze's margins are far too low for Apple, so Apple would have to do "Backblaze, but overpriced", which could look bad - or be content with low margin.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  I'm curious about Apple's cloud strategy. "Cloud, but only for iUsers" seems... weird, from a scaling perspective? Granted, there are more Apple device customers than any other possible bucket, but is it enough to drive economies down to the point of competing on cloud pricing? And if not, then they're still stealing iDevice margin to price cloud competitively.
  - jonplackett 5y ago
    I think their plan is to just always make a little bit more from every hardware customer Plus, to make their hardware more attractive by having that service available. Storing backups is probably also quite cheap to do since the data would be infrequently accessed. You don’t need fancy ssds. Cheapo hard drives will be fine.
  - ksec 5y ago
    > but is it enough to drive economies down to the point of competing on cloud pricing? More than Enough. When you have 1 Billion iPhone customer who are also in the highest paying basket. The purchasing power is likely over 50% of the total market. As similarly shown in App Store market. The problem is Apple has always had an Asset Light strategy. Keeping many Datacenter of Storage running just isn't their thing. That is why they are still relying on Azure, AWS for iCloud Storage. >And if not, then they're still stealing iDevice margin to price cloud competitively. Currently the iCloud Services ( or in fact all Services Revenue ) are masked by App Store profit and Google's Search Engine Deal. i.e most of their other Services like Apple Music, iCloud, News+ are low margin business but are used to dilute down their extremely high margin profits from App Store and Search Engine.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      Absolutely, Apple can charge $1.5 for something everyone else can charge $1 for, but I was looking it from a cost of goods sold perspective, instead of pricing power. If it costs them $1.25, and everyone else can do it for $0.75 because they have scale and capital... that doesn't seem long-term stable. If one cloud provider becomes dominant, Apple loses. If Apple loses market share, they lose negotiation power, and Apple loses. The only way Apple wins is if cloud stays a multi-polar race AND Apple stays cloud-portable AND Apple retains significant market share AND cloud stays commoditized. I'm not saying it's a bad bet (I'm sure Wall Street loves the resulting financials), but it does seem like a dangerous long term strategy, if cloud becomes more of product.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - ksec 5y ago
        >If one cloud provider becomes dominant, Apple loses. Apple has been basically funding Azure Expansion. Microsoft needed Apple to scale their Cloud business in a multi-year contract. And Apple using Microsoft to drive AWS price down. I think for one reason or another ( politics, strategic, or technical ) they have avoided GCP. Apple also partner with other Cloud Services Provider in different Region. And they are doing exactly what you described as Multi Cloud. Even their CDN are split between Akamai, ( used to be Limestone and they switch to something else I cant remember ) and their own. I would not be surprised if their next move is to fund Cloudflare R2 Storage services. ( Once it becomes mature enough )
        mkr-hn 5y ago
        It's an interesting turn. Microsoft invested $150 million to save Apple long ago, now Apple is investing in Microsoft's services platform as they both try to transition into services companies.
- dandellion 5y ago
  If anything that would be a good reason for them to do it. "X, but overpriced" is Apple's niche.

I love backblaze too - but I don’t know why Apple haven’t copied their business out of existence (for apple users at least) The original backblaze was literally Time Machine in the cloud.

ahartmetz 5y ago

Presumably because Backblaze's margins are far too low for Apple, so Apple would have to do "Backblaze, but overpriced", which could look bad - or be content with low margin.

ethbr0 5y ago
I'm curious about Apple's cloud strategy. "Cloud, but only for iUsers" seems... weird, from a scaling perspective? Granted, there are more Apple device customers than any other possible bucket, but is it enough to drive economies down to the point of competing on cloud pricing? And if not, then they're still stealing iDevice margin to price cloud competitively.
- jonplackett 5y ago
  I think their plan is to just always make a little bit more from every hardware customer Plus, to make their hardware more attractive by having that service available. Storing backups is probably also quite cheap to do since the data would be infrequently accessed. You don’t need fancy ssds. Cheapo hard drives will be fine.
- ksec 5y ago
  > but is it enough to drive economies down to the point of competing on cloud pricing? More than Enough. When you have 1 Billion iPhone customer who are also in the highest paying basket. The purchasing power is likely over 50% of the total market. As similarly shown in App Store market. The problem is Apple has always had an Asset Light strategy. Keeping many Datacenter of Storage running just isn't their thing. That is why they are still relying on Azure, AWS for iCloud Storage. >And if not, then they're still stealing iDevice margin to price cloud competitively. Currently the iCloud Services ( or in fact all Services Revenue ) are masked by App Store profit and Google's Search Engine Deal. i.e most of their other Services like Apple Music, iCloud, News+ are low margin business but are used to dilute down their extremely high margin profits from App Store and Search Engine.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Absolutely, Apple can charge $1.5 for something everyone else can charge $1 for, but I was looking it from a cost of goods sold perspective, instead of pricing power. If it costs them $1.25, and everyone else can do it for $0.75 because they have scale and capital... that doesn't seem long-term stable. If one cloud provider becomes dominant, Apple loses. If Apple loses market share, they lose negotiation power, and Apple loses. The only way Apple wins is if cloud stays a multi-polar race AND Apple stays cloud-portable AND Apple retains significant market share AND cloud stays commoditized. I'm not saying it's a bad bet (I'm sure Wall Street loves the resulting financials), but it does seem like a dangerous long term strategy, if cloud becomes more of product.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - ksec 5y ago
      >If one cloud provider becomes dominant, Apple loses. Apple has been basically funding Azure Expansion. Microsoft needed Apple to scale their Cloud business in a multi-year contract. And Apple using Microsoft to drive AWS price down. I think for one reason or another ( politics, strategic, or technical ) they have avoided GCP. Apple also partner with other Cloud Services Provider in different Region. And they are doing exactly what you described as Multi Cloud. Even their CDN are split between Akamai, ( used to be Limestone and they switch to something else I cant remember ) and their own. I would not be surprised if their next move is to fund Cloudflare R2 Storage services. ( Once it becomes mature enough )
      - mkr-hn 5y ago
        It's an interesting turn. Microsoft invested $150 million to save Apple long ago, now Apple is investing in Microsoft's services platform as they both try to transition into services companies.
dandellion 5y ago
If anything that would be a good reason for them to do it. "X, but overpriced" is Apple's niche.