12 ms·

One of the last great consumer companies is going B2B

by georgeburdell 7mo ago

dagmx 7mo ago
Apple always had a B2B component. This is just the latest attempt to not make it completely subpar.
- furyofantares 7mo ago
  This sucks. This page makes it clear this is the motivation for "Ads on Maps", as they talk about it prominently here - they are now directly selling the attention of their device consumers to their business customers. I guess they were doing that before in the App Store, which is of course also awful.
  - Barbing 7mo ago
    Their voice assistant is somewhat opinionated about how it will search the App Store for you https://i.ibb.co/zV8d9gbc/IMG-2177.jpg https://i.ibb.co/zV8d9gbc/IMG-2177.jpg They dynamically reveal 1-3 results and only show a “see more options in App Store” button when they feel like it.
lvspiff 7mo ago
its the only path to go to be able to continue to support their pricing models - they've priced the consumer/pro-sumer out of the market prettymuch and so B2B is the more sustainable paying population.
- kstrauser 7mo ago
  The company that just made a $600 Macbook?
  - bigyabai 7mo ago
    Yes, the phone company that is known for taking home a bronze medal in personal computing for the past 30 years running. Apple knows the score internally, this won't change the world any more than the 12" Retina Macbook did.
    - mpweiher 7mo ago
      The world's firs trillion dollar and three trillion dollar company. Yes, completely insignificant. The company that captures 60-70% of the global PC industry's profits. Definitely completely insignificant. Apple has known the score internally for decades and is laughing that score all the way to the bank.
      - bigyabai 7mo ago
        None of that refutes anything that was said. macOS is a third-class citizen measured by market share, and the total sum of annual Mac profits is lower than what the iPad ecosystem makes in a year. Consumers do not want the Mac. Datacenters don't want Apple Silicon. People want the iPhone, they want Airpods, but the M-series Macs have spent 5 years changing absolutely nothing.
        philistine 7mo ago
        > and the total sum of annual Mac profits is lower than what the iPad ecosystem makes in a year. So the company that makes between 50-60% of all profits in personal computers has created a market where it makes 100% of the profits, but albeit smaller than the whole PC market. That's terrrrible, what was Apple thinking! Market share is far from everything when people live in poverty and do not have money to spend on good hardware and software. Apple makes stuff for affluent people, and then makes a ton of money from those rich folks. Making Apple the most valuable company in the history of humanity. Boy, that's a terrible place to be in!
        bigyabai 7mo ago
        I shouldn't have to repeat myself; this still doesn't refute the claim that Apple has ceded the consumer compute market. Cheap Macs have flooded the used market for years, and people still gravitate towards plastic Wintel boxes and Chromebooks. > Apple makes stuff for affluent people is just repeating the original claim upthread: >> they've priced the consumer/pro-sumer out of the market prettymuch and so B2B is the more sustainable paying population.
- swiftcoder 7mo ago
  > they've priced the consumer/pro-sumer out of the market prettymuch I'd argue that (the low end of) Apple products are the cheapest they've ever been - the $599 iPhone 17e is below the inflation-adjusted price of the original iPhone, and at $599 the MacBook Neo is the cheapest launch price an Apple laptop has ever listed at (not even adjusting for inflation!) The maximum amount you can spend at the high-end has certainly gone up over time, although the basic MacBook Pro Max config costs roughly the same as it's peer from 10-15 years ago - nobody's forcing folks to shell out for the 128GB of RAM (something that didn't exist on laptops at all till very recently)
amelius 7mo ago
They need to go OEM.
- nhubbard 7mo ago
  They did it in the 1990s and it failed so hard that it almost took down the company.
  - amelius 7mo ago
    Why can others do it?
    - dhosek 7mo ago
      Who has successfully managed this kind of transition? The obvious case is IBM which is now essentially a consulting company and doesn’t sell PCs anymore.
    - nielsbot 7mo ago
      Apple's entire success story is their vertical integration. They can't do that and OEM. As for the PC makers: they don't innovate. Microsoft doesn't care who sells PCs, Intel doesn't care who sells PCs. Every PC maker is essentially an assembly company. If you appreciate Apple's innovation in the laptop space over the past x years, then you don't want Apple to be an OEM.
mindwok 7mo ago
I had the same thought. When you're a B2B and B2C company and you have to make a bold decision, the B wins because they hold the enterprise $$$.
andyferris 7mo ago
I think what they've announced is the best fit for small businesses, not large enterprises. They can still treat it as a B2C-style service - many tiny customers with similar needs. Mom and Pop can now get a domain name through Apple, with email accounts - for a lot of people that might be the only way they'd know how to do something like that. The business needs here aren't so different to family manangement features, say. Throwing in Entra ID / Google Workspace authentication and multiple Apple IDs per device is probably the most "interesting" part as to where that ends up in the distant future.
sneak 7mo ago
Apple has gone the way of AmEx and Uber. There are no massmarket "great consumer companies" left in the USA, as far as I can tell.

One of the last great consumer companies is going B2B

dagmx 7mo ago

Apple always had a B2B component. This is just the latest attempt to not make it completely subpar.

furyofantares 7mo ago
This sucks. This page makes it clear this is the motivation for "Ads on Maps", as they talk about it prominently here - they are now directly selling the attention of their device consumers to their business customers. I guess they were doing that before in the App Store, which is of course also awful.
- Barbing 7mo ago
  Their voice assistant is somewhat opinionated about how it will search the App Store for you https://i.ibb.co/zV8d9gbc/IMG-2177.jpg https://i.ibb.co/zV8d9gbc/IMG-2177.jpg They dynamically reveal 1-3 results and only show a “see more options in App Store” button when they feel like it.

lvspiff 7mo ago

its the only path to go to be able to continue to support their pricing models - they've priced the consumer/pro-sumer out of the market prettymuch and so B2B is the more sustainable paying population.

kstrauser 7mo ago
The company that just made a $600 Macbook?
- bigyabai 7mo ago
  Yes, the phone company that is known for taking home a bronze medal in personal computing for the past 30 years running. Apple knows the score internally, this won't change the world any more than the 12" Retina Macbook did.
  - mpweiher 7mo ago
    The world's firs trillion dollar and three trillion dollar company. Yes, completely insignificant. The company that captures 60-70% of the global PC industry's profits. Definitely completely insignificant. Apple has known the score internally for decades and is laughing that score all the way to the bank.
    - bigyabai 7mo ago
      None of that refutes anything that was said. macOS is a third-class citizen measured by market share, and the total sum of annual Mac profits is lower than what the iPad ecosystem makes in a year. Consumers do not want the Mac. Datacenters don't want Apple Silicon. People want the iPhone, they want Airpods, but the M-series Macs have spent 5 years changing absolutely nothing.
      - philistine 7mo ago
        > and the total sum of annual Mac profits is lower than what the iPad ecosystem makes in a year. So the company that makes between 50-60% of all profits in personal computers has created a market where it makes 100% of the profits, but albeit smaller than the whole PC market. That's terrrrible, what was Apple thinking! Market share is far from everything when people live in poverty and do not have money to spend on good hardware and software. Apple makes stuff for affluent people, and then makes a ton of money from those rich folks. Making Apple the most valuable company in the history of humanity. Boy, that's a terrible place to be in!
        bigyabai 7mo ago
        I shouldn't have to repeat myself; this still doesn't refute the claim that Apple has ceded the consumer compute market. Cheap Macs have flooded the used market for years, and people still gravitate towards plastic Wintel boxes and Chromebooks. > Apple makes stuff for affluent people is just repeating the original claim upthread: >> they've priced the consumer/pro-sumer out of the market prettymuch and so B2B is the more sustainable paying population.
swiftcoder 7mo ago
> they've priced the consumer/pro-sumer out of the market prettymuch I'd argue that (the low end of) Apple products are the cheapest they've ever been - the $599 iPhone 17e is below the inflation-adjusted price of the original iPhone, and at $599 the MacBook Neo is the cheapest launch price an Apple laptop has ever listed at (not even adjusting for inflation!) The maximum amount you can spend at the high-end has certainly gone up over time, although the basic MacBook Pro Max config costs roughly the same as it's peer from 10-15 years ago - nobody's forcing folks to shell out for the 128GB of RAM (something that didn't exist on laptops at all till very recently)

amelius 7mo ago

They need to go OEM.

nhubbard 7mo ago
They did it in the 1990s and it failed so hard that it almost took down the company.
- amelius 7mo ago
  Why can others do it?
  - dhosek 7mo ago
    Who has successfully managed this kind of transition? The obvious case is IBM which is now essentially a consulting company and doesn’t sell PCs anymore.
  - nielsbot 7mo ago
    Apple's entire success story is their vertical integration. They can't do that and OEM. As for the PC makers: they don't innovate. Microsoft doesn't care who sells PCs, Intel doesn't care who sells PCs. Every PC maker is essentially an assembly company. If you appreciate Apple's innovation in the laptop space over the past x years, then you don't want Apple to be an OEM.

mindwok 7mo ago

I had the same thought. When you're a B2B and B2C company and you have to make a bold decision, the B wins because they hold the enterprise $$$.

andyferris 7mo ago

I think what they've announced is the best fit for small businesses, not large enterprises. They can still treat it as a B2C-style service - many tiny customers with similar needs. Mom and Pop can now get a domain name through Apple, with email accounts - for a lot of people that might be the only way they'd know how to do something like that. The business needs here aren't so different to family manangement features, say. Throwing in Entra ID / Google Workspace authentication and multiple Apple IDs per device is probably the most "interesting" part as to where that ends up in the distant future.

sneak 7mo ago

Apple has gone the way of AmEx and Uber. There are no massmarket "great consumer companies" left in the USA, as far as I can tell.