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People who create and build things tend to have strong emotional needs to control that thing. This includes for example, the ui designers at netflix, and the p

People who create and build things tend to have strong emotional needs to control that thing. This includes for example, the ui designers at netflix, and the people who run the company. You see this in all kinds of domains from filmmakers who don’t want their movie released on certain formats even though fans want it, to game designers nerfing beloved tricks because content gets skipped, and making cutscenes unskippable, apple wanting control of what apps you put on your phone and how you repair it and so on. Often there is a profit motive as well but I think the underlying prime cause of this stuff is just control Netflix has some vision for how their service should be used, and they don’t want you fucking with it, and various weird contractual obligations and profit optimizations are gonna get you less and less choice. The people who want to customize are a small minority so there isn’t any competitive advantage to offer it, and niche players can’t exist in domains like netflix, or iphone.

nitrogen 5y ago
niche players can’t exist This is where the world has gone astray. We would be much better off with a thousand three comma companies taking the place of a single four comma company. Also, niches used to be considered socially acceptable. What has taken all the air out of the room?
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  Sure but in domains like running a streaming tv service, or building a phone, catering to a small subset of users means you are a smaller company, and then it is very hard to build a decent phone, or create something like netflix.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    But why is that? Phones are more expensive at retail and more profitable than ever. Why should it be so difficult to make one even with a billion dollars? And it wasn't hard to run a video rental store 25 years ago. What changed?
    - Hermitian909 5y ago
      Phone profit margins have been declining even for Apple (about ~60%) and are already fairly thin for the rest of the market (~13%). The problem is that getting the kind of customization we're talking about here probably means rolling your own phone OS which is a non-starter. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-phone-profits-apple-66-samsung-17-everyone-else-unlucky-13/?sh=5973487a2ff3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-...
      - nitrogen 5y ago
        The only must-have feature from a given new phone for me is the upgraded camera. In most other regards, reusing stuff from previous generations where profitability peaked should be fine, giving a dozen niche manufacturers enough clout to build customizations off a common base.

nitrogen 5y ago

niche players can’t exist This is where the world has gone astray. We would be much better off with a thousand three comma companies taking the place of a single four comma company. Also, niches used to be considered socially acceptable. What has taken all the air out of the room?

gameswithgo 5y ago
Sure but in domains like running a streaming tv service, or building a phone, catering to a small subset of users means you are a smaller company, and then it is very hard to build a decent phone, or create something like netflix.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  But why is that? Phones are more expensive at retail and more profitable than ever. Why should it be so difficult to make one even with a billion dollars? And it wasn't hard to run a video rental store 25 years ago. What changed?
  - Hermitian909 5y ago
    Phone profit margins have been declining even for Apple (about ~60%) and are already fairly thin for the rest of the market (~13%). The problem is that getting the kind of customization we're talking about here probably means rolling your own phone OS which is a non-starter. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-phone-profits-apple-66-samsung-17-everyone-else-unlucky-13/?sh=5973487a2ff3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-...
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      The only must-have feature from a given new phone for me is the upgraded camera. In most other regards, reusing stuff from previous generations where profitability peaked should be fine, giving a dozen niche manufacturers enough clout to build customizations off a common base.