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

Apple’s Social Network

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 209 posts

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#121

Post by logfromblammo »

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…

Same here. I recently saw that my cable internet bill was going up, and successfully argued my way to a higher tier of service for a lower monthly price. That extra $10 a month was about to drive me right into the arms of their main competitor. If I had been on auto-pay, I might not have even noticed.

I bought a new cable modem to take advantage of the higher tier data rate, so I'm not actually ahead of things yet, cost-wise, but another couple of months will do it.

I think we need that monthly payment friction to pressure companies to keep up their value proposition to customers. If I have to continually re-choose to be a customer, the company has to do more to keep me satisfied.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#122

Post by ethagknight »

72deluxe wrote: post #87
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…

Do you have sufficient disposable income that you don't notice a $20 bill coming either out of your bank or credit card for an entire year? I would wager that you need to pay more attention to your finances. As the old addage says, "look after the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves"!

I totally agree, and usually do. My wife was not happy about spending $240 on Phish :) My point is that it is very complicated to track everything. My household of 5, my businesses, my recreation. I guess the way to wrap up my gp comment is that Apple could move into this space becoming a major value driver to consumers.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#123

Post by icebraining »

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…

Is auto-pay really unrestricted? In my bank I can define a limit for any direct debits, so if they overcharge, it'll be automatically denied, and I'll be informed.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#124

Post by mrkstu »

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…

An interesting aside from an iPad Pro review noted that Apple's silicon designers are focused on the best design for the purpose of that particular piece of hardware.

I think that's an important insight on how and why Apple is lapping the field on the processor side.

They've hired the best team they could and freed them from all constraints other than physics based ones.

Take the best available node process, sprinkle in any custom algorithm acceleration necessary for voice/ai/camera/ssd throughput, and wattage consumption vs battery, figure out heat dissipation constraints, then max out performance.

No need to create a variety of silicon at slightly different price points- iPhone XR gets the same chip as XS, despite being a cheaper phone. New iPad does get one, since it has to push more pixels and has thermal headroom.

Meanwhile Intel or Qualcomm are creating very artificially specialized hardware at a multitude of price points- while also having to keep off features on their SoC's that don't have broad applicability.

The genius of this move into hardware is paying off more each generation.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#125

Post by simonh »

Yetanfou wrote: post #101
simonh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Openness is a pretty old big thing at this point. Apple haven't been open since the Apple II and it's worked out fine for them. Arguably the 'open' camp has missed the current big thing - privacy and security . Yes they are one thing, just with two sides to it.

What makes you think that the 'open' camp has missed the current big thing - privacy and security ? It can only be that you drank the Kool Aid Apple provided. Security-wise the 'open' camp - which includes things like Linux, *BSD and AOSP (which can be called 'Android' as long as you keep in mind not to include the Google-proprietary bits) has a better track record than Apple, privacy-wise there is no comparison. I p…

The cognitive dissonance in this post is giving me a headache.

You don’t get to be the gatekeeper of what constitutes an open AOSP phone or anything else. If you say AOSP has a better track record than Apple in terms of privacy and security, on what basis do you get to say “except all the AOSP phones with Google services and misc crapware and insecure hacks slapped on by their no name Chinese OEMs?” Those are open too. How does that exception serve the hundreds of millions of people walking around with old unpatched ‘open’ phones full of insecure junk-ware and manufacturer hacks?

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#126

Post by hbosch »

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…

> However, what surprises me is that Apple is doubling down on performance. The processing capability of iPhones continues to rise, even when we see that the software that uses that capability has diminishing returns.

Moving the goal posts on performance, beyond what is reasonably necessary, simply incentivizes and challenges developers to start making bigger and better app experiences. This is a passive form of ecosystem insulation that further separates Apple customers from Android customers.

There was a meme a couple years ago, maybe, that on Snapchat you could tell which one of your friends used and iPhone and which ones used Android purely based on the image quality of their photos/videos (I don’t think this is still true). If Apple can silently get devs to start developing apps for the A12, the gap between an Apple experience and an Android experience gets wider and wider IMO.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#127

Post by Yetanfou »

simonh wrote: post #125
Yetanfou wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that the 'open' camp has missed the current big thing - privacy and security ? It can only be that you drank the Kool Aid Apple provided. Security-wise the 'open' camp - which includes things like Linux, *BSD and AOSP (which can be called 'Android' as long as you keep in mind not to include the Google-proprietary bits) has a better track record than Apple, privacy-wise there is no comparison. I p…

The cognitive dissonance in this post is giving me a headache. You don’t get to be the gatekeeper of what constitutes an open AOSP phone or anything else. If you say AOSP has a better track record than Apple in terms of privacy and security, on what basis do you get to say “except all the AOSP phones with Google services and misc crapware and insecure hacks slapped on by their no name Chinese OEMs?” Those are open to…

The 'open camp' has a better track record than Apple, not 'AOSP'. No cognitive dissonance here, just facts.

By the way, if you really want to experience cognitive dissonance contemplate the fact that those same 'Chinese OEMs' produce Apple hardware. Just look at the back of nearly anything branded with that apple, it'll say 'designed in California, made in China' or something similar. Do you still trust that iPhone in your pocket knowing that it was made on the other side of the Great Firewall?

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#128

Post by xeromal »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #74
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…

I used to have this exact same problem. I'm currently using privacy.com to manage all of those little one off subscriptions. It's basically unlimited virtual credit cards. You can pause them, you can add limits to spending, you can delete them if youre done with the service and the service won't be able to charge your bank account. I just discovered it and have been using it for a few months and it's awesome. I highl…

I had that with Simple but they went out of business early this year. :(

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#129

Post by nojvek »

alsetmusic wrote: post #70
ryandrake wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Frontier is the same. They keep on increasing prices when their speeds keep on getting worse.

That’s what we have in America. Internet run by a couple of mafia like companies who have the government wrapped under their fingers.

Yes I would very much love if Apple threw a couple of billions and shook the internet pipes.

Re: Apple’s Social Network

#130

Post by jimbokun »

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…

"Why do sales always need to grow, why sustaining is not enough?"

They don't, but then the stock price goes down.

Post reply on HN