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I hated upvoting this but you’re right. I don’t use the App Store much anymore, nor Apple News that much even with an Apple One subscription and I just keep com

by SllX 4y ago

I hated upvoting this but you’re right. I don’t use the App Store much anymore, nor Apple News that much even with an Apple One subscription and I just keep coming back to the fact that the only adware installed on my phone—and I’ve checked—is basically the system software itself. This is a premium phone at a premium price paired up with a range of premium-priced accessories. I know I get more than the value out of these devices than I’m putting in but damn does it feel like Apple isn’t just double-dipping, they’re like quadruple-dipping at least. There’s the money I paid, there’s the money I pay to Apple for services that I do actually want, which, fair, some things have an upkeep cost, there’s the money I pay to 3rd party developers which Apple takes a cut of, and then there’s the money they’re charging developers to put ads in my face when I do open the App Store. There is such a thing as a value-add, and your example of the 5GB iCloud storage? The fact that this is the base level no matter what model phone you purchase just feels downright cheap, and that’s theoretically shared with a Mac or an iPad or both. Actually gutter-dwelling penny-pinching coupon-clipping lentil-dieting cheap.

devnullbrain 4y ago
The total addressable market is saturated now. Gains from Android are slow and difficult. So continued growth depends on more money from existing customers.
- SllX 4y ago
  No. That’s the line, that’s the word on Wall Street, but it’s also complete crap. Apple spent a decade and a half as the iPhone company and for a long time that was exactly the right call. They have other product lines with more than enough room to grow in the market, but they have to hunger for it, like they did from 1998 to 2008 with the Mac, and 2007 through the current day with the iPhone. Almost anything Apple puts out will sell in quantity as long as it doesn’t have exactly a voice-controlled UI, and while Microsoft and Intel are busy shitting the Wintel bed Apple is putting out top-tier high margin computer hardware with obvious gaps on the low-end, the middle and the ultra high-end and the thing keeping Apple from fully capitalizing on that is they’re shitting the bed with their own OS and tunneled in on nickel-and-diming their existing install base. The global music industry was $26B in 2021: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60837880 https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60837880 The global movie industry in 2021 was $90.2B: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/movies-entertainment-market https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/movies-e... The global TV industry in 2021 was $259.16B: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/television-market-report https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/televisi... Grand total: $375.36B Apple’s revenue in 2021 was $394.3B, and some portion of that is already accounted for in the Music, Movies and Television revenue for 2021 but if they really want to grow, then they need to go back to their roots: hardware running software of quality. Services will only be a segment and most of their “services” revenue depends substantially on the size of their hardware’s install base. They can still offer those, but if you build good products, the profit will follow. Apple was the one that built their business on that philosophy. Either that or become a bank.
  - jhoelzel 4y ago
    I have been saying for quite some time now that apple could probably just buy greece or some other indebted frist world state. Appleonia and Facebookistan. Even though the latter may turn out to be just a parking lot with a MCDondalds
  - simonh 4y ago
    Market share is the wrong thing to look at, yes Apple has a small desktop/laptop market share, but they utterly dominate the profit share. This is the real question: How is Apple going to fill the gaps you see in the low end PC market, where there are very small profits to be found, without cannibalising it's own high end profit margins? For the wintel PC makers market share is all that matters because they are all trapped in the commodity sector, so volume is the only way to grow profits. Apple isn't, it's a premium brand, so the economics it lives by are completely different. Analysts have been getting this wrong about Apple for decades, in fact pretty much my entire adult life, and I'm in my 50s. Commodity companies can afford to stagnate their products, Cocacola makes the same sugar water they did before I was born. Premium product companies cannot afford to do that, they have to constantly invest in renewing and updating their products. Apple has been doing that for almost their entire existence (modulo a period of stagnation in the 90s when the execs didn't understand their own business). On the software side I don't really agree, yes they have quality issues, but so does all software and they have incredibly complex stacks these days. They're constantly pushing forward with new software features, that's part of the problem, new features means new bugs.
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      > They're constantly pushing forward with new software features, that's part of the problem, new features means new bugs. Only if you don't invest in testing - and Apple sadly has fallen to the trap of "bananaware" (ripens at the customer) as well as everyone else. "We ship it once it is good quality" has been replaced by "we ship it as soon as it can survive the presentation at WWDC and fix the bugs later on". For commodity manufacturers this can be excused by low profit margins (even though I don't like it), but Apple could literally double their developer headcount and they wouldn't feel it in their bottom line.
rjzzleep 4y ago
Am I the only one who keeps having problems with iPhones backround music/video play and resume? It's linux level bad. I play something I stop it and I never know what might be playing. For PiP videos I have to play, lock the phone then press on play and then it might either continue the background video or play music from my library which I never really use. The other day my iPhone would just reload and I still have no idea why? Did it run out of memory? Screen would freeze and it would stop on a black screen and then reload. I don't remember these bugs from when I used to use an iPhone, but maybe I just didn't pay attention to them. When I travel and use a travel SIM it keeps asking me to switch everything to the new SIM. Default calls, iCloud, default messages. I say no to all of them but it still switches some of them. Using apps from two different countries is a nightmare as well. I do appreciate the speed of this device but ALL of these things are non-issues on Android. Something is off IMHO
- copperx 4y ago
  Ha, I have that exact problem with Android, and I've been considering switching to an iPhone. It's crazy that it's also happening in Apple's ecosystem.
  - rjzzleep 4y ago
    Weird. I had Android until Android 10, but I don't remember it being an issue. Who triages these bugs? Why are not considered worth fixing?
    - copperx 4y ago
      Interestingly, I started getting them after turning on Digital Wellness. The web browser will play audio in the background and even about 10 seconds after closing. It's crazy and drives me nuts.
  - microtonal 4y ago
    On my last Android excursion I left because I was continuously plagued by audio issues. I’d cycle 11km to work every day and listen to podcast. With Android I had to stop at least once every day to fix audio issues. I switched back to an iPhone and it has been smooth sailing since then?
yonaguska 4y ago
Apple news is also very quietly very politically biased. When you watch CNN or Fox News, you know what side you're getting at least.
- pasc1878 4y ago
  How? They are just links to original work in other places. Now if you look over all media there is a bias in the US Republicans will see all non Fox as left wing in the UK all the papers are right wing. I think News looks at what you choose and offers more of the same.
  - yonaguska 4y ago
    They are biased in the work that they choose to present. Curation is a way to introduce bias as well. Doubly so when you consider that they post the headline as a notification, and most people stop there. I don't have specific examples, I'm just going off the several times in the past year where I've seen a news story covered in five different ways, then I see an incredibly slanted headline notification from apple news that is woefully inaccurate. Also, Fox is just the other side of the same coin- left or right wing, when it matters, Fox is no different from CNN. It's all fake garbage. Just wait until you're belief systems or personal experiences don't exist within the mainstream collection of proffered views, and you'll see how fake all of it is.
jclardy 4y ago
I think App Store Search Ads were really the start of this trend. Think from a benefit perspective - do these ad placements help users? No, they lead them to apps they weren't looking for. Do these placements help good developers? No, they cost them money to ensure their own top placement isn't stolen in search. Does this benefit Apple? Of course - now every large developer on the platform is spending boatloads of cash to ensure they get the top result wherever possible. Essentially taxing developers to buy their own app name slot so that some other random company doesn't do it first. And it has the follow on problem of now allowing spam apps to have a voice on the platform - get your garbage ad-ridden, weekly subscription app approved, then just boost it up with search ads. The real problem is Apple still makes a boatload of cash from those scenarios, so they aren't incentivized to stop them. iAd came before that - but it had a goal of benefiting everyone - users, developers and advertisers. "High quality" ads, privacy focused targeting, developers get a cut and as a result they remove other more invasive ad networks. Unfortunately it didn't work out, and with Tim Cook now at the helm the numbers for search ads spoke a little more loudly than before.

by SllX 4y ago

devnullbrain 4y ago

The total addressable market is saturated now. Gains from Android are slow and difficult. So continued growth depends on more money from existing customers.

SllX 4y ago
No. That’s the line, that’s the word on Wall Street, but it’s also complete crap. Apple spent a decade and a half as the iPhone company and for a long time that was exactly the right call. They have other product lines with more than enough room to grow in the market, but they have to hunger for it, like they did from 1998 to 2008 with the Mac, and 2007 through the current day with the iPhone. Almost anything Apple puts out will sell in quantity as long as it doesn’t have exactly a voice-controlled UI, and while Microsoft and Intel are busy shitting the Wintel bed Apple is putting out top-tier high margin computer hardware with obvious gaps on the low-end, the middle and the ultra high-end and the thing keeping Apple from fully capitalizing on that is they’re shitting the bed with their own OS and tunneled in on nickel-and-diming their existing install base. The global music industry was $26B in 2021: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60837880 https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60837880 The global movie industry in 2021 was $90.2B: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/movies-entertainment-market https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/movies-e... The global TV industry in 2021 was $259.16B: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/television-market-report https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/televisi... Grand total: $375.36B Apple’s revenue in 2021 was $394.3B, and some portion of that is already accounted for in the Music, Movies and Television revenue for 2021 but if they really want to grow, then they need to go back to their roots: hardware running software of quality. Services will only be a segment and most of their “services” revenue depends substantially on the size of their hardware’s install base. They can still offer those, but if you build good products, the profit will follow. Apple was the one that built their business on that philosophy. Either that or become a bank.
- jhoelzel 4y ago
  I have been saying for quite some time now that apple could probably just buy greece or some other indebted frist world state. Appleonia and Facebookistan. Even though the latter may turn out to be just a parking lot with a MCDondalds
- simonh 4y ago
  Market share is the wrong thing to look at, yes Apple has a small desktop/laptop market share, but they utterly dominate the profit share. This is the real question: How is Apple going to fill the gaps you see in the low end PC market, where there are very small profits to be found, without cannibalising it's own high end profit margins? For the wintel PC makers market share is all that matters because they are all trapped in the commodity sector, so volume is the only way to grow profits. Apple isn't, it's a premium brand, so the economics it lives by are completely different. Analysts have been getting this wrong about Apple for decades, in fact pretty much my entire adult life, and I'm in my 50s. Commodity companies can afford to stagnate their products, Cocacola makes the same sugar water they did before I was born. Premium product companies cannot afford to do that, they have to constantly invest in renewing and updating their products. Apple has been doing that for almost their entire existence (modulo a period of stagnation in the 90s when the execs didn't understand their own business). On the software side I don't really agree, yes they have quality issues, but so does all software and they have incredibly complex stacks these days. They're constantly pushing forward with new software features, that's part of the problem, new features means new bugs.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > They're constantly pushing forward with new software features, that's part of the problem, new features means new bugs. Only if you don't invest in testing - and Apple sadly has fallen to the trap of "bananaware" (ripens at the customer) as well as everyone else. "We ship it once it is good quality" has been replaced by "we ship it as soon as it can survive the presentation at WWDC and fix the bugs later on". For commodity manufacturers this can be excused by low profit margins (even though I don't like it), but Apple could literally double their developer headcount and they wouldn't feel it in their bottom line.

rjzzleep 4y ago

Am I the only one who keeps having problems with iPhones backround music/video play and resume? It's linux level bad. I play something I stop it and I never know what might be playing. For PiP videos I have to play, lock the phone then press on play and then it might either continue the background video or play music from my library which I never really use. The other day my iPhone would just reload and I still have no idea why? Did it run out of memory? Screen would freeze and it would stop on a black screen and then reload. I don't remember these bugs from when I used to use an iPhone, but maybe I just didn't pay attention to them. When I travel and use a travel SIM it keeps asking me to switch everything to the new SIM. Default calls, iCloud, default messages. I say no to all of them but it still switches some of them. Using apps from two different countries is a nightmare as well. I do appreciate the speed of this device but ALL of these things are non-issues on Android. Something is off IMHO

copperx 4y ago
Ha, I have that exact problem with Android, and I've been considering switching to an iPhone. It's crazy that it's also happening in Apple's ecosystem.
- rjzzleep 4y ago
  Weird. I had Android until Android 10, but I don't remember it being an issue. Who triages these bugs? Why are not considered worth fixing?
  - copperx 4y ago
    Interestingly, I started getting them after turning on Digital Wellness. The web browser will play audio in the background and even about 10 seconds after closing. It's crazy and drives me nuts.
- microtonal 4y ago
  On my last Android excursion I left because I was continuously plagued by audio issues. I’d cycle 11km to work every day and listen to podcast. With Android I had to stop at least once every day to fix audio issues. I switched back to an iPhone and it has been smooth sailing since then?

yonaguska 4y ago

Apple news is also very quietly very politically biased. When you watch CNN or Fox News, you know what side you're getting at least.

pasc1878 4y ago
How? They are just links to original work in other places. Now if you look over all media there is a bias in the US Republicans will see all non Fox as left wing in the UK all the papers are right wing. I think News looks at what you choose and offers more of the same.
- yonaguska 4y ago
  They are biased in the work that they choose to present. Curation is a way to introduce bias as well. Doubly so when you consider that they post the headline as a notification, and most people stop there. I don't have specific examples, I'm just going off the several times in the past year where I've seen a news story covered in five different ways, then I see an incredibly slanted headline notification from apple news that is woefully inaccurate. Also, Fox is just the other side of the same coin- left or right wing, when it matters, Fox is no different from CNN. It's all fake garbage. Just wait until you're belief systems or personal experiences don't exist within the mainstream collection of proffered views, and you'll see how fake all of it is.

jclardy 4y ago

I think App Store Search Ads were really the start of this trend. Think from a benefit perspective - do these ad placements help users? No, they lead them to apps they weren't looking for. Do these placements help good developers? No, they cost them money to ensure their own top placement isn't stolen in search. Does this benefit Apple? Of course - now every large developer on the platform is spending boatloads of cash to ensure they get the top result wherever possible. Essentially taxing developers to buy their own app name slot so that some other random company doesn't do it first. And it has the follow on problem of now allowing spam apps to have a voice on the platform - get your garbage ad-ridden, weekly subscription app approved, then just boost it up with search ads. The real problem is Apple still makes a boatload of cash from those scenarios, so they aren't incentivized to stop them. iAd came before that - but it had a goal of benefiting everyone - users, developers and advertisers. "High quality" ads, privacy focused targeting, developers get a cut and as a result they remove other more invasive ad networks. Unfortunately it didn't work out, and with Tim Cook now at the helm the numbers for search ads spoke a little more loudly than before.