This is not about "cracking the walled garden"; we're comparing, well, not apples and oranges as much as Apples and Netflixes.
This is about laying the groundwork for Apple's new video service -- the question was always whether they wanted to use it as a way to sell overpriced TV pucks, like they've traditionally done with their services, or it was going to be its own thing. they wanted to have everywhere. If you're surprised that they're choosing "have it everywhere," it's probably because you haven't been following the mounting tidbits of Hollywood noise about the original content being produced for Apple. We're not talking about Carpool Karaoke anymore. We're talking new shows from J.J. Abrams, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Ron Moore, Damien Chazelle. We're talking about new children's programming with Peanuts and Sesame Street. Shows starring Jennifer Aniston, Steve Carrell, Chris Evans, Reese Witherspoon, Aaron Paul, Jason Momoa. A series based on Isaac Asimov's Foundation.
The point is, there is serious firepower happening here, to the point where it's pretty clear this is not "service as adjunct to hardware." This is Apple establishing an actual entertainment division.
I'm honestly surprised at how much investment tech giants are pouring into 1st party tv/movie production and also by the consensus that these ventures are virtually guaranteed to succeed. From what I've observed over the past decade, the future of our cultural landscape is going to be that of increasing fragmentation to the point that there will no longer be a single, dominant culture for mass media enterprises to appeal to.
The high production value of traditional HollyWood productions are only sustainable due to their mass cultural appeal. The problem is that mass culture is in fact, losing mass. These tech giants appear to have misread the signs of this pending sea change and interpret behaviors such as cord-cutting among younger generations to mean they are merely moving their consumption online and that their consumption habits remain otherwise unchanged. One only has to look at the popularity of services like YouTube and Twitch with Gen Z to see that this is in fact not the case. Younger millenials and Gen Z as a whole have completely changed their consumption habits to prefer niche content made by individual creators (or at most a small group) on the cheap. While YouTube stars like PewDiePie cannot be said to be "niche" due to the simple fact that his content captures more eyeballs per year than literally anything else by an enormous margin, the content itself isn't exactly something that appeals to a universal audience in the way that a traditional HollyWood Blockbuster or hit TV show might. Ironically, while Google was the tech giant best positioned to capture the future (at least in terms of how I see it developing), they've severly damaged the future potential of YouTube by playing games with the monwtization and promotion of popular channels while also making it impossible for new creators to make money before they've built their channel into a relative behemoth.
While Apple, Amazon, Disney, et al are throwing massive amounts of capital trying to capture a slice of the streaming service market, they appear to have missed signs of cultural change which will likely cause that market to stagnate over the coming decade. I can't say that trying to create a YouTube competitor is a better idea at this point in time either as that market just isn't large or stable enough at this point in time to say there is even space for a second major servicd for small content creators. I can say the future of entertainment is going to look a lot more like YouTube, where the attention of tens of millions of eyeballs are spread over tens of thousands of channels, rather than a handful of sources for traditional mass media productions.
This is the correct analysis. If you have any doubts that Apple can pull something like this off, you don't have to look very far. Right from the early days of the iPod Apple had the biggest players on the scene on board: Jimmy Iovine in that case.
Apple is a much more powerful company than it was then and I see it as very likely they'll pull off a Netflix-sized coup.
This is excellent insight, chipotle_coyote. The article is a poor take.
For anyone who might not be aware of the history, Apple media products have always extended outside of the "walled garden". QuickTime appeared on Windows in 1991, iTunes for Windows was introduced in 2003, and Apple Music has been available on Android since 2015. AirPlay has been supported by 3rd-party devices for quite some time (close to a decade. IIRC).
Then the player to watch for would be Disney. Huge, long history in the area, Mickey Mouse knows everyone in the entertainment business.
Even though Apple has a gigantic pile of cash there's a real question as to whether they can actually make money this way. One could question whether you can just hire a bunch of famous movie people and then have a movie empire.
I'm looking forward to the fight though. There's a good case that we're currently in one of the most productive eras in storytelling, mainly thanks to these titans clashing.
Giving people on other platforms the tools they need to allow them to purchase content directly from Apple has been around since the iTunes Store and iPod first made an appearance for Windows.
It continued with Apple Music on Android, and I don't see any difference in Apple's strategy here today.
Apple is moving into video subscriptions and wants to make sure the broader market can purchase their content.
What drives me crazy is the Jobs idol worship. Assuming that if he were alive that Apple wouldn't still have challenges with its platform roadmap.
He might have come up with some other/better ideas but it's not like he didn't fail and produce plenty of duds too.
I have never been an Apple fan but I'll say this, they generally treat their customers far better than the competition. You'll never go to an Android or Microsoft store (the former doesn't really exist I know) and get the kind of service that Apple offers.
I'll never forget the time I went to the Apple store and returned a used laptop battery I bought off of Amazon. It was painless and immediate. My wife loves Apple and for her and for this level of service, I'm happy to continue supporting her having an iPhone, a Macbook, etc.
> I have never been an Apple fan but I'll say this, they generally treat their customers far better than the competition.
It took a considerable amount of time until Apple admitted design flaws in iDevices (iPhones and Macbooks recently). Antennagate, Bendgate, Batterygate, the list goes on. I'm typing this on a MBP where the coating went kaboom.
Complaints about Apple Store service have been mounting in recent years. They've gone from friendly to wanting to upsell you a new iPhone or Macbook as much as possible. If you returned a used laptop battery to Apple, I'd wager that was a long time ago. In recent times they've worked with customs to prevent independent repair shops from getting spare parts.
I feel like apple has definitely matured a bit on the biz side that they’re effectively making drastic culture change within a few quarters of sales pace slowdowns, considering the years where they let rot fester the last time the company was in trouble. Maybe they’ve learned lessons from the past or from Microsoft’s journey but in either case, it’s promising that they seem to understand what some of the big deals are when committing to services business line.
I also think apple has one of the most compelling digital movie purchase systems so it’ll be interesting to see if this follows the iTunes music biz model where they expand to more platforms and take over a lot of the revenue. The system is way more stable at higher quality than competitors like vudu, and they’re trying to do the right thing by avoiding this push to charge more than $20 per movie. Also backdating purchases to upgrade 1080p movies to 4K was a very slick move.
> also think apple has one of the most compelling digital movie purchase systems
People don't decide which platform to purchase a movie from based on how compelling the streaming technology is. It needs to be a platform that's accessible on their device firstly.
When the ability to make books for iBooks came out I was excited. I would like to write a math textbook with embedded videos in it. I was about to explore doing this in iBooks but then I realized that I would be limiting my audience to those with Apple devices. I abandoned the idea.
I buy digital books from Amazon and not Apple because I know that Amazon will make its books available on any device. As far as I know iBooks are not available on non-Apple devices. Why would someone lock themselves in? If they made their digital services device agnostic I’d buy from them.
Amazon could kill support for any platform at any time if they wish. If I get any eBooks at all I want them to be in an open standard (e.g ePub) with no DRM whatsoever.
Yeah, iPhone sales are below expectations, but Apple's struggling? Hyperbole remains the tech journalism's go-to, I see. I was hoping tech journalism might've made cutting that nonsense out part of their New Year's resolutions, but apparently not.
I used to feel that it was hyperbole when a big deal is made at huge companies that miss earnings but still do significantly better than most. The problem is investor sentiment. All investors want their investment to grow which makes stability (not stable growth but actual stability) seem bad. New investors including hedge fund managers making decisions for thousands of investors will want to choose investments that grow. Less demand will end up decreasing the value of the stock, potentially wiping billions away from the marketcap. The actual company could be making gobs of money but the way the market is, companies get a premium on their valued based on multiples of their future growth potential. If growth potential goes away, the stock price will take a hit accordingly. An investor might see iPhone sales increasing year over year and conclude that their investment will be worth more because of the future value gained from more and more sales in the future so they hold the stock. If the hope of increasing growth goes away or decreases in any way, so does that premium. Dividends help with this reduce this effect but not completely.
I hate inaccurate journalists as much as the next guy, but I think you're being a bit hyperbolic on a single adjective while also misreading it. I think they mean it's the sluggish sales they are struggling with, not a struggling company.
Apple makes their money from services, not hardware. Declining new iPhone sales would only be a problem if people left the ecosystem to buy Android phones.
Apple really needs to double down on Siri and take voice interaction to the next level. Part of this means that apple really needs to get its own knowledge/sematic web solution.
The new Google interactive radar thing is neat. Apple needs to figure that out.
That the iphone/ipad can be a bigger compute device with external attachments could be a bigger development then we think (like the Samsung dock thing).. People don't buy laptops in the same sense anymore and that will help justify higher prices.
The Apple upgrade rent/lease program is basically a way to get higher prices over time.
I think Microsoft's Surface line is showing what computing can be about. Its lacking the one thing though that Apple is really leader, a phone.
I think Apple should look there to get some inspiration, they could easily bring that to the next level.
Its 2019 for instance and my MacBook Pro still does not have a touch screen, seriously? Which to me, coming from PC world, seems like I'm using a device from 6+ years ago. It has an interesting touchbar though. Ok.
And everything seems too expensive I feel also. I would never pay for a MacBook, my employer does.
Personally I did research end of last year and bought a Surface device and am very happy with that decision.
Yeah Siri is limited in its ability to answer queries, and it also doesn’t handle multi-device situations well in my experience.
While holding my phone, I ask Siri to open Netflix. My HomePod in the next room responds that it cannot open apps. Impressive that it can hear me, but maybe consider that My iPhone is much closer to my voice and is able to do the thing I requested?
Just returned the HomePod, for various reasons including this (but mostly because paired HomePods cannot he used as the audio playback device on my Mac, except in iTunes).
The iPhone is so powerful now I don’t understand why they don’t sell a dock for it that runs a desktop environment. or a laptop enclosure where you drop it in as the trackpad. I’d be back on the upgrade cycle if they did.
Apple's resurgence was built moreso on great hardware than software, due to Jobs philosophy and the nature of hardware this naturally led to a more vertical / walled garden approach.
The next "big thing" in tech is trending to be AI powered voice assistants, an assistant is more of a horizontal play as you'd need it to be compatible with many different devices and services. With the PC and phone markets mature, what differentiates Apple from it's competition? Especially when the gulf in quality is getting smaller and smaller?
Well, Apple reached $1 Trillion in market cap in 2018. Odds were that the only way was down...you can't keep growing at 20% qtr to qtr forever, or you'd own the world.
Add the fact that today's smartphones do 99% of what people want and new ones are not that much better to justify spending $1000 on them. Add Android competitors from all over the world and you have a very profitable Apple, but not one growing like a "startup."
Cheaper iPhone? Maybe, but the $500 iPhone would way worst than a $500 Android one made by others so...
for those that remember 90s tech.. it was a Very Big Issue that Apple created The Apple Store where all software must be purchased (online). Lots of smaller companies made money selling software for Macintosh in various ways.. because they ran their own store, you know, the ones that determine and hold the profit margins on sales? It was not-at-all decided that the one mothership company should run the only store, and to REQUIRE users to purchase software there?
The phone ecosystem has since become FAR more dollars per month than Mac software ever was in its entirety, and the norms of the phone market are not the norms of the desktop market. Massive centralization is ordinary with the phones.. meaning centralized control.
There is nothing ordinary about the way citizens and phones and markets are working .. this is new territory.. without commenting on the article, I take the headline as a comment on the (highly controversial) Apple Store. Evolving past that Apple company store is news.
I would love to see Apple move towards a truly modular phone. Just broke my screen. If I could walk into a retail store and get the screen module I would have done so right away. Now I have to go on eBay order and wait hoping I can survive with a cracked screen until it arrives. If anyone could do a modular phone it would be apple.
> The famous Apple walled garden may not be crumbling, but the cracks are starting to show.
Bashing Apple never seems to go out of fashion. Companies change strategies for various reasons, including slowing, stagnating or negative growth, revenues, profits, etc. Apple is doing what any capitalistic company would do.
There are many things Apple is yet to open up and/or bring to other platforms (and in all likelihood it will never become the Microsoft of recent times). Apple didn’t just wake up last month and say, “Oh, by the way, our services side doesn’t have a defined growth strategy, and now we need all hands on deck to figure it out.” It already had a strategy for at least a couple of years, if not longer, to make services a bigger piece of the pie and growing it was a key focus area.
Any arrangements, in relation to other platforms and devices, that we have seen announced in the last few weeks or months have likely been in the works for several months or years.
One can argue how well the services side is picking up...or not. But calling it as “the walled garden is cracking” is just a negative spin to catch eyeballs.
It started crumbling when Apple joined Alliance for Open Media. Since they were obnoxiously anti free codecs in the past, it was surprising to see Apple there.
I sold my Apple stock about 8 months ago. These are the relevant data points:
- Apple is a superb company but the stock price is still too high.
- Apple faces increasing competition from its own older phones that still work just fine.
- The older phones work just fine because Apple was caught crippling the older phones to preserve the life of the $20 battery inside the phone, and ended up having to simply replace batteries rather than sell new phones. This should be considered a scandal on par with the Volkswagen emissions scandal. I suspect the crippling was timed to make the shiny new phone seem all that much more appealing.
Note that Google recently rolled out Android updates that default a lot of battery killing AI features to "on" even on older devices, dramatically reducing their battery life. This may have been an attempt to boost sales of new phones, or it may be that Google thinks the AI features are so compelling that they will drive new purchases.
- Apple has continued its practice of small, steady improvements to iOS, but has also dramatically increased the price of the phones. I had to chuckle when I realized I spent $1K on my last iPhone. Wow.
I'd argue that the incredible Moore's law-like growth of mobile technology has actually held back a lot of innovation, and now that the platforms are more mature we'll see bigger investment in platform technologies that were risky before when the target devices two years out were largely unknown.
Apple has still shied away from trying to defend its market share by entering the low end market. Like Github's decision (far too late, after Bitbucket nearly caught up) to offer unlimited private repos, Apple will eventually enter the low end market, but only after its lunch starts to be eaten by competitors.
What happens when new big budget production apps don't prioritize iPhone by default as the first platform to launch on? Apple has no strategy to deal with this, and has neglected its development tooling substantially. This is basically the position Microsoft was in (and a nearly identical strategy) right before it took its own nose dive.
Apple should:
- Release a $199 iPhone as quickly as possible, and a $199 iPad also.
- Team up with Facebook to make React-Native a first class citizen for iOS development, even if this is a hostile fork and a blessed version released directly by Apple.
- Institute some programs (battery replacement, etc.) that show that the devices are the only one anyone would ever consider buying.
- Work with software vendors to create apps that actually do require the latest hardware features and the newest phones. Most apps do not need these.
- Make the devices fully waterproof so I can throw mine in the dishwasher once in a while to get it clean.
- Create car radios that are "CarPlay Only" that can be retrofitted into vehicles that didn't ship with one.
- Release a version of OSX that works (and is supported on) Intel NUC hardware.
> Apple has still shied away from trying to defend its market share by entering the low end market. Like Github's decision (far too late, after Bitbucket nearly caught up) to offer unlimited private repos, Apple will eventually enter the low end market, but only after its lunch starts to be eaten by competitors.
They have rather a serious problem there actually. There are many people who buy an expensive iPhone for reasons that would be entirely satisfied by a less expensive one if it existed. It's hardly worth raising sales by 15% if you would have to lower overall margins by 50%.
They could produce an intentionally crippled one to avoid cannibalizing their high margin products, but that would dilute their brand, and anyway who would buy it over similarly-priced non-crippled Android devices?
There is a place in the market for a luxury brand, but Apple already has more of the market than luxury brands typically have. It's going to be difficult for them to do much better when the main thing they could adjust is the trade off between margins and volumes.
IoT is the big market Apple should focus on. It plays to their strengths:
- People want integrated solutions, not one-off devices
- Control of hardware and software, including updates
- High quality cameras, sensors, design aesthetics, etc...
- High price, because integration differentiates their IoT making it hard to compare directly with other products
- Latest technology: Siri voice assistant, face recognition, AI, VR/AR
Imagine if Apple IoT in a home worked with guest iPhones. The networking effect of people talking about iDevices (do you have Apple?) might be enough to create a monopoly.
An example of a simple opportunity: Apple could have in home data caching for music and video where an IoT device acts as a peer server that works with Apple TV -- buy more Apple IoT and all your devices get better.
> Note that Google recently rolled out Android updates that default a lot of battery killing AI features to "on" even on older devices, dramatically reducing their battery life. This may have been an attempt to boost sales of new phones, or it may be that Google thinks the AI features are so compelling that they will drive new purchases.
As an Android developer, I haven't heard anything about any such "battery killing features" being rolled out to anything. Can you provide a source or did you just make this up?
I think it is more likely that Apple's strategy is Embrace, Extend , and Extinguish. Does anyone else remember when iTunes could sync with a Motorola phone?
Apple's strategy has largely avoided "embrace". Their couple of attempts at it - letting third parties make Mac clones, and the Motorola ROKR - flopped spectacularly.
The ROKR was largely a way to build relationships with cell carriers. If you watch Jobs introducing it, his disgust for it is palpable, and they launched the iPod Nano alongside it as an additional "fuck this thing".
[+] [-] chipotle_coyote|7 years ago|reply
This is about laying the groundwork for Apple's new video service -- the question was always whether they wanted to use it as a way to sell overpriced TV pucks, like they've traditionally done with their services, or it was going to be its own thing. they wanted to have everywhere. If you're surprised that they're choosing "have it everywhere," it's probably because you haven't been following the mounting tidbits of Hollywood noise about the original content being produced for Apple. We're not talking about Carpool Karaoke anymore. We're talking new shows from J.J. Abrams, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Ron Moore, Damien Chazelle. We're talking about new children's programming with Peanuts and Sesame Street. Shows starring Jennifer Aniston, Steve Carrell, Chris Evans, Reese Witherspoon, Aaron Paul, Jason Momoa. A series based on Isaac Asimov's Foundation.
The point is, there is serious firepower happening here, to the point where it's pretty clear this is not "service as adjunct to hardware." This is Apple establishing an actual entertainment division.
[+] [-] cc439|7 years ago|reply
The high production value of traditional HollyWood productions are only sustainable due to their mass cultural appeal. The problem is that mass culture is in fact, losing mass. These tech giants appear to have misread the signs of this pending sea change and interpret behaviors such as cord-cutting among younger generations to mean they are merely moving their consumption online and that their consumption habits remain otherwise unchanged. One only has to look at the popularity of services like YouTube and Twitch with Gen Z to see that this is in fact not the case. Younger millenials and Gen Z as a whole have completely changed their consumption habits to prefer niche content made by individual creators (or at most a small group) on the cheap. While YouTube stars like PewDiePie cannot be said to be "niche" due to the simple fact that his content captures more eyeballs per year than literally anything else by an enormous margin, the content itself isn't exactly something that appeals to a universal audience in the way that a traditional HollyWood Blockbuster or hit TV show might. Ironically, while Google was the tech giant best positioned to capture the future (at least in terms of how I see it developing), they've severly damaged the future potential of YouTube by playing games with the monwtization and promotion of popular channels while also making it impossible for new creators to make money before they've built their channel into a relative behemoth.
While Apple, Amazon, Disney, et al are throwing massive amounts of capital trying to capture a slice of the streaming service market, they appear to have missed signs of cultural change which will likely cause that market to stagnate over the coming decade. I can't say that trying to create a YouTube competitor is a better idea at this point in time either as that market just isn't large or stable enough at this point in time to say there is even space for a second major servicd for small content creators. I can say the future of entertainment is going to look a lot more like YouTube, where the attention of tens of millions of eyeballs are spread over tens of thousands of channels, rather than a handful of sources for traditional mass media productions.
[+] [-] jagger27|7 years ago|reply
Apple is a much more powerful company than it was then and I see it as very likely they'll pull off a Netflix-sized coup.
[+] [-] CharlesW|7 years ago|reply
For anyone who might not be aware of the history, Apple media products have always extended outside of the "walled garden". QuickTime appeared on Windows in 1991, iTunes for Windows was introduced in 2003, and Apple Music has been available on Android since 2015. AirPlay has been supported by 3rd-party devices for quite some time (close to a decade. IIRC).
[+] [-] lordnacho|7 years ago|reply
Even though Apple has a gigantic pile of cash there's a real question as to whether they can actually make money this way. One could question whether you can just hire a bunch of famous movie people and then have a movie empire.
I'm looking forward to the fight though. There's a good case that we're currently in one of the most productive eras in storytelling, mainly thanks to these titans clashing.
[+] [-] leoc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GeekyBear|7 years ago|reply
It continued with Apple Music on Android, and I don't see any difference in Apple's strategy here today.
Apple is moving into video subscriptions and wants to make sure the broader market can purchase their content.
[+] [-] tech_tuna|7 years ago|reply
He might have come up with some other/better ideas but it's not like he didn't fail and produce plenty of duds too.
I have never been an Apple fan but I'll say this, they generally treat their customers far better than the competition. You'll never go to an Android or Microsoft store (the former doesn't really exist I know) and get the kind of service that Apple offers.
I'll never forget the time I went to the Apple store and returned a used laptop battery I bought off of Amazon. It was painless and immediate. My wife loves Apple and for her and for this level of service, I'm happy to continue supporting her having an iPhone, a Macbook, etc.
[+] [-] Fnoord|7 years ago|reply
It took a considerable amount of time until Apple admitted design flaws in iDevices (iPhones and Macbooks recently). Antennagate, Bendgate, Batterygate, the list goes on. I'm typing this on a MBP where the coating went kaboom.
[+] [-] llampx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Krasnol|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awinder|7 years ago|reply
I also think apple has one of the most compelling digital movie purchase systems so it’ll be interesting to see if this follows the iTunes music biz model where they expand to more platforms and take over a lot of the revenue. The system is way more stable at higher quality than competitors like vudu, and they’re trying to do the right thing by avoiding this push to charge more than $20 per movie. Also backdating purchases to upgrade 1080p movies to 4K was a very slick move.
[+] [-] jordache|7 years ago|reply
People don't decide which platform to purchase a movie from based on how compelling the streaming technology is. It needs to be a platform that's accessible on their device firstly.
[+] [-] skh|7 years ago|reply
I buy digital books from Amazon and not Apple because I know that Amazon will make its books available on any device. As far as I know iBooks are not available on non-Apple devices. Why would someone lock themselves in? If they made their digital services device agnostic I’d buy from them.
[+] [-] Paianni|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zapzupnz|7 years ago|reply
Yeah, iPhone sales are below expectations, but Apple's struggling? Hyperbole remains the tech journalism's go-to, I see. I was hoping tech journalism might've made cutting that nonsense out part of their New Year's resolutions, but apparently not.
[+] [-] menzoic|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kodablah|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|7 years ago|reply
52-wk low 142.00
I don't think "struggling" is hyperbole. They are still making lots of money, sure. But the market smells something significant.
[+] [-] Tsubasachan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sjg007|7 years ago|reply
The new Google interactive radar thing is neat. Apple needs to figure that out.
That the iphone/ipad can be a bigger compute device with external attachments could be a bigger development then we think (like the Samsung dock thing).. People don't buy laptops in the same sense anymore and that will help justify higher prices.
The Apple upgrade rent/lease program is basically a way to get higher prices over time.
Apple should have its own MVNO.
[+] [-] kerng|7 years ago|reply
I think Apple should look there to get some inspiration, they could easily bring that to the next level.
Its 2019 for instance and my MacBook Pro still does not have a touch screen, seriously? Which to me, coming from PC world, seems like I'm using a device from 6+ years ago. It has an interesting touchbar though. Ok.
And everything seems too expensive I feel also. I would never pay for a MacBook, my employer does.
Personally I did research end of last year and bought a Surface device and am very happy with that decision.
[+] [-] gnicholas|7 years ago|reply
While holding my phone, I ask Siri to open Netflix. My HomePod in the next room responds that it cannot open apps. Impressive that it can hear me, but maybe consider that My iPhone is much closer to my voice and is able to do the thing I requested?
Just returned the HomePod, for various reasons including this (but mostly because paired HomePods cannot he used as the audio playback device on my Mac, except in iTunes).
[+] [-] faitswulff|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SirHound|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 40acres|7 years ago|reply
The next "big thing" in tech is trending to be AI powered voice assistants, an assistant is more of a horizontal play as you'd need it to be compatible with many different devices and services. With the PC and phone markets mature, what differentiates Apple from it's competition? Especially when the gulf in quality is getting smaller and smaller?
[+] [-] onetimemanytime|7 years ago|reply
Add the fact that today's smartphones do 99% of what people want and new ones are not that much better to justify spending $1000 on them. Add Android competitors from all over the world and you have a very profitable Apple, but not one growing like a "startup."
Cheaper iPhone? Maybe, but the $500 iPhone would way worst than a $500 Android one made by others so...
[+] [-] Marsymars|7 years ago|reply
Yeah, a lot of people don't intuitively get this; but any growth above GDP growth is some part of the pie you're taking away from someone else.
[+] [-] error629|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistrial9|7 years ago|reply
The phone ecosystem has since become FAR more dollars per month than Mac software ever was in its entirety, and the norms of the phone market are not the norms of the desktop market. Massive centralization is ordinary with the phones.. meaning centralized control.
There is nothing ordinary about the way citizens and phones and markets are working .. this is new territory.. without commenting on the article, I take the headline as a comment on the (highly controversial) Apple Store. Evolving past that Apple company store is news.
[+] [-] 14|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newscracker|7 years ago|reply
Bashing Apple never seems to go out of fashion. Companies change strategies for various reasons, including slowing, stagnating or negative growth, revenues, profits, etc. Apple is doing what any capitalistic company would do.
There are many things Apple is yet to open up and/or bring to other platforms (and in all likelihood it will never become the Microsoft of recent times). Apple didn’t just wake up last month and say, “Oh, by the way, our services side doesn’t have a defined growth strategy, and now we need all hands on deck to figure it out.” It already had a strategy for at least a couple of years, if not longer, to make services a bigger piece of the pie and growing it was a key focus area.
Any arrangements, in relation to other platforms and devices, that we have seen announced in the last few weeks or months have likely been in the works for several months or years.
One can argue how well the services side is picking up...or not. But calling it as “the walled garden is cracking” is just a negative spin to catch eyeballs.
[+] [-] agumonkey|7 years ago|reply
better make more interesting phones and laptops and accept the end of growth rather than dilluting your spirit into chasing revenue
[+] [-] shmerl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] resters|7 years ago|reply
- Apple is a superb company but the stock price is still too high.
- Apple faces increasing competition from its own older phones that still work just fine.
- The older phones work just fine because Apple was caught crippling the older phones to preserve the life of the $20 battery inside the phone, and ended up having to simply replace batteries rather than sell new phones. This should be considered a scandal on par with the Volkswagen emissions scandal. I suspect the crippling was timed to make the shiny new phone seem all that much more appealing.
Note that Google recently rolled out Android updates that default a lot of battery killing AI features to "on" even on older devices, dramatically reducing their battery life. This may have been an attempt to boost sales of new phones, or it may be that Google thinks the AI features are so compelling that they will drive new purchases.
- Apple has continued its practice of small, steady improvements to iOS, but has also dramatically increased the price of the phones. I had to chuckle when I realized I spent $1K on my last iPhone. Wow.
I'd argue that the incredible Moore's law-like growth of mobile technology has actually held back a lot of innovation, and now that the platforms are more mature we'll see bigger investment in platform technologies that were risky before when the target devices two years out were largely unknown.
Apple has still shied away from trying to defend its market share by entering the low end market. Like Github's decision (far too late, after Bitbucket nearly caught up) to offer unlimited private repos, Apple will eventually enter the low end market, but only after its lunch starts to be eaten by competitors.
What happens when new big budget production apps don't prioritize iPhone by default as the first platform to launch on? Apple has no strategy to deal with this, and has neglected its development tooling substantially. This is basically the position Microsoft was in (and a nearly identical strategy) right before it took its own nose dive.
Apple should:
- Release a $199 iPhone as quickly as possible, and a $199 iPad also.
- Team up with Facebook to make React-Native a first class citizen for iOS development, even if this is a hostile fork and a blessed version released directly by Apple.
- Institute some programs (battery replacement, etc.) that show that the devices are the only one anyone would ever consider buying.
- Work with software vendors to create apps that actually do require the latest hardware features and the newest phones. Most apps do not need these.
- Make the devices fully waterproof so I can throw mine in the dishwasher once in a while to get it clean.
- Create car radios that are "CarPlay Only" that can be retrofitted into vehicles that didn't ship with one.
- Release a version of OSX that works (and is supported on) Intel NUC hardware.
[+] [-] AnthonyMouse|7 years ago|reply
They have rather a serious problem there actually. There are many people who buy an expensive iPhone for reasons that would be entirely satisfied by a less expensive one if it existed. It's hardly worth raising sales by 15% if you would have to lower overall margins by 50%.
They could produce an intentionally crippled one to avoid cannibalizing their high margin products, but that would dilute their brand, and anyway who would buy it over similarly-priced non-crippled Android devices?
There is a place in the market for a luxury brand, but Apple already has more of the market than luxury brands typically have. It's going to be difficult for them to do much better when the main thing they could adjust is the trade off between margins and volumes.
[+] [-] irq-1|7 years ago|reply
- People want integrated solutions, not one-off devices
- Control of hardware and software, including updates
- High quality cameras, sensors, design aesthetics, etc...
- High price, because integration differentiates their IoT making it hard to compare directly with other products
- Latest technology: Siri voice assistant, face recognition, AI, VR/AR
Imagine if Apple IoT in a home worked with guest iPhones. The networking effect of people talking about iDevices (do you have Apple?) might be enough to create a monopoly.
An example of a simple opportunity: Apple could have in home data caching for music and video where an IoT device acts as a peer server that works with Apple TV -- buy more Apple IoT and all your devices get better.
[+] [-] izacus|7 years ago|reply
As an Android developer, I haven't heard anything about any such "battery killing features" being rolled out to anything. Can you provide a source or did you just make this up?
[+] [-] ksec|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tonyedgecombe|7 years ago|reply
Pretty much everything you suggested would result in lower profits.
[+] [-] dplgk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zitterbewegung|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ceejayoz|7 years ago|reply
The ROKR was largely a way to build relationships with cell carriers. If you watch Jobs introducing it, his disgust for it is palpable, and they launched the iPod Nano alongside it as an additional "fuck this thing".