Apple's Reinvention as a Services Company Starts for Real Monday • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's Reinvention as a Services Company Starts for Real Monday

#121

Post by ValentineC » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 9:43 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #58

com2kid wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any competitor can license music from all of the music providers. There is no reason for most people to keep both Spotify and Apple Music. Android is 81% of the US market. Unless Apple Music comes to android, I don't see Spotify being threatened.

Apple Music is available on Android and the web. It’s not a “walled” service like iMessage or FaceTime is.

> It’s not a “walled” service like iMessage or FaceTime is.

Steve Jobs promised that FaceTime would be open source… eventually: https://www.cnet.com/news/steve-jobs-promised-to-make-faceti...

Any time now.

Re: Apple's Reinvention as a Services Company Starts for Real Monday

#122

Post by amelius » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 9:43 PM UTC

It would be fun if the EU enforced something like the browser ballot screen, giving users choice of content provider on Apple devices.

It also makes sense from an environmental perspective: why have two different devices when you can view all content on one.

Re: Apple's Reinvention as a Services Company Starts for Real Monday

#123

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 9:44 PM UTC

liquidify wrote: post #109

Their products are stagnating because they are less robust and more expensive. The value just isn't there compared to some of golden era hardware. Obviously services can help them grow, but as user of apple laptops, I've felt abandoned for quite a while now. Their growth in those fields are stagnating because their price / quality ratio has reduced significantly.

[deleted]

Re: Apple's Reinvention as a Services Company Starts for Real Monday

#124

Post by pembrook » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 9:54 PM UTC

anongraddebt wrote: post #31

Perhaps I'm overly critical, but I find most paywalled journalism (let alone non-paywalled) to be low-quality. I had a subscription to The Information, and while I initially found their journalism to be high-quality, I eventually realized this perception was strongly shaped by my experience of pervasive low-quality journalism elsewhere. I cancelled my subscription because while The Information was better than pretty…

Yea the information is probably the highest quality tech news out there (that publishes with volume), but I agree it often falls into regurgitating the same narratives everybody else is talking about with zero added value.

I’ve come to realize the only journalism worth paying for comes from exceptional individual writers who are allowed to write about whatever they find interesting (and have something unique to say). Ben Thompson’s Stratechery fits into this category and is often the only person writing about tech who brings unique thinking and new perspective to whatever the topic of the day is.

Re: Apple's Reinvention as a Services Company Starts for Real Monday

#125

Post by toufka » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 9:56 PM UTC

blihp wrote: post #110

zmmmmm wrote: post #106

One interesting question is how viable this can be if they continue their strategy of differentiation through privacy. Doing "services" for people intrinsically means knowing about them. What they watch, what they read, what they listen to, what they need, who they are. The more you know, the better you can "service" them. By pursuing this path they may quickly find themselves sucked into a slipperly slope that puts…

Take the marketing pitch with a grain of salt. They've been keeping track of aggregate usage data pretty much from the beginning. Also, they already have to keep track of things like which apps/music/movies you have bought for accounting purposes at the very least. For subscriptions they most likely also have to track consumption (i.e. per access data) for royalty/revenue share payments. I remember a story from the t…

I think society is okay with some knowledge about individuals. And that information is valuable. But it's still unclear where the line gets drawn that becomes creepy and inverts its value. If you have the corporate structure and policies to be able to draw an arbitrary line, you're likely better suited to capture long-term value than if you have no line at all and willingly scrape all data just to have it (ie, Facebook/Google).

So, Apple having aggregate data is interesting, because it's certainly a monetization, but if they're truly honest and statistically aggregate numbers, I think that might be a fantastic strategy.

Re: Apple's Reinvention as a Services Company Starts for Real Monday

#126

Post by Felz » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

seanwilson wrote: post #20

tyfon wrote: post #10

> The company would collect these monthly fees, then divide up the revenue between developers based on how much time users spend playing their games Sounds terrible for short indie games and good for long grindy games. That's not a future I want for my gaming. Not that I am an apple customer in the first place but hopefully this won't affect what is delivered on the other platforms.

> Sounds terrible for short indie games and good for long grindy games. What would be a good system to determine a fair amount between games when a user is paying a fixed amount per month for all games? You could ask for ratings (e.g. overall, originality) but these will be a lot more nuanced than time spent. You could ask users what split between games they think is fair (feels like a lot to ask especially if you're…

A bit of a wild idea:

Deduce how important a game is to people by introducing small amounts of artificial delay when playing it. This could be input delay, or maybe the game freezes up for a second every minute, or it takes a bit longer to launch or something.

Measure the dropoff rate. People should be really willing to keep playing great games even when inconvenient, and drop marginally-fun grindy games faster. With a large enough install base, you shouldn't need to degrade anyone's experience very much to get enough data.

Re: Apple's Reinvention as a Services Company Starts for Real Monday

#127

Post by gjvc » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 10:03 PM UTC

From the article "The company has only used the Steve Jobs Theater at its new headquarters twice since it opened two years ago."

Something is in decline at Apple.

Re: Apple's Reinvention as a Services Company Starts for Real Monday

#128

Post by hartator » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 10:07 PM UTC

Still hoping for the ARM Macbook insteal of Netflix made by Apple.

Re: Apple's Reinvention as a Services Company Starts for Real Monday

#129

Post by AsyncAwait » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 10:13 PM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #57

ksec wrote: post #19

I continue to wonder why they don't have or push iPhone as a Services ( The iPhone Upgrade Programme ) and continue to rely on mostly Carriers for Financing. By offering iPhone up to a 4 years terms and bundled with AppleCare+ Thief and Loss and iCloud Backup. With Optional Apple Music, Apple News Magazine, Apple TV and Apple Game. All paid via an Apple Branded Credit Card within Apple Pay backed by Goldman Sachs. Yo…

considering the fight to break Apple from the App store this would be a politicians dream state. the current political climate is to demagogue any large corporation which does not bend to their will or more politely, contribute properly to the interest of the politicians and their supporters. Any such program would instantly be set upon with demands for a low income version which in effect would be subsidized by thos…

> the current political climate is to demagogue any large corporation which does not bend to their will or more politely, contribute properly to the interest of the politicians and their supporters.

Corporations have been exercising massive influence over politics worldwide, orchestrating & supporting coups, stealing natural resources, bribing, doctoring data etc. for centuries, but now there's like 3 newly elected congress people not taking PAC money and talking about this a tiny bit and suddenly we should feel bad for the poor multinationals?

Spare me.

Re: Apple's Reinvention as a Services Company Starts for Real Monday

#130

Post by AsyncAwait » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #101

andor wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To me, the clear indication that they're serious about this transition to services will be making them available on third-party devices" This just happened: "Apple is putting iTunes on Samsung TVs" - https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/6/18170797/samsung-2019-tvs-...

That's a big—and new—step for Apple, and I'm sure it's connected to the video service. They don't want it to be "Apple product exclusive," even if I'm sure they'd rather you use Apple products to watch it. But Apple hasn't ever been quite as exclusive as they're painted to be when it comes to peripherals and services. They've had iTunes on Windows for a very long time (yes, it's kind of a trash fire, but it's still t…

I'd very much appreciate them making AirPlay an open protocol, enabling any app to freely stream to AirPlay 2 hardware. Are they really benefiting that much from the licensing deals vs the ecosystem it could spawn? They'd still be producing most of the AurPlay receiver hardware people'd buy, just not the transmitting end.