4 ms·

Awkward time for Apple. - Moves into finance have been a failure, cancelling their BNPL as well. - Vision Pro basically dead at this point. - A large number

Awkward time for Apple. - Moves into finance have been a failure, cancelling their BNPL as well. - Vision Pro basically dead at this point. - A large number of senior execs getting reshuffled/moving on from the company. - Apple Intelligence, still no where to be seen. This is most likely a Goldman Sachs issue, but still, who at Apple decided to partner with the bank that hasn't got any track record in consumer banking? The only advantage GS would have had over competitors is that they would have offered Apple very generous terms because they wanted to leverage Apple to get into a new market. Choosing GS was not very customer centric.

icelancer 2y ago
Apple Intelligence is on the eligible devices in beta, I've had it for a little bit now. It's nothing exciting but I've been using it.
- crowcroft 2y ago
  This is fair, it's not vaporware at least.
- Schiendelman 2y ago
  Keep in mind what you're using isn't much of what they're launching. 18.1 only has a couple of features, the three releases after that have the bulk of what they demonstrated.
CPLX 2y ago
There’s actually some nuance to this. One of Apple’s big requirements was to have quite lax acceptance criteria. They didn’t want lots of their customers being denied for cards and creating a negative brand association. Apparently GS was up for that. Possibly because they didn’t actually know what they are doing. My understanding is the loss rate was way too high for them to be profitable. It was well covered at the time, here’s the first example to come up in a quick search: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/12/goldmans-gs-apple-card-business-has-a-surprising-subprime-problem.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/12/goldmans-gs-apple-card-busin...
- CSSer 2y ago
  Without simply citing greed, I find this difficult to justify or explain. Apple is a premium, luxury brand. They make opinionated hardware and software that has offended many. They’ve certainly never given a phone away, but they’re afraid of offending someone by turning them down if they have bad credit? Rubbish. Forgive me, I’m not trying to shoot the messenger. Nuance or not, I think GP is right. It wasn’t very customer centric.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    > Apple is a premium, luxury brand. People all across the income/wealth spectrum use Apple products, in huge proportions.
    - crowcroft 2y ago
      Apple is worth $3t because both of those things are true. Apple and Huawei both sell smartphones, which one has the margins of Ferrari and which one has the margins of Toyota?
  - polishdude20 2y ago
    Is GS though a good luxury "brand"? I don't know much about them but they seem like a Big Name. Maybe that's all they wanted? The prestige of being tied to GS
- crowcroft 2y ago
  I can understand the surface appeal beyond greed. Goldman Sachs offers good terms, is willing to have higher acceptance rates, has a strong 'luxury'/'high net worth' feel about the brand etc. Even with the benefit of the doubt it was naive. Did no one think, he maybe there's a reason all these companies with a lot more experience than GS aren't giving credit cards to everyone? The real brand risk was never denying people cards – that still happened anyway, the risk was exactly what's happening now.
cageface 2y ago
Also I've been working with their latest Swift & SwiftUI and I think they've made some fundamental missteps with the language and the APIs. Nothing that a company of Apple's size can't correct with enough effort I suppose but it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in their software engineering chops.

icelancer 2y ago

Apple Intelligence is on the eligible devices in beta, I've had it for a little bit now. It's nothing exciting but I've been using it.

crowcroft 2y ago
This is fair, it's not vaporware at least.
Schiendelman 2y ago
Keep in mind what you're using isn't much of what they're launching. 18.1 only has a couple of features, the three releases after that have the bulk of what they demonstrated.

CPLX 2y ago

There’s actually some nuance to this. One of Apple’s big requirements was to have quite lax acceptance criteria. They didn’t want lots of their customers being denied for cards and creating a negative brand association. Apparently GS was up for that. Possibly because they didn’t actually know what they are doing. My understanding is the loss rate was way too high for them to be profitable. It was well covered at the time, here’s the first example to come up in a quick search: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/12/goldmans-gs-apple-card-business-has-a-surprising-subprime-problem.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/12/goldmans-gs-apple-card-busin...

CSSer 2y ago
Without simply citing greed, I find this difficult to justify or explain. Apple is a premium, luxury brand. They make opinionated hardware and software that has offended many. They’ve certainly never given a phone away, but they’re afraid of offending someone by turning them down if they have bad credit? Rubbish. Forgive me, I’m not trying to shoot the messenger. Nuance or not, I think GP is right. It wasn’t very customer centric.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  > Apple is a premium, luxury brand. People all across the income/wealth spectrum use Apple products, in huge proportions.
  - crowcroft 2y ago
    Apple is worth $3t because both of those things are true. Apple and Huawei both sell smartphones, which one has the margins of Ferrari and which one has the margins of Toyota?
- polishdude20 2y ago
  Is GS though a good luxury "brand"? I don't know much about them but they seem like a Big Name. Maybe that's all they wanted? The prestige of being tied to GS
crowcroft 2y ago
I can understand the surface appeal beyond greed. Goldman Sachs offers good terms, is willing to have higher acceptance rates, has a strong 'luxury'/'high net worth' feel about the brand etc. Even with the benefit of the doubt it was naive. Did no one think, he maybe there's a reason all these companies with a lot more experience than GS aren't giving credit cards to everyone? The real brand risk was never denying people cards – that still happened anyway, the risk was exactly what's happening now.

cageface 2y ago

Also I've been working with their latest Swift & SwiftUI and I think they've made some fundamental missteps with the language and the APIs. Nothing that a company of Apple's size can't correct with enough effort I suppose but it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in their software engineering chops.