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Why are you people defending Apple?

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Re: Why are you people defending Apple?

#191

Post by khafra »

jad wrote: post #140
statictype wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense? Many (like me) already own iOS devices and are invested in it with all the apps/games/songs/books that we already bought. I probably won't switch platforms based on the absence of a newspaper/music subscription service, but I sure would like the option of having those.

In the sense that if you are unhappy with your iPad, your next tablet will be something else. New customers won't buy an iPad if it doesn't do what they want. True, some users might have some switching pain, but that's true for most things. Windows to Mac, Xbox to PS3, Kindle to Nook. Lock in is real, but rarely determinative. Consumers vote with their wallets. The free market is a powerful thing.

People who own an iPhone or iPad bought it because they perceived it as their best option. Whether they buy something else, or just grit their teeth and bear it because there's still nothing better, they're being hurt when their best option gets worse.

Re: Why are you people defending Apple?

#192

Post by brown9-2 »

speleding wrote: post #184

30% is not as much as people think it is. I've been involved in billing systems that do recurring billing and it is actually surprisingly hard, a lot harder than one-off payments. Just a few examples: * Credit cards on file get stolen or expire all the time. * People forget to cancel in time and do charge backs which you then have to resolve in some other way. * People e-mail customer support a lot more than for regu…

This is a completely subjective judgment. You don't think 30% is too much for these services.

Re: Why are you people defending Apple?

#193

Post by speleding »

brown9-2 wrote: post #192
speleding wrote: post #184

30% is not as much as people think it is. I've been involved in billing systems that do recurring billing and it is actually surprisingly hard, a lot harder than one-off payments. Just a few examples: * Credit cards on file get stolen or expire all the time. * People forget to cancel in time and do charge backs which you then have to resolve in some other way. * People e-mail customer support a lot more than for regu…

This is a completely subjective judgment. You don't think 30% is too much for these services.

Double faux pas: It's not subjective, because I provide quantitative arguments (Apple not making money on the app store initially) and facts (recurring billing is much more expensive than regular billing, which is common knowledge to billing experts). Also note that I did NOT say 30% wasn't too much, I said it's not as much as people think.

Re: Why are you people defending Apple?

#194

Post by justincormack »

potatolicious wrote: post #174
loewenskind wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If last.fm, etc. are providing so much value why are their margins so thin? Are they providing value less than 30% of the cost of the base product?

What yungchin said, but also because last.fm and Pandora's source supplier has a stranglehold over the market (aka the traditional labels). Like Netflix, their entire business revolves around having the right to play their content, so the content producer can take them to the cleaners easy peasy. And now they're being squeezed from the other side. Life sucks right now for services that make content discovery and reco…

I don't think discovery and recommendation are worth much. I pay for Spotify for the access, I would not pay for recommendations, which can be built on any addressable technology via social networks anyway.

Spotify already have negative margins though so 30% wont work.

Re: Why are you people defending Apple?

#195

Post by justincormack »

Natsu wrote: post #169
mambodog wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they want any kind of DRM.

Why would you need DRM for a web app with a subscription model?

To stop subscribers copying all the content and then unsubscribing. For services where most of the value is in the back catalogue this is a risk.

Re: Why are you people defending Apple?

#196

Post by swombat »

potatolicious wrote: post #174
loewenskind wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If last.fm, etc. are providing so much value why are their margins so thin? Are they providing value less than 30% of the cost of the base product?

What yungchin said, but also because last.fm and Pandora's source supplier has a stranglehold over the market (aka the traditional labels). Like Netflix, their entire business revolves around having the right to play their content, so the content producer can take them to the cleaners easy peasy. And now they're being squeezed from the other side. Life sucks right now for services that make content discovery and reco…

The real problem there is that there are already two sets of distributors in the music market.

The songwriters/artists/producers create the songs.

The record companies distribute it.

The "distribution plus" companies like last.fm distribute it.

Now they want Apple to distribute it too (quite reasonably).

Well, one of those distributors is going to have to drop their rates. I'd suggest the one that already takes most of the pie, rather than the poor "distribution plus" innovator squeezed in the middle. But, as we know, the record companies are insane and will not accept this suggestion.

Could they afford to do this if people weren't paying for music? No. Solution: stop paying for music in any form that ends up in the pocket of the big recording labels.

Re: Why are you people defending Apple?

#197

Post by [deleted] »

chc wrote: post #91
enneff wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, come on. None of these things even existed a few years ago. People are consumers and will adjust to whatever is the newer, better tech.

That's not how people's brains work. When Mom first sees a smartphone, it's a cool new thing. Yeah, there's a learning curve, but it's new, so that's obvious. She'll deal. Fast forward three years. Mom has developed a lot of habits and expectations. Time for a new smartphone. When Mom buys a new smartphone, if it works differently than the one she had before, it is confusing and you just can't do anything with this p…

[deleted]

Re: Why are you people defending Apple?

#198

Post by isleyaardvark »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #177
statictype wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense? Many (like me) already own iOS devices and are invested in it with all the apps/games/songs/books that we already bought. I probably won't switch platforms based on the absence of a newspaper/music subscription service, but I sure would like the option of having those.

Wasn't it obvious when you bought the non-transferable music, books and apps that this was the sort of company you were dealing with? It strikes me that this is a pretty unreasonable complaint. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I don't think it's fair to moan when it turns out it's a duck. I'm not knocking Apple, I like Apple but we as consumers need to be aware of what we're buying i…

We can still be disappointed even if we're not surprised.

Re: Why are you people defending Apple?

#199

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

statictype wrote: post #188
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't it obvious when you bought the non-transferable music, books and apps that this was the sort of company you were dealing with? It strikes me that this is a pretty unreasonable complaint. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I don't think it's fair to moan when it turns out it's a duck. I'm not knocking Apple, I like Apple but we as consumers need to be aware of what we're buying i…

I think you missed my point: I'm not feigning outrage at the fact that I can't transfer everything I bought for phone A onto phone B. I'm saying that shutting out apps because they don't cough up Apple's ransom only hurts the customer and that customers won't necessarily vote with their wallet and move somewhere else because they have already invested in their current platform/device.

If they won't do anything about being hurt, then the question is surely how hurt are they?

Re: Why are you people defending Apple?

#200

Post by JamieEi »

lotusleaf1987 wrote: post #16

Zach said it best yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2224469 Of course Rhapsody can't sell their stuff for a 30% margin. It's not their own stuff! They're trying to be the last link in a chain of 90/10 (or more) splits. They repackage record labels' repackaging of artists' content. Do you think the artists would find 30% economically untenable? The App Store is 70/30 because Apple can take things straight…

I disagree with the last part. Apple desperately wants to be in the commodity payment processing business. They want a cut of every transaction that takes place on a cell phone, which someday soon may be almost every transaction in the consumer economy. Normally the transaction processing business is a small slice of a huge pie. Apple's plan is to take a huge slice of a huge pie. Obviously it's in no one else's interest to give them all this extra pie, so Apple figures it will abuse it's market position to force everyone to go along.

It's pure evil, but that really shouldn't surprise anyone at this point.

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