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Apple’s Social Network

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41–50 of 209 posts

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#41
post #30

> Apple said it would stop providing unit sales for iPhones, iPads, and Macs in fiscal 2019, a step toward becoming more of a services business. While some pundits praised the move as a way to highlight a potent new business model, many analysts complained it was an attempt to hide the pain of a stagnant smartphone market. Can companies just pull this sort of "yeah those numbers look bad, so we're not publishing them…

I was wondering the same thing. What are the reporting requirements? How much flexibility do companies have?

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#42

I only skimmed the article until I realized they weren't talking about Apple starting a privacy focused actual social network. That's what I thought the article would be about. So this is off topic but what I'm imagining is letting people connect with other iCloud users (aka friends and family) to share pics, videos and comment on them. Maybe they can link iTunes/App store content (apps, music, movies, etc.) with eac…

They've had that for years -- iMessage.

IMO Facebook is for aspirational connectivity... you stalk your high school friends from afar. iMessage is for the people whom you actually talk to, and the green vs. blue bubble is a subtle peer pressure factor to get people to flip.

As more applications expose functionality via iMessage, that will get more powerful.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#43

I don’t think he mentioned it, but the easy way for Apple to grow to a $2T company is to get my household, a typical locked-in Apple household with an iPad or iPhone for every person and a computer for each adult and an AppleTV at every TV, to start paying for ever more services through those Apple devices. TV service. Ubiquitous internet service. Financial services like payments but grow into banking. manage all my…

As far as I understand Apple's current business model is heavily geared towards dominating a segment and charging handsomely for it. If Apple were to go for 'quantity' their margin, at least per sale, would suffer and they would probably run into antitrust issues. I think this is a missed opportunity for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Mozilla and maybe even Netflix and Facebook. Not necessarily for Apple.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#44

If you are a developer with a SaaS business, be very afraid. Apple is going to do everything possible to collect a 30% tax on your business to fix their growth problem. It’s ironic, really. The company that mastered tax evasion is about to become the world’s most determined tax collector.

It's a pretty good business model tho. Amazon, both retail and cloud, costco, are both doing pretty well.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#45

I appreciate that Ben took the time to read between the lines of what Apple has been saying, to tease out how Apple is thinking about Apple. It's clear that's why he has a successful business. This article made me stop and think about Apple's future, and to be honest, the future of computing. I think it is clear that in 10 years mobile computing has reached maturity (which is astounding). There is no broad use-case a…

I agree. Imagine AR Kit being manyfold powerful and useful not just with games and gimmicks but useful stuff. But only a small percent of hardware, the latest hardware can run those features. That would considerably hinder the adoption rate and the market won't have enough incentive to double down on it. Instead a good proportion of older hardware able to run those new features will suddenly create a whole new market with just a software release. And I do think iPhone is doing lot more computation than people appreciate. A very easy example is that of the Photos app. Face recognition, scene detection, and object detection among many other things happen on device. Comparing that to Google Photos, none of that happens device; all computing is done on cloud. So it gives Apple an opportunity to decentralise all that computation and optimise ,related costs while also upholding its privacy edge over the competing platforms.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#46

If you are a developer with a SaaS business, be very afraid. Apple is going to do everything possible to collect a 30% tax on your business to fix their growth problem. It’s ironic, really. The company that mastered tax evasion is about to become the world’s most determined tax collector.

Ib4 apple downvote storm.

Dev here, I actively campaign against Apple (and FAAG) products.

They seem like a danger to our capitalistic system as they have enough power to sway politics.

Apple has always been anti-dev from my point of view, forcing users to use their hardware and pay to produce apps.

While there doesnt seem to be many 'good guys', Apple has used their weight to constantly do unpopular things for their customers and developers.

My only hope is that Apple will fail to innovate, and users will begin to go toward more consumer and dev friendly high end products.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#47

I appreciate that Ben took the time to read between the lines of what Apple has been saying, to tease out how Apple is thinking about Apple. It's clear that's why he has a successful business. This article made me stop and think about Apple's future, and to be honest, the future of computing. I think it is clear that in 10 years mobile computing has reached maturity (which is astounding). There is no broad use-case a…

Ben always does a good job in his weekly articles.

I was thinking AR/VR when I read your paragraph 4, and then you said it at the end. So, I completely agree with you. I think most disruption is behind us, but the new wave of Deep Learning enabled computer vision/speech recognition will probably trigger a new wave of use cases and thus new business/services.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#48
post #30

> Apple said it would stop providing unit sales for iPhones, iPads, and Macs in fiscal 2019, a step toward becoming more of a services business. While some pundits praised the move as a way to highlight a potent new business model, many analysts complained it was an attempt to hide the pain of a stagnant smartphone market. Can companies just pull this sort of "yeah those numbers look bad, so we're not publishing them…

AFAIK, the SEC does not require publishing unit volume figures.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#49

I think Apple has some serious issues with growth; they have expanded a huge amount based on a few key and impressive products and ideas at the right time and in the right way, but I think they've ridden that pony almost as far as it can go [but they've done a better job than most at it]. They have done very well with it, but like most corporations who do that, they usually miss the next big thing, because it is some…

I think you're right, and that's what makes Apple such a historically powerful company. They're the most valuable public company on the planet and there are still things where I'm like "if they just did this they could be so much bigger."

That's insanely impressive; to be honest, would you rather the situation be "they're the largest company on the planet and they're extracting all the growth opportunities in the market that I can see?"

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#50

If you are a developer with a SaaS business, be very afraid. Apple is going to do everything possible to collect a 30% tax on your business to fix their growth problem. It’s ironic, really. The company that mastered tax evasion is about to become the world’s most determined tax collector.

Or you can just distribute the apps without using the platform's payment processor.

No one says you have to use Apple's payment processor. Direct users to sign up on your website and then have them download the apps free of charge.

Btw; So does Google and Microsoft. They all take a cut of every app sale. The difference is the rate they take out.

Oh, for Apple, it's 30% the first year of the sub only, it goes down to 15% after that.

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