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Apple is on the way to having the same problem as Facebook - becoming an uncool brand for older people. The under-30s increasingly care about climate change an

Apple is on the way to having the same problem as Facebook - becoming an uncool brand for older people. The under-30s increasingly care about climate change and other more immediate threats. Unless they have Type 1 diabetes, blood glucose is not an issue for them. Apple under Jobs did a solid job of making cool lifestyle accessories for all ages and genders. Apple under Cook has drifted towards a kind of white picket Disneyfied techtopia, where the sun always shines, people always smile, everyone is very creative and colourful but also professional, fit, and focused. And it's somehow very sterile and boring. As a result Apple missed out on the user-generated content wave, which was owned by YouTube and then TikTok. Apple already had some of the basic infrastructure in place with podcasting, but a middle aged outlook meant it missed the (mildly but interestingly) anarchic possibilities. And that's going to be a problem for the future. Jobs was anarchic enough to want to shake things up but stable enough to make the shaking work (mostly). Cook is small-c conservative, safe, and suburban in outlook. And now Apple is too. Asking what The Next Big Consumer Thing will be is already missing the point because it assumes a model where there is a Next Big Consumer Thing and it's important enough to matter. Ten years from now that's going to look like a weird and dated assumption. There will be much more chaos and uncertainty, and I suspect Big Consumer Things will be less important to everyone than they are now, and the people who are in their 10s-20s-30s now will be looking for something entirely different.

The-Bus 5y ago
> As a result Apple missed out on the user-generated content wave, which was owned by YouTube and then TikTok. I don't disagree with your take on Apple's perception. However, I don't think UGC is the end-all be-all. UGC is only useful for companies in the sense that it drives advertising. By changing its Privacy policies, Apple has managed to triple its advertising revenue in the last six months, now at $5B, with expectations of reaching $20B in three years.[1] UGC is nice, but so is having the hardware and OS that the UGC runs on. 1: https://www.ft.com/content/074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286b9d https://www.ft.com/content/074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286... ($)
- toyg 5y ago
  > By changing its Privacy policies ... is the new "by leveraging its monopoly power" ...
  - r00fus 5y ago
    Apple is not a monopoly in any way, shape or form.
    - Nullabillity 5y ago
      How do you install not-iOS on an iPhone? How do you install applications on iOS without involving Apple? How do you transfer your iOS apps over to non-iPhones? Until there is a compelling answer to all three of those then Apple is still a monopolist (when it comes to phones, but similar lists apply to their other product segments).
      - quitit 5y ago
        Same things could be said if one switches the brand names to Nintendo, Sony, Amazon etc. The problem is that your questions are arbitrary and at best approximate the ideas of what you think a monopolist is rather than what is established in law. Merely moving the goal post doesn’t make a monopolist. Furthermore your questions have no bearing on the company in question: a company building its own devices and ecosystem has no responsibility to facilitate onboarding of the technology of others: things which they do not know about, could never plan for and have nothing to do with their operations.
        toyg 5y ago
        Keep rehashing the same tired arguments, you'll need them when antitrust authorities start shooting. They are coming for Apple and Google, both in EU and US. Lowering appstore fees was just the first skirmish.
        quitit 5y ago
klelatti 5y ago
Sorry don’t see any evidence here that young people aren’t buying Apple devices. One of the things that distinguishes Apple is its focus. It’s added services like Apple Music and TV but it absolutely doesn’t need to compete with TikTok etc.
- quitit 5y ago
  Piper Jaffray do a semi-annual study on US teens which includes the categories in which apple market a range of devices. The tl,dr: Popularity of apple in youth is and remains consistently high. As this is a US-centric forum conducted in English I think it’s safe to use PJs research here.
peruvian 5y ago
Kids still buy or want iPhones and see blue bubbles as desirable. As long as hardware sales are strong (and they are), Apple can miss out on the next cool app or have services that perform just okay.
michaelje 5y ago
Apple has a significant role - UGC is facilitated hugely by the iPhone.
rcconf 5y ago
I don't agree. Apple is definitely a cool brand because what is the alternatives in the phone space for being cool? I can guarantee you that no one thinks Android devices are "cool" amongst the younger generation. Apple is doing a fantastic job right now and I believe they're going to do great in the next 10 years because of one really simple fact: Apple makes great products that just work and look great. No other company has been able to do that. I was just gifted a Fitbit and it failed about 5 times to pair to my phone. I restarted both the device (5x) and phone and it finally worked. How easy do you think it was for my girlfriend to setup her Apple watch? That's when I was reminded why Apple is #1. I think Apple should continue what they're doing, create great products that just work and look great. It doesn't matter what the next 10 years looks like if they can continue doing that and I really think they can.
- uuddlrlr 5y ago
  Do you have an Android phone? The bluetooth stack on Android is a an atrocity.
  - hungryforcodes 5y ago
    It works as well or better than my iPhone 6's.
  - kd913 5y ago
    AFAIK Android's bluetooth stack was rewritten from scratch in rust for Android 11. There are a bunch of options in the dev options including what enabling the Gabeldorsche stack.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      Good point, updating to Android 11 took my Bluetooth connection from "spotty at best" to "nearly too aggressive". If you have multi-point Bluetooth accessories, Android 11+ devices will almost always try to steal your connection if Bluetooth is enabled. I can't tell if it's a feature or an issue, but it's certainly better than the way it used to be.
  - 5y ago
mortenjorck 5y ago
Millennials left Facebook for Snapchat and Zoomers for TikTok, but where are either going to go if they leave Apple? Your "white-picket Disneyfied techtopia" may be right on the mark, but when Apple's mobile computing ecosystem is competing for it-factor with the likes of Samsung, there's still no competition. Ultimately, it's not really about Apple's ever-more anodyne first-party positioning; it's about the entertainment elite and the influencers that continue to carry iPhones.
hungryforcodes 5y ago
This exactly.
natch 5y ago
I agree with pretty much all you said except I don’t think coolness is that much of a driving factor for Apple purchases. Maybe Apple marketing layers on the cool hipster videos to make it look that way, but that’s just a surface level understanding of what’s going on. I often hear this as a misunderstanding about why people use Apple products. There are plenty of ways to be cool. And people young and old understand that trying to be cool is not cool, and they don’t buy Apple to be cool. They buy Apple stuff for other reasons. If I was trying super hard (not cool) to be cool, I would use a flip phone or some oddball Android phone with an innovative shape and look from China. And a nice looking watch, not a square of glass. People use Apple for the convenience (just works), quality, and privacy. People interested primarily in coolness over these factors use other products.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Luxury and/or quality does not have to be cool.
  - natch 5y ago
    exactly
r00fus 5y ago
Coolness is one factor that attracts people to brands. Another is trust. Apple relies on trust, and tries to cultivate (though not always successfully) coolness through innovation. Show me a trustworthy mainstream alternative and I might agree with you.
tl 5y ago
> Apple already had some of the basic infrastructure in place with podcasting, but a middle aged outlook meant it missed the (mildly but interestingly) anarchic possibilities. While I have some criticisms of Apple, impugning them for doing the best possible thing for an ecosystem seems like an odd thing to attack. Sure, Spotify, Stitcher and others have "innovated" with dynamic ad insertion and they occasionally dump massive bags of money on a few individual podcasts like Joe Rogan, but I don't view their profiteering as an improvement.
cm277 5y ago
Erm... 30% of US teens own an Apple Watch [1]. The AW may be the most underestimated gadget of all time... [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/05/apple-now-most-popular-watch-brand-among-teens/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/05/apple-now-most-popular-...
- lostmsu 5y ago
  This article is extremely bad, you shouldn't believe any claims in it.
kingcharles 5y ago
24x7 blood-glucose monitoring could actually help people understand better what they are eating and perhaps help to reduce the obesity epidemic.
- fomine3 5y ago
  This is what I'd like to see as who don't care health much. Current metrics like heartbeat, SpO2 aren't very useful unless I constantly exercise or become ill, but blood-glucose should be useful metric since we eat everyday.
jbc1 5y ago
For years every years flagship phone camera comparison reviews have varied largely by reviewer preference over whose post processing they prefer, which they often even note. Favourites varying from brand to brand year to year. For photos. I have never seen anyone suggest that another phone camera touches the iPhone in terms of video quality. In fact in these days of casual user content creation, this wave you say apple missed, video remains a minor element of camera write ups and I can’t help but think it’s because “if you care about shooting video with your phone at all and have the money, get an iPhone” is all that can be said on the matter. Phone camera tech isn’t stagnant. It’s one of the(just the?) most important factors people value in their phones. Apple is making an intentional choice to prioritise video quality. I hardly think that’s them missing user generated content. They’re just cashing in at the device purchase level rather than diving in to the algorithm driven ad feed engagement game.
rangoon626 5y ago
> As a result Apple missed out on the user-generated content wave, which was owned by YouTube and then TikTok. Apple already had some of the basic infrastructure in place with podcasting, but a middle aged outlook meant it missed the (mildly but interestingly) anarchic possibilities. Agreed. Apple had the ENTIRE digital hub strategy nailed, with fantastic tools.
crossroadsguy 5y ago
Software, let alone online services, has never been Apple’s forte. They were and still are a hardware company. Just look at the current mess of the services they run - iCloud, iMessage, Music etc (I recently found out they’ve something called Clips) - yes, these are broken; and they break in a very Applesque opaque manner. Each of these are light years behind the competition, in fact it’d be an insult to the competition to call Apple an competitor on this front. Top that with Apple’s pathological need to remain a walled garden - Tim Cook starting a TikTok - “iTok runs your iPad and iPhones”. They never stood a chance when it comes to content; and they never will in their current shape and form.
dwaite 5y ago
> As a result Apple missed out on the user-generated content wave, which was owned by YouTube and then TikTok. Apple already had some of the basic infrastructure in place with podcasting, but a middle aged outlook meant it missed the (mildly but interestingly) anarchic possibilities. Apple has stores for music, for books, for video and also nice recently includes subscriptions for periodicals, news and podcasts. Go ahead and add "apps" to that if you like, although people tend to not think of software as "generated content". Apple doesn't really have it in their DNA to be a social network and provide free hosting in exchange for monetizing people's content with ads. Podcasts existed before Tim Cook; Apple jumped on the chance to promote it but always considered it more a way to people get further use out of their Apple hardware. This has changed recently with the focus on services, which means Apple is competing for people's attention and free time. Making it easy for people to pay for premium content (and providing Apple's own premium content through subscription costs) is pretty much a necessity. However, they are still continents away from say the algorithm-driven video maelstrom of TikTok. And even if they made hosting user content easier at the same tier as professional content, I would suspect they would sooner do revenue sharing of a monthly subscription than they would leverage advertising for monetization.

The-Bus 5y ago

> As a result Apple missed out on the user-generated content wave, which was owned by YouTube and then TikTok. I don't disagree with your take on Apple's perception. However, I don't think UGC is the end-all be-all. UGC is only useful for companies in the sense that it drives advertising. By changing its Privacy policies, Apple has managed to triple its advertising revenue in the last six months, now at $5B, with expectations of reaching $20B in three years.[1] UGC is nice, but so is having the hardware and OS that the UGC runs on. 1: https://www.ft.com/content/074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286b9d https://www.ft.com/content/074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286... ($)

toyg 5y ago
> By changing its Privacy policies ... is the new "by leveraging its monopoly power" ...
- r00fus 5y ago
  Apple is not a monopoly in any way, shape or form.
  - Nullabillity 5y ago
    How do you install not-iOS on an iPhone? How do you install applications on iOS without involving Apple? How do you transfer your iOS apps over to non-iPhones? Until there is a compelling answer to all three of those then Apple is still a monopolist (when it comes to phones, but similar lists apply to their other product segments).
    - quitit 5y ago
      Same things could be said if one switches the brand names to Nintendo, Sony, Amazon etc. The problem is that your questions are arbitrary and at best approximate the ideas of what you think a monopolist is rather than what is established in law. Merely moving the goal post doesn’t make a monopolist. Furthermore your questions have no bearing on the company in question: a company building its own devices and ecosystem has no responsibility to facilitate onboarding of the technology of others: things which they do not know about, could never plan for and have nothing to do with their operations.
      - toyg 5y ago
        Keep rehashing the same tired arguments, you'll need them when antitrust authorities start shooting. They are coming for Apple and Google, both in EU and US. Lowering appstore fees was just the first skirmish.
        quitit 5y ago

klelatti 5y ago

Sorry don’t see any evidence here that young people aren’t buying Apple devices. One of the things that distinguishes Apple is its focus. It’s added services like Apple Music and TV but it absolutely doesn’t need to compete with TikTok etc.

quitit 5y ago
Piper Jaffray do a semi-annual study on US teens which includes the categories in which apple market a range of devices. The tl,dr: Popularity of apple in youth is and remains consistently high. As this is a US-centric forum conducted in English I think it’s safe to use PJs research here.

peruvian 5y ago

Kids still buy or want iPhones and see blue bubbles as desirable. As long as hardware sales are strong (and they are), Apple can miss out on the next cool app or have services that perform just okay.

michaelje 5y ago

Apple has a significant role - UGC is facilitated hugely by the iPhone.

rcconf 5y ago

I don't agree. Apple is definitely a cool brand because what is the alternatives in the phone space for being cool? I can guarantee you that no one thinks Android devices are "cool" amongst the younger generation. Apple is doing a fantastic job right now and I believe they're going to do great in the next 10 years because of one really simple fact: Apple makes great products that just work and look great. No other company has been able to do that. I was just gifted a Fitbit and it failed about 5 times to pair to my phone. I restarted both the device (5x) and phone and it finally worked. How easy do you think it was for my girlfriend to setup her Apple watch? That's when I was reminded why Apple is #1. I think Apple should continue what they're doing, create great products that just work and look great. It doesn't matter what the next 10 years looks like if they can continue doing that and I really think they can.

uuddlrlr 5y ago
Do you have an Android phone? The bluetooth stack on Android is a an atrocity.
- hungryforcodes 5y ago
  It works as well or better than my iPhone 6's.
- kd913 5y ago
  AFAIK Android's bluetooth stack was rewritten from scratch in rust for Android 11. There are a bunch of options in the dev options including what enabling the Gabeldorsche stack.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Good point, updating to Android 11 took my Bluetooth connection from "spotty at best" to "nearly too aggressive". If you have multi-point Bluetooth accessories, Android 11+ devices will almost always try to steal your connection if Bluetooth is enabled. I can't tell if it's a feature or an issue, but it's certainly better than the way it used to be.
- 5y ago

mortenjorck 5y ago

Millennials left Facebook for Snapchat and Zoomers for TikTok, but where are either going to go if they leave Apple? Your "white-picket Disneyfied techtopia" may be right on the mark, but when Apple's mobile computing ecosystem is competing for it-factor with the likes of Samsung, there's still no competition. Ultimately, it's not really about Apple's ever-more anodyne first-party positioning; it's about the entertainment elite and the influencers that continue to carry iPhones.

hungryforcodes 5y ago

This exactly.

natch 5y ago

I agree with pretty much all you said except I don’t think coolness is that much of a driving factor for Apple purchases. Maybe Apple marketing layers on the cool hipster videos to make it look that way, but that’s just a surface level understanding of what’s going on. I often hear this as a misunderstanding about why people use Apple products. There are plenty of ways to be cool. And people young and old understand that trying to be cool is not cool, and they don’t buy Apple to be cool. They buy Apple stuff for other reasons. If I was trying super hard (not cool) to be cool, I would use a flip phone or some oddball Android phone with an innovative shape and look from China. And a nice looking watch, not a square of glass. People use Apple for the convenience (just works), quality, and privacy. People interested primarily in coolness over these factors use other products.

Apocryphon 5y ago
Luxury and/or quality does not have to be cool.
- natch 5y ago
  exactly

r00fus 5y ago

Coolness is one factor that attracts people to brands. Another is trust. Apple relies on trust, and tries to cultivate (though not always successfully) coolness through innovation. Show me a trustworthy mainstream alternative and I might agree with you.

tl 5y ago

> Apple already had some of the basic infrastructure in place with podcasting, but a middle aged outlook meant it missed the (mildly but interestingly) anarchic possibilities. While I have some criticisms of Apple, impugning them for doing the best possible thing for an ecosystem seems like an odd thing to attack. Sure, Spotify, Stitcher and others have "innovated" with dynamic ad insertion and they occasionally dump massive bags of money on a few individual podcasts like Joe Rogan, but I don't view their profiteering as an improvement.

cm277 5y ago

Erm... 30% of US teens own an Apple Watch [1]. The AW may be the most underestimated gadget of all time... [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/05/apple-now-most-popular-watch-brand-among-teens/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/05/apple-now-most-popular-...

lostmsu 5y ago
This article is extremely bad, you shouldn't believe any claims in it.

kingcharles 5y ago

24x7 blood-glucose monitoring could actually help people understand better what they are eating and perhaps help to reduce the obesity epidemic.

fomine3 5y ago
This is what I'd like to see as who don't care health much. Current metrics like heartbeat, SpO2 aren't very useful unless I constantly exercise or become ill, but blood-glucose should be useful metric since we eat everyday.

jbc1 5y ago

For years every years flagship phone camera comparison reviews have varied largely by reviewer preference over whose post processing they prefer, which they often even note. Favourites varying from brand to brand year to year. For photos. I have never seen anyone suggest that another phone camera touches the iPhone in terms of video quality. In fact in these days of casual user content creation, this wave you say apple missed, video remains a minor element of camera write ups and I can’t help but think it’s because “if you care about shooting video with your phone at all and have the money, get an iPhone” is all that can be said on the matter. Phone camera tech isn’t stagnant. It’s one of the(just the?) most important factors people value in their phones. Apple is making an intentional choice to prioritise video quality. I hardly think that’s them missing user generated content. They’re just cashing in at the device purchase level rather than diving in to the algorithm driven ad feed engagement game.

rangoon626 5y ago

crossroadsguy 5y ago

Software, let alone online services, has never been Apple’s forte. They were and still are a hardware company. Just look at the current mess of the services they run - iCloud, iMessage, Music etc (I recently found out they’ve something called Clips) - yes, these are broken; and they break in a very Applesque opaque manner. Each of these are light years behind the competition, in fact it’d be an insult to the competition to call Apple an competitor on this front. Top that with Apple’s pathological need to remain a walled garden - Tim Cook starting a TikTok - “iTok runs your iPad and iPhones”. They never stood a chance when it comes to content; and they never will in their current shape and form.

dwaite 5y ago

> As a result Apple missed out on the user-generated content wave, which was owned by YouTube and then TikTok. Apple already had some of the basic infrastructure in place with podcasting, but a middle aged outlook meant it missed the (mildly but interestingly) anarchic possibilities. Apple has stores for music, for books, for video and also nice recently includes subscriptions for periodicals, news and podcasts. Go ahead and add "apps" to that if you like, although people tend to not think of software as "generated content". Apple doesn't really have it in their DNA to be a social network and provide free hosting in exchange for monetizing people's content with ads. Podcasts existed before Tim Cook; Apple jumped on the chance to promote it but always considered it more a way to people get further use out of their Apple hardware. This has changed recently with the focus on services, which means Apple is competing for people's attention and free time. Making it easy for people to pay for premium content (and providing Apple's own premium content through subscription costs) is pretty much a necessity. However, they are still continents away from say the algorithm-driven video maelstrom of TikTok. And even if they made hosting user content easier at the same tier as professional content, I would suspect they would sooner do revenue sharing of a monthly subscription than they would leverage advertising for monetization.