Apple’s Social Network • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#61

Post by GarrisonPrime » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 2:50 PM UTC

qwerty456127 wrote: post #26

> Apple Inc. shares had their worst day since 2014 amid concerns that growth in its powerhouse product, the iPhone, is slowing. In the fiscal fourth quarter, Apple said iPhone unit sales barely grew from a year earlier Why do sales always need to grow, why sustaining is not enough? Also wouldn't it be a good idea to change the focus product periodically? I.e. we've sold so much iPhones that everybody who ever wanted…

I agree that growth is often overemphasized.

But one point to consider is the population expands by approximately 2% per year. (Highly variable depending on region, of course.)

If growth in sales isn’t at least 2% per year, that implies a smaller percentage of the population is buying their products than have previously.

In other words, sales remaining flat can be interpreted as a relative decrease in sales.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#62

Post by macintux » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #40

empath75 wrote: post #5

It seems like apple can continue to grow ‘unit sales’ by introducing new products like the watch at a regular pace.

Or like the Earpods. I expect they will continue making discrete, targeted bets on wearables and other augmenters, while they keep poking at big ideas like the car. I really don't see them going the "social" way. Cook does cloud software as well as Steve did (i.e. not very), he'd rather sell physical widgets and be a landlord on the resulting platforms. I think this post reads too much into "Today at Apple", Apple ar…

> Apple are just reacting to Google building a similar network of physical locations for outreach and training last year

You know Apple has been offering free classes at their retail stores for years, right?

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#63

Post by PKop » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

qwerty456127 wrote: post #26

> Apple Inc. shares had their worst day since 2014 amid concerns that growth in its powerhouse product, the iPhone, is slowing. In the fiscal fourth quarter, Apple said iPhone unit sales barely grew from a year earlier Why do sales always need to grow, why sustaining is not enough? Also wouldn't it be a good idea to change the focus product periodically? I.e. we've sold so much iPhones that everybody who ever wanted…

If you're an investor, or an employee who's compensation is largely allocated to stock shares, then you depend on perpetual share price appreciation, either through sales growth or other means.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#64

Post by MisterTea » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

ethagknight wrote: post #19

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…

Good little cow. keep mooing and chew your cud. pay no attention to the chute you're walking towards...

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#65

Post by moolcool » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 2:58 PM UTC

ethagknight wrote: post #19

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…

>Imagine if those “luxury” expenses were intermixed with a dozen other large, more legitimate bills? Apple could be processing $1000s a month per household, taking a hefty fee from some of them.

That's what we need-- another middle man taking a even more off the top of every transaction.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#66

Post by johnchristopher » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 2:58 PM UTC

ComputerGuru wrote: post #59

johnchristopher wrote: post #54

I am bad at the economy thing so I have a question: Is Apple increasing the price of iPhones to keep up with revenue growth ?

Yes. Units sold is down across the market and Apple is no exception, but Apple’s revenue is at record highs.

Okay, thanks.

So in the end, when a consumer wants to replace his iphone 6s that is finally too much out of date he'll have to pay more than if everyone (him included) had bought the iphone that came after the iphone 6s, right ?

So basically selling a product that last too long is a problem for Apple (who has to report to shareholders why revenue is growing less than before) and the consumers (who pays basically more for the same since standard usage between an iphone6s and an iphone7/8 stays the same overall) ?

Apple can't take a drop in revenue growth to the benefit of consumers by selling the next crop of iphone at the same price. So they are condemned to get a more expensive (than the last one) premium iphone out or raise the prices across the line-up. And if I understand correctly they did both, correct ?

That would explain why it seems to me that apple products are getting more expensive and less of a commodity (which high volume would suggest).

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#67

Post by bobjordan » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 2:58 PM UTC

mkirklions wrote: post #46

throwawayinside wrote: post #25

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…

Well, I'm not trying to goad a downvote storm. But, having dealt with Apple, getting my China factory approved in the Apple MFi program. In about three months, their terrible and unethical business practices in dealing with their Apple MFI program factories in China, literally made me completely switch my business strategy, and end up telling them to shove it. Blessing in disguise. I'll prefer to build popcorn stands, literally anything, is better than spending our time and resources to be abused by them.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#68

Post by 013a » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 2:58 PM UTC

bedhead wrote: post #29

sanderjd wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the next big thing that they have missed?

I think it's pretty clear that online video slipped right through their fingers. They were early with Apple TV and Steve Jobs' assertion that he had "cracked" TV back in 2011. And what happened? They did almost nothing and let Netflix run away with it. Apple wasn't even a contender. Same thing goes for mapping, which was highlighted in that recent blog post. They came out with Apple Maps years ago but almost did noth…

I don't believe these are "missed opportunities". A true missed opportunity would be, say, Microsoft and the phone market. The train came and went on that because of the network effects of a phone platform putting momentum behind incumbents.

Look at Apple Music. Spotify was released in 2008. Google Play Music All Access in 2013. Apple Music was released in 2015. For being technically 8 years late, APM has 50M subscribers, compared to Spotify's 75M [1] (GPM is probably harder to measure because the subscription is combined with YTP/YTM, I pay for it but literally never use it). If that wasn't impressive, realize that APM is marketed just to Apple users, whereas all those other platforms do everything they can to get users on every platform (APM is available on Windows and Android, though I'd love to see the user counts for those platforms over the competition, likely very low).

Apple Maps and the routers are really weird things to pick on. They're not core at all to Apple's business model. They're fungible products; you can use any mapping software or any router and get 98% of the same experience. Apple simply doesn't invest a lot in fungible products; they invest in products where they can make a true 10x difference for their customers. iCloud Drive is the same way; customers want it so they'll make it, but they're not going to drop $5B developing it.

An Apple TV subscription service is more similar to APM than anything else, with the exception that music streaming services are expected to have "everything" on the platform whereas streaming services just need to host those handful of shows you watch to justify the subscription price. And they might have a great lineup coming up the pipeline here; they've ordered shows from Ronald Moore, a TV adaptation of Foundation, a comedy from the co-creators of Its Always Sunny, a show produced by J.J. Abrams, etc; I think they're in a good place to drop a big announcement and secure a LOT of subscribers. [2]

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/careypurcell/2018/05/15/with-50...

[2] https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/07/11/here-are-all-of-t...

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#69

Post by epicide » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 3:00 PM UTC

sanketskasar wrote: post #45

oflannabhra wrote: post #33

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…

Even before we get to ubiquitous AR (capability), I think the on-device AI tools is a big differentiator. Right now, not so much, but I think public opinion on privacy is shifting a bit with what we're seeing about Facebook, etc.

It's a little like a solution looking for a problem, but it seems like a good bet that we will have some of those problems in the future. I guess more like a solution waiting for a problem?

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#70

Post by alsetmusic » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 3:00 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #57

xfitm3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rarely make changes so I don’t see the value here. I have every recurring bill setup to auto pay. If I had to manually pay bills I would go insane.

Interesting. I choose to manually pay all my bills, and avoid monthly subscriptions for things. This allows me to see billing shenanigans as soon as companies attempt them, rather than months later. Comcast just recently raised my bill by 15% or so because that's what they do, and I was able to avoid it before paying it. With auto-pay I would have just kept paying the higher rate. I also try to manually pay everythin…

> Comcast just recently raised my bill by 15% or so because that's what they do, and I was able to avoid it before paying it. With auto-pay I would have just kept paying the higher rate.

I also disabled autopay for similar reasons. This helped me notice that Comcast had started charging me for a TV tuner that I didn’t have (I don’t have their television service, only internet). It took three months and multiple calls to get that resolved and credited. I might not have remembered to follow-up if I didn’t have to look at the bill each time.