Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 429 posts

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#11

Post by s1k3s »

aurareturn wrote: post #9
s1k3s wrote: post #5

> Apple executive Eddy Cue pushed for an Android iMessage app in 2016, but Craig Federighi responded in an internal email that “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.” This conversation happened 8 years ago and it was about a product released 12 years ago. If anything, this shows how slow regulators are before they take any action and how they…

The truth is, all businesses do what Craig suggested. AirBnB isn't opening up their platform to Expedia. Meta isn't allowing your Instagram data to be accessed by another platform. Your own company isn't voluntarily making it easier for its customers to leave.

Exactly. It should be expected from any company to do this, which is why I'm blaming the regulatory agencies for being too slow to act.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#12

Post by talldayo »

aurareturn wrote: post #9
s1k3s wrote: post #5

> Apple executive Eddy Cue pushed for an Android iMessage app in 2016, but Craig Federighi responded in an internal email that “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.” This conversation happened 8 years ago and it was about a product released 12 years ago. If anything, this shows how slow regulators are before they take any action and how they…

The truth is, all businesses do what Craig suggested. AirBnB isn't opening up their platform to Expedia. Meta isn't allowing your Instagram data to be accessed by another platform. Your own company isn't voluntarily making it easier for its customers to leave.

Well, yes. It's a great reason to not let businesses decide on these things, because their petty interpretation will always override a communal solution. Once you reach Apple's scale, you shouldn't expect to start replacing stuff like SMS with a proprietary alternative and get away with it.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#13

Post by [deleted] »

ukuina wrote: post #2

It was very surprising that Apple did not strong-arm the EU by threatening to pull out of the area. The short-term loss of revenue from leaving the EU is nothing compared to the long-term decline this is going to cause in Apple's services/subscriptions revenue if the iPhone is commoditized.

[deleted]

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#14

Post by Bjorkbat »

Something I keep thinking about is how we’re seeing the end of what I call the “tech zeitgeist”.

Started upon realizing that we‘ve likely seen the end of the social network era. No new social networking startups have popped-off in a while, and the recent ones are arguably more about connecting you to entertainers than friends.

Besides that, a lot of the tech ideas from 2012-2020 have kind of fizzled out. 3D printing will likely never enter the mainstream. VR/AR has failed to launch. In broad strokes, everything has either reached maturity or faded away.

AI is the one exception it seems, and when you realize that you start to realize that all the hype and money being poured into AI may be more out of desperation than anything else. It’s AI or nothing it seems.

And then, you have Apple at what is arguably its most vulnerable, while many other tech giants go through some kind of enshittification phase.

Can’t wait for the end personally.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#15

Post by cydonian_monk »

pavlov wrote: post #10
ukuina wrote: post #2

It was very surprising that Apple did not strong-arm the EU by threatening to pull out of the area. The short-term loss of revenue from leaving the EU is nothing compared to the long-term decline this is going to cause in Apple's services/subscriptions revenue if the iPhone is commoditized.

A quarter of Apple’s revenue is from Europe. (This number includes the UK and a few other smaller non-EU markets, but it’s close enough for comparison purposes.) I don’t see what would be “short-term” about pulling out of this market entirely. If they lost 25% of their revenue, they’d have to increase revenue in other markets by 33% to make up for it. Where is that going to come from?

This depends on how high the operating costs are in Europe. If their profits are approaching zero in the market, pulling out of it entirely would have less of an impact. Obviously that isn't the case, but operating costs for the market also aren't zero.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#16

Post by fidotron »

The thing people love forgetting is a huge part of the iPhone success is based on the North American cellular comms industry being a trustless disaster area. The deal Apple did with AT&T opened the floodgates.

Android was initially designed so that operators could customise it. The idea was apps were developed (and sold) only by operators, and everything else would be via the browser. If you had used a Nokia device in the EU in 2005 and then the exact same model in the customised form released on a US carrier you'd understand why this was such a terrible idea. The exclusion of carriers from being able to make modifications to the phone was, and remains, an active feature for end users.

People keep having to learn that developers cannot be trusted either, someone somewhere will always trend towards the very worst thing they can do, and you need look no further than this forum for the levels of avarice which have overrun the tech industry. The EU regulators live in a parallel universe where they're all dependent on WhatsApp as they've never truly internalised that there is no such thing as a free lunch and that people see them as easy marks.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#17

Post by pessimizer »

aurareturn wrote: post #9
s1k3s wrote: post #5

> Apple executive Eddy Cue pushed for an Android iMessage app in 2016, but Craig Federighi responded in an internal email that “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.” This conversation happened 8 years ago and it was about a product released 12 years ago. If anything, this shows how slow regulators are before they take any action and how they…

The truth is, all businesses do what Craig suggested. AirBnB isn't opening up their platform to Expedia. Meta isn't allowing your Instagram data to be accessed by another platform. Your own company isn't voluntarily making it easier for its customers to leave.

Companies shouldn't be expected to individually make suboptimal decisions in order to preserve the health of the market. They should be regulated by a functioning government.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#18

Post by pfannkuchen »

One thing that I haven’t seen mentioned in discussions of communications tech monopoly (or “monopoly” in many cases) is the risk of future political censorship by a hypothetical future evil Apple. Centralized market power here isn’t just about unfair profits or bad products, it’s also about control of information (and therefore control of minds).

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#19

Post by aetherson »

pavlov wrote: post #10
ukuina wrote: post #2

It was very surprising that Apple did not strong-arm the EU by threatening to pull out of the area. The short-term loss of revenue from leaving the EU is nothing compared to the long-term decline this is going to cause in Apple's services/subscriptions revenue if the iPhone is commoditized.

A quarter of Apple’s revenue is from Europe. (This number includes the UK and a few other smaller non-EU markets, but it’s close enough for comparison purposes.) I don’t see what would be “short-term” about pulling out of this market entirely. If they lost 25% of their revenue, they’d have to increase revenue in other markets by 33% to make up for it. Where is that going to come from?

From Europe, yes, but less is from the EU. They don't break this out in public statements so we can only guess at the numbers, but less than 25%.

Re: The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down

#20

Post by api »

fidotron wrote: post #16

The thing people love forgetting is a huge part of the iPhone success is based on the North American cellular comms industry being a trustless disaster area. The deal Apple did with AT&T opened the floodgates. Android was initially designed so that operators could customise it. The idea was apps were developed (and sold) only by operators, and everything else would be via the browser. If you had used a Nokia device i…

I summarize the second point as “the Internet is a dark forest.”

If it’s bad and it can be done it will be done, and at scale.

Post reply on HN