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Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

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Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#431

Post by magic_hamster »

bee_rider wrote: post #326
tcmart14 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to my first iPhone last year and for me the determining factor was not feeling I had to constantly be on the upgrade path. I've has my iPhone SE (2020) and haven't been happier with a phone. A taken care of iPhone can theoretically last 7-8 years since that is how long an iPhone generally gets OS and security updates. Android is getting better on flagship phones, but still not as good. By some none flagshi…

> Addition: And I think one thing that really hurt the Android ecosystem is when Android phones went through that phase of every phone flagship phone had some sort of gimmick. Where as Apple really just buttoned down and developed a really solid phone. A lot of android phone makers were just focusing on gimmicks like styluses or niche features to set them apart from other Android instead of just really developing a g…

As a long term android user, there are definitely great minimalist phones out there that give you a really good experience with little to no gimmicks. My current favorite is the Zenfone line from Asus. I have the Zenfone 8 and it's just brilliant. There's hardly any bloat, it's just android, no silly gimmicks, small form factor, decent camera and it has a 3.5 headphone jack. The newest model has all that and a much improved camera, and I've been eyeing it even though I really don't need to upgrade yet.

It was definitely a long way getting there but android is in a pretty great place right now.

I can't imagine ever going back to iPhones. I felt extremely crippled every time I tried to do anything. I remember having no access to the filesystem, having to use proprietary software (iTunes... never again) and having to jailbreak my iPhone to install custom ringtones from my own music. When I got my first android phone and could just plug it in, drag and drop files from my computer, I felt the strongest and weirdest catharsis, akin to "I don't have to suffer anymore".

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#433

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

smoldesu wrote: post #93
duped wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every adult in the developed world needs a smart phone. They replace these devices about every 2-3 years. Apple makes one of the best in class of these devices, and has successfully designed one such that it's hard to switch to a competitor (rather it's easier to stay in the ecosystem). They've convinced about a billion people on the planet that the iPhone is the best device for them, so if you split that into…

iPhones make money, but services make more. The App Store alone made over 80 billion dollars in estimated revenue last year, just by existing. That's without accounting for Apple One, Apple Fitness, Apple Arcade, AppleTV Plus, or iCloud. Apple simply makes $80 billion annually for writing a payment processor everyone else has to use. Services are one thing, but playing both the gatekeeper and competitor to a number o…

This is underappreciated. You're not just buying an iPhone, you're buying a system of life accessories.

Which has clunky ugly corners, but still sort of works smoothly most of the time. (Mostly.)

I'm increasingly convinced Android only exists because it allows Google to pretend it's not just an ad company, and Apple to pretend it's not a monopoly.

Apple's stranglehold on the mobile market, with its mix of hardware, software, and content services, is far more extreme than Microsoft's 90s-era stranglehold on the PC desktop.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#434

Post by magic_hamster »

krzyk wrote: post #387
tcmart14 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to my first iPhone last year and for me the determining factor was not feeling I had to constantly be on the upgrade path. I've has my iPhone SE (2020) and haven't been happier with a phone. A taken care of iPhone can theoretically last 7-8 years since that is how long an iPhone generally gets OS and security updates. Android is getting better on flagship phones, but still not as good. By some none flagshi…

The so called gimmicks is progress, how would you know what sticks if you don't try? And it was one of the best features of android. Apple makes boring product, that makes it easy for app developers to test (recently less so). AFAIR Android has still more de ices. Android is more of a power user device (you can do more, you can root it, think hack as in hacker news). From power user perspective iPhone is like Windows…

From my user perspective Android is Linux while iOS is more like Microsoft Bob

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#435

Post by krelian »

skc wrote: post #422

I actually like that Apple completely obliterates the fiction that people don't want a walled garden. It's such a minority as to be utterly irrelevant. These insane numbers prove it.

HN threads are a bad source for what real people want and feel. It's terrific for talking about the technical side of things or about products and services that are geared towards the HN demographic but at the moment you step out of that comfort zone the disconnect between HN and real people becomes jarring.

And on a different note, and this is an idea that can use some further development, the fact that a non-free, closed source, walled garden, subscription-based software rules our life when free software alternative exists but remain unused by the majority of people is in a way a demonstration of how anarchism (= free software movement) has no chance to take hold in human society. Humans will always be prepared to trade some freedom for comfort.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#436

Post by throwaway0x7E6 »

skc wrote: post #422

I actually like that Apple completely obliterates the fiction that people don't want a walled garden. It's such a minority as to be utterly irrelevant. These insane numbers prove it.

and the numbers McDonalds is pulling prove that people who cook their own meals are an utterly irrelevant minority as well.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#439

Post by wiredfool »

bee_rider wrote: post #329
smoldesu wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great, I support that option for you. Personally, I just want to use the Open Source apps that Apple won't let me install. If I can have that, then there's no reason we can't both live in perfect harmony. That system works perfectly fine on Android and Google even manages to make a handsome bundle off the Play Store to boot.

Yeah, I don't really want an EPIC store on my phone, but I'd love a GNU repo. I dunno. Maybe Apple could allow stores on their phones, but still take a % of any purchases, to annoy EPIC and their ilk into buggering off.

The _moment_ there's an option, there will be a Facebook store, and it will have things like that vpn app that routed all traffic through Facebook so that they could do analytics on it. There will be cross app device/user level identifiers.

Facebook will drive something like 10-50% of people to add their store if it's the only way they can have their insta/whatsapp/fb/whateverthehellelse.

Google will probably roll out a play store as well. I don't think they're going to be as overtly evil, but they're still going to be be going around Apple's privacy protections if at all possible. (Why not? I get the feeling that FB is more on the back foot with metaverse and other flat/failing metrics, and google has more to drive people to them between Chrome, Android, and GApps.)

And others? There will probably be at least 10-100 app stores, and I would be shocked if there wasn't one that attempted to do things like a hidden RAT/Rootkit. I'm not saying that the app store review process solves a malware problem, but it is one layer in a defense in depth. It certainly has kept my extended family's devices in better shape than their computers, which I've had to clean occasionally.

This is a version of good of the many vs good of the few (Sorry, been looking at Star Trek lately). On the one hand, there are companies that would like a bigger hit of the pie, + a fringe of people who have enough knowledge and skills to manage to manually setup a secure phone with alternative/os/apps. On the other, there's Apple and a vast swath of humanity where the iPhone/iPad is probably the most secure computing device they can hope to own, and is yet still useful.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#440

Post by labcomputer »

smoldesu wrote: post #349
kjreact wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not until you start telling me that I don't have a right to eat food that the FDA hasn't approved for me. If you only eat FDA-certified food, good for you. It's a service the government provides free-of-charge, and some people like it. It is illegal to import unapproved drugs, so yes FDA can stop you. And no the FDA is not really “free-of-charge” since you pay them through your tax dollars. But I concede that, like…

> Why the necessity to force Apple to do the same? Because both of us can coexist without forcing the other out of the room. John Deere didn't have a right to fleece farmers just because some people would pay for their premium services and others would not. They were sued for antitrust violation because of this[0], which isn't a far cry from the way Apple treats their repair partners or developers. The precedent of t…

> Because both of us can coexist without forcing the other out of the room.

So can't you just, like, not be an Apple customer?

Your own solution to another commenter not wanting alternative apps stores is to "just not use it". So why don't you "just not use" iOS?

People who like the Apple Way can continue to buy Apple products. People who don't can continue enjoying products from Apple's competitors. No need to force anyone out of the room.

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