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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

#171

Post by lozenge »

zerocrates wrote: post #145
GeekyBear wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when iAd was a thing, there were articles about how upset advertisers were that Apple's iAd wouldn't let them plug directly into an Apple customer's music and video store purchase history. >Apple has a lot of knowledge regarding its users,but what it doesn’t do with that data is share it with advertisers very freely. That makes Madison Avenue very mad. >rather than offering a cookie-based ad-tracking and targeti…

I'm not extremely familiar with the ad industry, but isn't this setup (tell us who you want to target and we'll do it for you) the way that the other big platform holders work, like Google and Facebook? That's always been my impression, that the data is their "secret sauce" and they aren't interested in sharing.

You can upload email addresses and phone numbers to Facebook to target and you can set cookies on your website for retargeting too.

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

#172

Post by BillinghamJ »

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…

Aside from accounting purposes, most of these cases are achieved through differential privacy - https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Differential_Privacy_Over...

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

#173

Post by ENGNR »

zerocrates wrote: post #145
GeekyBear wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when iAd was a thing, there were articles about how upset advertisers were that Apple's iAd wouldn't let them plug directly into an Apple customer's music and video store purchase history. >Apple has a lot of knowledge regarding its users,but what it doesn’t do with that data is share it with advertisers very freely. That makes Madison Avenue very mad. >rather than offering a cookie-based ad-tracking and targeti…

I'm not extremely familiar with the ad industry, but isn't this setup (tell us who you want to target and we'll do it for you) the way that the other big platform holders work, like Google and Facebook? That's always been my impression, that the data is their "secret sauce" and they aren't interested in sharing.

I imagine that's only because FB/Google want to protect their distribution, and users run ads directly with them. Smaller publishers have no choice but to give it all up to the ad networks

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

#174

Post by mark_l_watson »

I am reading a different Bloomberg article right now on this subject https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-22/apple-...

I am 100% sure (infinitely sure!) that I will sign up for Apple’s service to try it out and I am ‘almost sure’ that Apple will face a lot of regulatory and legal challenges.

By personal preference I would like to see more open platforms and, off topic for this conversation, a more distributed web.

I don’t think we will get there though. Years ago author William Gibson probably ‘got it right’ in predicting what the future will be like: corporations become all-powerful, governments become a joke if they exist at all, and talented people align themself with a corporation as we self identify now as the citizen of a country.

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

#175

Post by timbit42 »

Despegar wrote: post #7
whatshisface wrote: post #4

> This service will combine stories from newspapers, websites, and magazines into a new tab in the Apple News app on iPhones, iPads, and Macs. > Apple plans to charge about $10 a month. Is it just me, or is there no way this could possibly be worth it? Hacker News and Reddit already combine stories from newspapers and websites, and they do it for free. I have a hard time believing that a managed source selected from…

Hacker News and Reddit don't license content from the WSJ, which is why every story has some guy in the comments with a link to outline.com that pirates the article.

So what?

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

#176

Post by pavs »

projectileboy wrote: post #119
gjvc wrote: post #117

Alan Kay once remarked “I don't know what Silicon Valley will do when it runs out of Doug's ideas."

+1 - feels like a once great product company is now taking its strategy cues from market analysts.

Last I checked, Apple is still the biggest company in the world in market cap. They are also on the very top in terms of revenue and profit.

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

#177

Post by BillinghamJ »

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.

The iPhone Upgrade Program is exactly the same price over the full course of the loan as just buying the phone with AppleCare. If you don't want the AppleCare, "iPhone Payments" is exactly the same price overall as just buying the iPhone. Both are 0% financing.

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

#178

Post by ksec »

kristianc wrote: post #152
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…

> Apple Music, Apple News Magazine, Apple TV and Apple Game This is where I get slightly lost with this strategy. There doesn't seem to be a discernable advantage to me as a consumer bundling all of these together versus the amount of lock in. Something like iMessage is unique to iOS and a big benefit - music, news, TV I can get at least as good elsewhere often for less.

>There doesn't seem to be a discernable advantage to me as a consumer bundling all of these together versus the amount of lock in.

Branding. Spotify had a hard time getting people to streaming, and Apple Music helped pushed the world into Music Streaming Services. So together they have grown the Music Streaming Market by ~5 times since launch.

People don't want the hassle and they want to have access to content. So instead of looking for 5 different package and doing comparison, they decide to let Apple do the job for them.

Considering how much utter crap Apple Music was when launched and still getting some much needed improvement today, the quality of services might not weight as much as ease of access to majority of the iPhone user.

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

#179

Post by ATsch »

toufka wrote: post #125
blihp wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, Facebo…

I don't think there needs to be a universal line, decided by the company, on what's creepy. I appreciate how GDPR recognizes this. I believe it is up to the users to decide for themselves what they are and are not comfortable with. Just like with some other topics, informed and free consent is really the thing that matters for an act to be okay.

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

#180

Post by drivingmenuts »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #68
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.

Most of the long, grindy AAA games are on Windows only, so really, not much worries there. I have yet to see a game listed in the App Store that wasn't also on Steam, so I'm not worried about that either. Apple may be good at many things, but games is not one of them. There's not enough bang for your buck on the Mac platform when it comes to gaming and you can't easily and cheaply mix-n-match your hardware like you c…

My needs are based on only occasionally needing to run a Linux VM but running games more often. More like an XBox that isn’t locked down. I’d be paying way more for hardware and the cost of buying Win 10 isn’t that expensive anymore.
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