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

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

#161

Post by millstone »

xbmcuser wrote: post #159
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…

They are taking a few Billion a year from Google for search placement after that any marketing they do about privacy is mostly bull.

This is way too dismissive. Siri and Apple Maps don't know who you are (except on-device) while Google Assistant and GMaps aggressively push you to log in and link your accounts. These real differences aren't erased by choice of search provider.

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

#162

Post by lotsofpulp »

toyg wrote: post #135
ksec wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPhone upgrade Programme which I presume is what you are referring to are not popular outside US, and Apple barely advertise about it. ( Which is why I said push in the original sentence ) And it is only available in selected countries and under some condition.

I evaluated it here in UK and it just didn't make sense for me. It was very expensive -- slightly less than buying a phone every year, but much more than doing it every two-three years.

In the US, it’s the same price to buy at one time versus pay over 24 months, assuming you get AppleCare warranty.

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

#163

Post by jedberg »

tootie wrote: post #150
jedberg wrote: post #143

They're gonna need a huge internal cultural shift if this is going to work. Their entire company is built around hardware. Services are "just good enough". No one buys an iPhone because of the services offered -- you buy the services because you already have the iPhone and it works better than the third party services. But I don't know anyone who adores the Apple services. Or to put it another way, even if they offer…

Do they have any iconic software that wasn't appropriated from NeXT? Keynote is pretty good. Everything else is either awful or basic.

Keynote is fantastic. But it’s not an internet service.

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

#164

Post by alwillis »

necubi wrote: post #83

To me, the clear indication that they're serious about this transition to services will be making them available on third-party devices. Android has ~55% market share in the US, and >80% globally. Roku has 35% of the smart TV market (through both their dedicated devices and TV integrations), Apple has ~15%. A video streaming service that's only available on iOS and Apple TV will be inevitably niche, and no real compe…

Apple has sold over 2 billion iOS devices, so by definition, a service that runs on iOS is not niche.

Sure, Android has more but Apple has the best 2 billion customers available.

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

#165

Post by prewett »

chx wrote: post #41
ilovecaching wrote: post #2

I wonder if now is a good time to short some Netflix stock.

Dangerous. OTOH if someone did the "buy the day after the dip" and "sell the day after the next peak" then they'd bought Netflix stock on Dec 27, 2018 at 250.11 and sold at Jan 09, 2019 at 317.71 -- it's 25% in two weeks...

How would someone actually do that? The only way to identify the dips and peaks is N days afterwards, where larger N increase the confidence of that it really was the max/min.

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

#166

Post by jedberg »

graeme wrote: post #153
jedberg wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use my iPad to stream content for my mother in law to my TV using AirPlay. It's a huge pain in the ass. She can't do it for herself, I have to set it up because of the various steps involved. I don't see that as a viable workaround.

Thanks! I don’t know the difficulties involved; I have no TV, just a projector. What steps did you have to do? I agree that if most devices are cumbersome to stream to, then that’s too much friction for almost everyone.

It's not complicated, it's just not intuitive.

1) Open the app

2) Make it start streaming

3) Make it full screen

4) Swipe up from the bottom of the screen (this is the part she never remembers)

5) Activate AirPlay and select the right device (in my house they are Apple TVs so they have good names, but if it were in every TV, they would have strange names

5b) If you've never streamed to this TV before, put in the auth code

At this point it will play to the TV. However, since I have an older iPad, it plays a 16:9 image in a 4:3 box on a 16:9 TV, so it doesn't use the whole screen. So then you have to go to the TV and change it to "zoom" mode to use the whole screen, which of course isn't at full resolution at that point.

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

#167

Post by karmelapple »

meruru wrote: post #157
mark_l_watson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cal Newport’s new book ‘Digital Minimalism’ offers a good viewpoint on why this is useful: how much time to you lose mindlessly clicking around on HN and Reddit each week? (Unfortunately, I keep track of this and it is disturbing.) With a quality news feed the hope would be that you would get information you need with spending less of your time. I am taking a different track towards digital minimalism: I don’t count…

What do you use to keep track? I should probably start doing too.

RescueTime is very powerful and can do this.

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

#168

Post by techdragon »

Felz wrote: post #126
seanwilson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Not a wild idea at all.

This is pretty much how people A/B test for maximum revenue in “free” to play games monetised using micro transactions and other in app purchases.

It’s turned into pure evil there and it’s probably just as likely to spawn pure evil somewhere else.

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

#169

Post by techdragon »

karmelapple wrote: post #167
meruru wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you use to keep track? I should probably start doing too.

RescueTime is very powerful and can do this.

I wish it was more powerful on my phone and tablet. I love RescueTime

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

#170

Post by kalleboo »

jedberg wrote: post #166
graeme wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I don’t know the difficulties involved; I have no TV, just a projector. What steps did you have to do? I agree that if most devices are cumbersome to stream to, then that’s too much friction for almost everyone.

It's not complicated, it's just not intuitive. 1) Open the app 2) Make it start streaming 3) Make it full screen 4) Swipe up from the bottom of the screen (this is the part she never remembers) 5) Activate AirPlay and select the right device (in my house they are Apple TVs so they have good names, but if it were in every TV, they would have strange names 5b) If you've never streamed to this TV before, put in the auth…

The iOS "Videos" app used for iTunes video purchases doesn't require fullscreening, has the airplay streaming button right there on the video (removing the swipe up step), and it streams the raw video instead of doing screen mirroring (avoiding the letterbox/zoom issue), so presumably an Apple streaming service would also be easier to use
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