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i'd say apple is one of the few companies that could charge people for an "AI embedded" 128GB module, allow people to pay for a subscription in order to "access

i'd say apple is one of the few companies that could charge people for an "AI embedded" 128GB module, allow people to pay for a subscription in order to "access", yet have the inference happen locally. one hypothetical is that you need an icloud subscription, a token is retrieved from apple, the token "unlocks" your AI module, on the phone and allows you to do the inference. in this way apple could charge monthly for this and claim that the inference happens locally. sadly in this was it was similar to the whole csam debacle apple is also one of the few companies that could realistically get manufacturers to massively produce a hypothetical "AI model chip" that has the model on device, at a quantity that would make it realistic to pay for in a hypothetical iPhone 19 Pro model.

brookst 4y ago
What other services does Apple charge a subscription fee for despite having no opex?
- endisneigh 4y ago
  apple fitness I imagine has a pretty small opex (sure they pay trainers, but that doesn't scale linearly with subscriptions. the videos themselves are limited in scope and could be cached pretty trivially. the actual fitness tracking happens on device), same with apple arcade which I highly doubt has any additional expensive over the app store in general. I can see it - "Siri+", pay $5 a month for fine tuned model upgrades straight to your device and remote fallback. local inference available for Pro devices only.
  - brundolf 4y ago
    You don't need a subscription to track and view your data (I've got an apple watch and no subscription). I think all the subscription gets you are the training courses (videos, but also live events and stuff)
    - endisneigh 4y ago
      my point was more around how you need apple fitness + subscription to do relatively trivial things like show your health metrics on a TV (which you also need an apple TV for).
  - smugma 4y ago
    If you look at Peloton’s financial statements, you’ll see that your assumptions are off. For one thing, music costs are significant (Peloton had to settle a $200M law suit for not doing it right). In addition to the trainers, you have producers, graphic designers, artist spotlights, celebrity interviews, etc. Yes, some costs are fixed so with more subs you get higher profitability but that’s really different than charging for something that doesn’t have a variable cost.

brookst 4y ago

What other services does Apple charge a subscription fee for despite having no opex?

endisneigh 4y ago
apple fitness I imagine has a pretty small opex (sure they pay trainers, but that doesn't scale linearly with subscriptions. the videos themselves are limited in scope and could be cached pretty trivially. the actual fitness tracking happens on device), same with apple arcade which I highly doubt has any additional expensive over the app store in general. I can see it - "Siri+", pay $5 a month for fine tuned model upgrades straight to your device and remote fallback. local inference available for Pro devices only.
- brundolf 4y ago
  You don't need a subscription to track and view your data (I've got an apple watch and no subscription). I think all the subscription gets you are the training courses (videos, but also live events and stuff)
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    my point was more around how you need apple fitness + subscription to do relatively trivial things like show your health metrics on a TV (which you also need an apple TV for).
- smugma 4y ago
  If you look at Peloton’s financial statements, you’ll see that your assumptions are off. For one thing, music costs are significant (Peloton had to settle a $200M law suit for not doing it right). In addition to the trainers, you have producers, graphic designers, artist spotlights, celebrity interviews, etc. Yes, some costs are fixed so with more subs you get higher profitability but that’s really different than charging for something that doesn’t have a variable cost.