Live data from Hacker News

My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

terminalbytes.com

121–130 of 198 posts

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app? How much something costs is not what determines how much a company charges for something. A company sets prices based on what will make it the most money. A company only lowers prices if they think doing so will generate higher total profits in the long run. Apple seems to think charging $99 a year for…

> A company sets prices based on what will make it the most money. No company does this. Prices are set based upon demand. This does provide opportunities to make more money during some periods than others. If you have a monopoly then you can ignore this and just pick what makes you the most. > Apple seems to think charging $99 a year for developers will help its long term bottom line the most. It's absolutely a besp…

> No company does this. Prices are set based upon demand.

In a market without competition (such as the mobile duopoly), that's how it works. The customer has no choice anyways so no price comparison can happen.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app? How much something costs is not what determines how much a company charges for something. A company sets prices based on what will make it the most money. A company only lowers prices if they think doing so will generate higher total profits in the long run. Apple seems to think charging $99 a year for…

There can’t be that many iOS developers that the $99 really affects their bottom line. I always assumed it was a barrier to entry to help discourage low effort apps.

Keeping low effort apps out of the store helps their bottom line. It's a second order effect.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#124

>I’m saving approximately $84-120 CAD annually. I suppose most of this is eaten up by the need to pay apple $99 per year just to run your own app on your own phone for longer than a week.

This Apple fee is one of the most absurd things they do. Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app? When I buy a device I want to know that I own it, but Apple keeps pushing the narrative that "we LET you use this device in ways we see fit". So basically the customer is just borrowing a device from Apple while paying the full price. I'm a longtim…

> Apple keeps pushing the narrative that "we LET you use this device in ways we see fit".

No, they do not. That is how you are interpreting their actions. It’s obviously not the narrative they are pushing, that would be utterly absurd. The narrative Apple pushes over and over is that it’s your device, and that what you do with it is private and stays with it. Outright saying the device is theirs and they only let you do what they choose would be incredibly stupid, and their marketing is not incompetent.

Mind you, this doesn’t mean your interpretation (which is shared by many people) is wrong. On the contrary, it has merit. But it makes no sense to say Apple is pushing it as a narrative, that’s not what the expression means.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app? How much something costs is not what determines how much a company charges for something. A company sets prices based on what will make it the most money. A company only lowers prices if they think doing so will generate higher total profits in the long run. Apple seems to think charging $99 a year for…

There can’t be that many iOS developers that the $99 really affects their bottom line. I always assumed it was a barrier to entry to help discourage low effort apps.

But it's asinine for developers to have to pay $99 in order to test their app, such as on TestFlight. When you have an app idea, when you are far from deciding on monetization, you just want to test out the central features of the app among friends, it's wrong to require payment for that.

Remember all apps have once been low effort apps: the first few weeks when you begin working on them. Polish comes later.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app? How much something costs is not what determines how much a company charges for something. A company sets prices based on what will make it the most money. A company only lowers prices if they think doing so will generate higher total profits in the long run. Apple seems to think charging $99 a year for…

>How much something costs is not what determines how much a company charges for something. It actually does - in a free market. That's, like, one of the main arguments why capitalism is good for the population and not evil. But in a gate-kept oligopoly like phones, actors can abuse the system to squeeze more money out of consumers, leaving the corporations as sole beneficiaries. That's why this kind of stuff usually…

> capitalism is good for the population and not evil

This is the biggest lie that we keep telling ourselves. Capitalism is destroying the only place in the universe we can survive, and with the absurdly unequal wealth distribution and centralisation it enables, has caused more collective misery than any other idea in human history, in my opinion.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#127
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90 days is still absurd. I have custom apps I install on my Android phones once per phone . I go years without bothering to rebuild them.

I would guess they do it because they want to minimize the chance that someone will install an unapproved app to someone’s phone and cause harm. I know it’s already pretty hard but Apple seems to be very particular when it comes to this.

Popup on app open that warns app is sideloaded?

There are simpler and more usable options that are more defensible than what they do today.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app? How much something costs is not what determines how much a company charges for something. A company sets prices based on what will make it the most money. A company only lowers prices if they think doing so will generate higher total profits in the long run. Apple seems to think charging $99 a year for…

>How much something costs is not what determines how much a company charges for something. It actually does - in a free market. That's, like, one of the main arguments why capitalism is good for the population and not evil. But in a gate-kept oligopoly like phones, actors can abuse the system to squeeze more money out of consumers, leaving the corporations as sole beneficiaries. That's why this kind of stuff usually…

Free markets have absolutely nothing to do with capitalism. You can have markets without capitalism. You can have free trade without capitalism, and you can have unfree trade with capitalism too.

It’s one of the great achievements of capitalism that it managed to convince people that trade == capitalism and that without capitalism you are reduced to the Soviet Union, because no other options are possible.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How much something costs is not what determines how much a company charges for something. It actually does - in a free market. That's, like, one of the main arguments why capitalism is good for the population and not evil. But in a gate-kept oligopoly like phones, actors can abuse the system to squeeze more money out of consumers, leaving the corporations as sole beneficiaries. That's why this kind of stuff usually…

Free markets have absolutely nothing to do with capitalism. You can have markets without capitalism. You can have free trade without capitalism, and you can have unfree trade with capitalism too. It’s one of the great achievements of capitalism that it managed to convince people that trade == capitalism and that without capitalism you are reduced to the Soviet Union, because no other options are possible.

> It’s one of the great achievements of capitalism that it managed to convince people that trade == capitalism and that without capitalism you are reduced to the Soviet Union, because no other options are possible.

Never heard anyone say this before, although it may be pretty much the case[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_trade_of_the_Soviet_Un...

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free markets have absolutely nothing to do with capitalism. You can have markets without capitalism. You can have free trade without capitalism, and you can have unfree trade with capitalism too. It’s one of the great achievements of capitalism that it managed to convince people that trade == capitalism and that without capitalism you are reduced to the Soviet Union, because no other options are possible.

> It’s one of the great achievements of capitalism that it managed to convince people that trade == capitalism and that without capitalism you are reduced to the Soviet Union, because no other options are possible. Never heard anyone say this before, although it may be pretty much the case[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_trade_of_the_Soviet_Un...

If you criticise capitalism one of the most likely responses you're going to get is ''so you want to become communist like the SU"?

And that wkkipedia article is of course not proving that trade equals capitalism (or are you saying that America stops being capitalistic if Trumps dream of a self-sufficient nation somehow succeeds?). Trade is trade. There was trade in the past when capitalism did not yet exist and there will be trade in the future when capitalism no longer exists.

Post reply on HN