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Apple Reports First Quarter Results
- carlycue 5y ago-
- jb1991 5y agoJust wish the quality control was the same as in the Jobs era.
- threeseed 5y agoThis is nothing but revisionist history. Many Apple products in particular OSX was pretty bad during Jobs era.
- aetherspawn 5y agoI have never bought an Apple device that so much as had a spec of dust in the box. But I’ve never had a Dell or HP laptop come without a bezel scratch or something like that. So in my books, Apple are still a league ahead on quality, even.
- jb1991 5y agoI’m talking about myriad software bugs.
- joering2 5y agoit blows my mind every day how they screwed up somewhat very good native mail client. once I've updated to iOS14, daily: - my mail will disappear. I would open a folder and see emails from 2007 at the top... wait and see he is loading them again and more are popping up.. takes few minutes to catch up with 2021. - my contacts will not work when I start typing email. literally sometimes the do sometimes they don't - emails that previously were formatted well, would be crashing with odd CSS issues I never seen before - I would click email.. start reading, then it would shift to the next email.. on its own! - I had few emails automatically disappear for good... only to find them in trash folder. Its a disaster. A classical situation where after a system update I'm banging my head against the wall "why the heck did I do that??"
- tomxor 5y agoI really hate promoting Steve Jobs as some kind of miracle worker - But I swear there is a correlation between his death and the hard to quantify decline of software quality at Apple since. I clearly remember at the time all of the rampant speculation about the downfall of Apple and thinking it's all bullshit, that the people doing the real work are still there and still care and his absence would make little difference, which was true immediately, but gradually over the last decade? perhaps individual work ethic is not enough in a large megacorporate structure to overcome corporate pressures. Perhaps, in such a large structure you really do need someone pushy and particular enough at the top to get emotional and pissed at people when small details suck to prevent it adding up over time.
- hotpotamus 5y agoMy 12" Macbook's keyboard basically never worked and then the battery decided it wasn't happy and decided to bloat out which pushed out the bottom panel of the laptop. Really put me off their laptops, though I'm still a fan of iOS devices.
- tomxor 5y ago> I have never bought an Apple device that so much as had a spec of dust in the box Of course not! If there was dust it would immediately brick the keyboard.
- jobu 5y agoIt's not like there weren't issues then as well - https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/steve-jobs-says-youre-holding-it-wrong-3573705.html https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/steve-jobs-says...
- jb1991 5y agoYeah but those were exceptions. I’m talking about constant new bugs in operating system or software.
- wiredfool 5y agoLike every odd numbered version of OS X? Leopard in particular. (I will say one thing about leopard, I iinstalled a boot disk of it on an intel machine and I was able to boot an old ppc mini. That was impressive at the time)
- dewey 5y agoThere were big quality issues in that era too, we just don't remember them so well. Antenna-gate, the PowerBooks that basically barbecued your legs,...
- CameronBanga 5y agoDon't forget MobileMe.
- neximo64 5y agoExcept they were fixed and fixed quickly. The MobileMe team had a battering session with SJ once.. I don't think Steve Jobs would let a 'Your battery is under 10%', 'interruptive' notification stay this long on a phone. If you took out a screenshot of system preferences from OS X tiger or something and compared it to today, see how easy it is to find things on that one. Even with simple things such as the wording of 'General' vs 'Appearance'.
- threeseed 5y ago> I don't think Steve Jobs would let a 'Your battery is under 10%', 'interruptive' notification stay this long on a phone. Why not ? He was happy with the giant, interruptive volume overlay for all those years.
- neximo64 5y agoYou're doing something to initiate that, vs the battery one that interrupts your workflow without an action taken on your part.
- jhickok 5y agoI haven't had issues with hardware other than the butterfly keyboard, but I have been astounded at issues with first-party software. For the last 48 hours podcasts have just not worked on my iPhone 13 Pro Max, for instance. Apple Music is a disaster. This might not be a QA really but OS updates have introduced bugs and constant crashes for those products for me.
- wiredfool 5y agoThe tibooks whose paint rubbed off from wrist rubbing? With the flexy keyboards? And the dvd drive that would flex into the disk if your wrist was resting above it? The 1st gen intel MacBooks which had a heat pipe that would short out the system when it got warm? The 24” iMacs that would cook the hard drive after 2 years due to bad thermals? (And eventually, the backlight too).
- MattGaiser 5y agoI don't want to have to configure anything. I don't want to deal with setting things up. I don't want to deal with the mediocrity of every other company out there. I just want a phone that works well, works with everything (virtually nobody builds serious apps just for Android and not iOS), and allows me to go about the rest of my day with ease.
- r0fl 5y agoServices, which include iCloud, Apple Music, search licensing and App Store fees, continued growing strongly, rising 25% annually to $19.52 billion. Keeps blowing my mind how consistently services keep growing. Highest margins too. Just printing money!
- lukewrites 5y agoI feel like I get great value for my Apple One Premier subscription. I already was paying for the largest available iCloud storage. Paying a bit more and being able to host email addresses for private domains, plus having iCloud Private Relay, plus a music service (and my library in the cloud), plus Apple TV+, plus Fitness (use it occasionally but would never pay for it on its own) is a no-brainer for me.
- hughrr 5y agoYeah this. I’ve got three kids, my mother and (spit) my ex wife on my Apple One sub. Couple of domains and two apple fitness users, storage and Apple Music for all is a bargain.
- Hamuko 5y agoI've on the other hand yet to find one Apple service that I'd actually want to pay for. Apple Music might be the closest one, but I'm probably not subscribing after my free trial ends. I had the free Apple TV+ trial when it launched for like 9 months and I barely watched it.
- Karupan 5y ago> Paying a bit more and being able to host email addresses for private domains Woah I had no idea this was a thing! Since Google is forcing the old free workspace users into paid accounts this year, this will be a great replacement. Thanks, I'll have to look into this.
- malshe 5y agoI Before Apple One I was paying for iCloud Drive, Apple Music family, and Apple Arcade separately which added up to $30 per month. With all the extra stuff thrown in, Apple One was a no brained for me.
- paxys 5y agoFinally some good news in this bloodbath of a market
- svnt 5y agoYeah Apple are definitely not on the table for more anti-trust action as they have been squeezing out other major companies with large revenue streams based on information coming from Apple devices.
- zepto 5y ago> revenue streams based on information coming from Apple devices. Indeed. There is no evidence of them abusing streams of user information.
- newaccount2021 5y ago
- mensetmanusman 5y agoAs Apple continues to dominate, we can’t forget that the iPhone is approaching >90% utilization by the youth: https://www.howtogeek.com/778355/new-study-says-87-of-us-teens-have-an-iphone/ https://www.howtogeek.com/778355/new-study-says-87-of-us-tee... This means we will soon enough have a situation where a corporation controls the primary medium of communication of the citizens. At this point a smart society would consider how to regulate this situation to safely prevent domination abuse, but I doubt it will happen.
- rosndo 5y ago> This means we will soon enough have a situation where a corporation controls the primary medium of communication of the citizens. Wow. Crazy! This has literally never happened before.
- dijit 5y agoI might describe as an Apple product enjoyer; certainly not a hater and everyone seems so polarised. But objectively: monopoly is a bad thing. We’re still recovering from Microsoft’s dominance of desktop computing. Once you have a near monopoly it’s practically impregnable to disintegrate. As you have a wealthy company which is actively harming those efforts.
- zepto 5y agoObjectivity, monopoly is not a bad thing. Even the law doesn’t consider monopoly a problem in itself, Abuse of monopoly is a problem.
- cassianoleal 5y ago> Under §2 of the Sherman Act 1890 every "person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize ... any part of the trade or commerce among the several States" commits an offence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Monopoly_and_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Mo... IANAL, and I'm assuming USA since that's where Apple has 90% market share on the young, but this seems to imply that monopoly in and on itself is illegal.
- bigtones 5y agoTheir huge China derived revenue is an increasing problem for Apple from a company stance perspective. They have to increasingly walk a tightrope between servicing that market, kowtowing to the Chinese government, and upholding the values of a California based US Company.
- thewarrior 5y agoThis is the case for all companies in the world eventually. China will overtake the US economy in the next 5 years.
- zepto 5y agoThere is no serious analysis that presents this scenario with any certainty.
- thewarrior 5y agoLet’s not miss the forest for the trees. China will continue to grow and get very close to the size of the American economy. China is already the worlds largest economy in terms of raw output (PPP terms). China is already the worlds largest consumer market. There’s a reasonable chance it exceeds USA in nominal GDP it if it grows at 5+% till 2030. This year they grew at 8.5 %
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago> China will continue to grow and get very close to the size of the American economy. Given that they are hitting a demographic cliff in a few years, it is not so guaranteed anymore. It will be an interesting next couple of decades for China. > This year they grew at 8.5 % A lot of that is real estate, the same real estate that speculators are banking on will sell to poor farmers for a million dollars when they re-locate to cities (and the same farmers who aren't having that many kids anymore...).
- thewarrior 5y ago
- ericmay 5y agoQuarter after quarter Tim Cook just mic drops these earnings. Remember all the “Apple is doomed, Tim is a bean counter” comments when Jobs handed over the reigns? Yea. Ok.
- thewarrior 5y agoNobody uses Facebook anymore. Apple is doomed. Google search results are terrible. Amazon is terrible. And every cycle of quarterly results there’s surprise on HN.
- chunkyguy 5y agoWho is surprized by these numbers? Since Cook took over from Jobs earnings are the only thing they're focused on. The product quality, developer experience, user experience,.. everything that made Apple great is declining.
- thewarrior 5y agoAnd yet competitor products are still worse.
- chunkyguy 5y agoI find that as the biggest difference between Jobs and Cook vision for Apple. Jobs wanted Apple to deliver the best of the technology that mankind has to offer whereas Cook wants Apple to deliver the best in the market.
- ksec 5y agoYes. I will add Steve's Apple made new product and services, and "hopes" the market will buy it. Tim's Apple look at which market has potential profits and tries to enter it. It is a product based strategy vs a market based strategy.
- thewarrior 5y agoApples moat is simply enormous. From SoC design to camera design to manufacturing to software and compiler engineering. Competitors could spend 10 years catching up. Cook simply needs to keep the machine going till he retires.
- lvl100 5y agoMan, I wish Steve Jobs were alive to witness the total domination. I imagine he knew but perhaps not to this extent.
- intrasight 5y agoFunny - I was thinking the same this morning. But more along the lines of "I hope his spirit is watching this"
- thomassmith65 5y agoThat sounds like a different Steve Jobs. For starters, the Mac has a notch now.
- decafninja 5y agoIIRC, he was also adamant against a bigger iPhone and a smaller iPad, both which ended up being hit products.
- dwaite 5y agoAlso adamant against iTunes for Windows
- lvl100 5y agoAlso adamant against App Store!
- decafninja 5y agoThose happened while he was alive though no? Whereas the iPhone6 and iPad Mini came after his death.
- michelb 5y agoWell, big difference is that Jobs was playing company with the shareholders money, while Cook is doing something else, like returning shareholders money.
- klelatti 5y agoApple is the ‘Personal IBM’: a premium systems integrator where ‘you never blame yourself for buying Apple’ in the era when everyone has a handheld computer. Edit - just to add that IBM dominated computing for a long time with this model. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Apple has become so big in what is a much bigger market.
- teitoklien 5y ago> you never blame yourself for buying Apple I do, latest macs have terrible linux compatibility for now, with apple not doing much to help in providing support for it (M1) They keep fixing and breaking their keyboards, the latest macs are better in this aspect but until even 2 yrs ago, they used to break quite frequently Apple making it so hard to develop ios apps on a non apple device, definitely brings additional pain, I don’t want to use apple for my computer. Saying it as someone who really enjoys using the iphone. I get why people like macbooks so much, but saying “You never blame yourself for buying Apple” is untrue For me, that would stand for thinkpads and even then primarily for the older ones.
- klelatti 5y agoI was making a general point about an analogy with ‘never get fired for buying IBM’ - which of course wasn’t 100% true either. I get it that Apple products aren’t perfect but in general for most consumers it’s a safe bet.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoAnd IBM lost that status after they decided to tank the relative quality of their product. I presume Apple will suffer the same fate.
- danaris 5y agoPeople have been presuming this very loudly for basically Apple's entire lifetime. I'm not saying I think they'll keep going forever, but I really don't think you should hold your breath.
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- Eric_WVGG 5y ago25.1% Mac growth. For professionals and enthusiasts, you either just got your M1, you’re saving for one, or waiting on the Pro Desktops. I’m curious to see if there’s any change to the replacement rate of Macs. It seems normal for people to use the same laptop for four or more years — a far sight longer than the two-year life expectancy of laptops twenty years ago, but about half of the replacement rate of smartphones. There's one benefit of these DIY designs that seems under-reported: Apple can now develop stuff like the "neural engine". Chips that aren't just faster or more efficient than Intel offerings, but also do different things. I think there's almost no chance that I'll be upgrading to an M2 Pro next year or the following, but there's every possibility that the M3 Pro won't just be a faster Apple Silicon chip. If future Macbooks are more than just "the same thing but faster," dorks like me will be retiring our computers a lot faster.
- _ph_ 5y agoYeah, 27" iMac owner here, desperately waiting for an upgrade. If Apple had been a bit more open about the road map, I might have bought an air around the release date to bridge the time till the iMac update. Wouldn't say no to a (smaller) Mac Pro with an external display (if Apple offered that) either.
- michaelmarion 5y agoThis. I want an M1 Max in a Mac mini, and especially an Apple-branded display or three that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago>and especially an Apple-branded display or three that doesn't cost an arm and a leg I think you are going to be out of luck there.
- olliej 5y agoI'm hoping for a pro desktop with something more advanced than the current M1s - e.g not just an M1 with more cores. I want a Nvidia/amd class gpu, etc.
- fartcannon 5y ago
- gjsman-1000 5y agoIf you consider Foxconn slave labor, maybe. Except Foxconn wages are generally considered to be good for the area (thus why so many employees do it seasonally for a few months during the ramp-up each year). It's a better factory than many. Yes, the netting to prevent suicides looks really bad... until you consider Foxconn employs 1.2 million people. Their suicide rate once that is considered is lower than the general population. Perfect? No, but within reason. Finally... every tech company uses Foxconn, from Intel to Google to AMD to Lenovo to Sony. Don't blame Apple when everyone is to blame.
- fartcannon 5y agoYes blame Apple as they have the most money and thus the most responsibility to do better. 3 trillion dollars is worth how many human lives?
- gjsman-1000 5y agoMarket cap is not money they can just spend within factories they don't own.
- roflulz 5y agothe US was built on the back of slaves and continues to be run on stolen land. How is doing business with any American business any different?
- MisterSandman 5y agoWhat a stupid fucking comment. It's been decades since Slavery was a thing and anyone with half a brain cell condemns it. To say that it's okay for Apple to exploit workers because "that's how America was built" is mind-bogglingly stupid.
- 5y ago