Their numbers seem utterly unreal to me. How on earth do you sell $205 billion worth of just a single product (iPhone) every year?
This is simply the greatest business to have ever been created. I can't imagine anything else ever topping it. The margins AND the volume are both insane.
Almost every adult in the developed world needs a smart phone. They replace these devices about every 2-3 years.
Apple makes one of the best in class of these devices, and has successfully designed one such that it's hard to switch to a competitor (rather it's easier to stay in the ecosystem).
They've convinced about a billion people on the planet that the iPhone is the best device for them, so if you split that into about 300 million re-ups into the ecosystem each year you're talking about where their revenue is.
I say this as a happy iOS user. I replaced my phone of three years about a month ago. Took a day to get it through my carrier and it immediately restored from backup with minimal data loss, despite not having access to the old device. That ease of use and confidence I won't lose data is worth the premium.
> Apple makes one of the best in class of these devices, and has successfully designed one such that it's hard to switch to a competitor (rather it's easier to stay in the ecosystem).
I wonder how many years it will take before I can convince some people that I actually just prefer Apple's phones to competing phones and that I'm not actually brainwashed or forced by Apple to never leave. But that's exactly what a brainwashed person would say...
I switched to my first iPhone last year and for me the determining factor was not feeling I had to constantly be on the upgrade path. I've has my iPhone SE (2020) and haven't been happier with a phone. A taken care of iPhone can theoretically last 7-8 years since that is how long an iPhone generally gets OS and security updates. Android is getting better on flagship phones, but still not as good. By some none flagship android and your lucky to get 1 year of OS and security updates. My last android was a pixel and so was the one before that and every time I felt like after year 1 with an android, there is a massive performance drop off. I feel like my iPhone SE (2020) runs just as well today as the day it came out of the box.
Apple does do some things really well. Android could, and I really want to see them do it, but as of right now, there are some things Android does not do well.
Addition: And I think one thing that really hurt the Android ecosystem is when Android phones went through that phase of every phone flagship phone had some sort of gimmick. Where as Apple really just buttoned down and developed a really solid phone. A lot of android phone makers were just focusing on gimmicks like styluses or niche features to set them apart from other Android instead of just really developing a good solid smart phone.
> Addition: And I think one thing that really hurt the Android ecosystem is when Android phones went through that phase of every phone flagship phone had some sort of gimmick. Where as Apple really just buttoned down and developed a really solid phone. A lot of android phone makers were just focusing on gimmicks like styluses or niche features to set them apart from other Android instead of just really developing a good solid smart phone.
This is how I look at it as well. Because anyone can make an Android phone, Android phone makers had to either race to the bottom or come up with their special gimmick. Those that came up with a gimmick became the phone for people who care about that gimmick. But this ceded the domain of "people who don't particularly care about which phones have which gimmicks," aka most people, to Apple.
Pixel managed to break out of this by having their gimmick be "flagship by the people who wrote most of the OS, so, just generally well-implemented," but it took a while to get there.
As a long term android user, there are definitely great minimalist phones out there that give you a really good experience with little to no gimmicks. My current favorite is the Zenfone line from Asus. I have the Zenfone 8 and it's just brilliant. There's hardly any bloat, it's just android, no silly gimmicks, small form factor, decent camera and it has a 3.5 headphone jack. The newest model has all that and a much improved camera, and I've been eyeing it even though I really don't need to upgrade yet.
It was definitely a long way getting there but android is in a pretty great place right now.
I can't imagine ever going back to iPhones. I felt extremely crippled every time I tried to do anything. I remember having no access to the filesystem, having to use proprietary software (iTunes... never again) and having to jailbreak my iPhone to install custom ringtones from my own music. When I got my first android phone and could just plug it in, drag and drop files from my computer, I felt the strongest and weirdest catharsis, akin to "I don't have to suffer anymore".
- It's waterproof, dustproof, and shock-proof out of the box. I can image an iPhone can pull this off in a third-party protective case.
- It can sideload software; I have some important apps managed by f-droid. Sorry, iPhone can't do this by design. It's not "strictly better", every such decision is a balancing act. But it's what I prefer.
Things like microSD card, 3.5mm jack, etc are nice but not the essential differentiating factors.
I do use an iPhone happily. I’m an engineer of computers, and appreciate the ability to run my own things. Here is my take.
iPhones are engineered very well, and even stands up to abuse quite better than the run of the mill Android phones. Dust proof, water proof etc out of the box.
Man, do I wish regulators would force Apple to break their monopoly on App stores on iOS! Apple can keep their App Store exactly how it is today, but as a user I should be allowed to install “aftermarket” apps via side loading. Sure, I can fall for “insecure” unvalidated 3rd party apps pulling a scam on me, but that’s my prerogative, not Apple’s. They sold me hardware I paid for, they gave me an opportunity to spend and buy apps at their store, but that’s where it should stop. They shouldn’t be allowed to prevent competitors from selling apps to me unless they bend over to Apple. I just don’t see how this is any different from Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer with Windows and pulling dirty tricks from preventing people from installing/using 3rd party web browsers in the nineties.
I don't know. Only a few premium models support stylus. Rather, I think most Android phones are too similar than ecosystem should. Most phones are just big heavy and camera-focused. There are some gimmicks like Galaxy's edge screen but not every phone. Speaking about gimmicks, Dynamic Island. You may just want to say Android phone is crappier than iPhone.
Dynamic island is Apple's branding of their feature of having a camera cutout and some animations and lights to try to turn it into a UI element. It might uncharitably be called a gimmick. It's on their latest top-end phones.
I switched to my first iphone nearly 3 years ago. I still have the same phone. At the time, I got it mainly because I wanted a waterproof phone. I've never had a phone get damaged by water, but I didn't want to worry about it either.
Unlike any previous (Android) phone I've had, it still feels just as fast as it did when it was brand new. To date, the longest I've had any phone is around 3.5 years, and in 2 out of 3 cases it was due to hardware failure. Even if this one were to die tomorrow I'd definitely get another, although I think it's more likely that this one will last at least another couple of years, at which point it will be ~5 years.
> Android is more of a power user device (you can do more, you can root it, think hack as in hacker news).
For now. Remote attestation is becoming mainstream and every app will find a reason to require it. Computing freedom was the whole point of tolerating Android's imperfections. Without that, it's just a poorly kept Google walled garden. My next phone will be an iPhone.
> From power user perspective iPhone is like Windows and Android like Linux.
A widely adopted platform/operating system with every improving security fundamentals versus a kernel with numerous spins each awaiting their day on the desktop: This is apt in a manner the author certainly did not intended..
I bought a Galaxy fold last week and returned it yesterday. The form factor and larger screen was cool, but holy cow did Android feel like a huge downgrade from iOS. It was just all kinds of little quality of life things in iOS that I instantly missed. I think I needed something like one extra button press to get to the flashlight on Android and that did me in.
I don't use vendor ROMs, but on my past several phones with LineageOS, I can hold the power button for a few seconds when the screen is off to enable the torch. I can also double tap power for the camera.
I have both Galaxy Z Fold3 and iPhone 13 mini. Flashlight on Galaxy is really great. On settings, set double click power button to launch flashlight (perhaps most people use it to quick launch camera). It's really quick even compared to other Android phones I have ever. It's sad that it's not possible on iPhone, because mini is handy so suitable for flashlight.
I argue Fold is a real significant improvement in this decade for who need. There's no other way to have tablet on my pocket. Flip seems to just a gimmick for me.
To me having a phone that actually fits in my pocket is a luxury and I have no interest in having "a tablet in my pocket" so I feel exactly the opposite.
It's okay. I wish various products are available on market, rather than similar boring commodity devices. I don't want to pay only for great camera on phone.
> I switched to my first iPhone last year and for me the determining factor was not feeling I had to constantly be on the upgrade path. I've has my iPhone SE (2020) and haven't been happier with a phone.
Indeed. I am on my fourth iPhone, an 11 pro now three years old that I expect to keep for at least another year. More would be nice, but that probably requires a battery change. I had my two previous phones for four years each, no problem. I really don’t understand people who just have to get a new phone ever year or two (or three)!
I got the Galaxy Note 10+ over 3 years ago and I can't imagine a a phone without a stylus now. The ability to take a note in a second without opening the phone is worth its weight in gold to me. As soon as somebody makes a foldable with a stylus I'm all in, just wish there was more options than Samsung.
The Galaxy Note with the stylus is one of the few that have panned out and stood the test of time. When it first came out, it was a bit gimmicky, but now that it has stood the test of time and isn't going anywhere, today it definitely is not a gimmick.
Why people buy Samsung or other manufacturer phones, and then gripe that the company is as stingy with backwards support and updates as they've always been boggles my mind. Why would anyone ever think this time would be different?
It looks like the oldest phone with current support is from 2019. The 2017 iPhone is still getting OS updates. And up until September this year, the iPhone from 2015 was still on the current OS. Does any Android phone even get half long of a software update cycle?
iOS 12.5.6 was released in August to address a security vuln for the 5s, 6, etc.
The 5s debuted Sept 2013 as the first 64-bit phone, and the first phone with a Secure Enclave, so I'm kind of hopeful they'll just keep limping it along forever for good will... I own a pair of them and adore them dearly.
On the topic of iOS, be sure to check out https://libimobiledevice.org/, which provides utilities like ifuse that will even get you access to your Photos sqlite database; including all the machine generated tags, aesthetics scores and such.
Since around 2011, Apple has allowed you to download the “last compatible version” of apps from the App Store.
As of 2019 at least, I was able to reset my first ten iPad (2010) and redownload and use Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, Apple’s iWork suite, Spotify and play music that I had previously purchased from iTunes.
What I’m seeing on that page seems to indicate that the Pixel 6 will receive Android version updates for 3 years after its release, and security updates for 5 years.
provided your phone doesn't bootloop or otherwise have the hardware fail. Android phones - from google in particular - are notorious for this. Should things fail, you're screwed.
I've got a Moto 5G stylus, it was $280 on prime day, $450 normal. It'll get 3-5 more years of os updates. Battery lasts 2-3 days for me. It's so cheap I don't get insurance (would lose money in like 8 months) or care. I broke the screen 4 days in because I'm a dummy, but a replacement was on ebay for $40 shipped next day. I fixed it myself. No Multi-$K tool fixtures. I used an ios for other reasons. They're basically they same just slightly different. But I have an easily adequately powerful phone for 1/4 of an iphone and I don't even care if I break it or lose it, next day shipping replace or walk in purchase in a store.
So basically there are GREAT midline phones. I'm not coding on my phone, I m reading slack and email and taking photos.
Frankly at $280, I don't care. But Moto has said they'll do android 13 at a minimum and they did well on my 2019 power so they've earned my trust I'll get 3-4 years of security updates. And compared to flagship prices I can take 4-5 updates even at every 2 years and still come out ahead. Even more if you include inflation.
You got the phone on sale. Visit deal websites and iPhones will sometimes be on sale for similar prices and will have updates for the same time period. Phones sometimes on sale in that range would be 2020 SE or iPhone 11s
Ha. I switched to Apple's phones because of the disappointment in the competing products and practices. It's angry-quit into Apple rather than brainwashing.
I switched from an OG Pixel XL to an iPhone when I found out about Google's Project Nightingale[1], though I was already looking for a new phone because I got a notification saying that November would be the last security update my phone would get, on a three year old phone.
> I wonder how many years it will take before I can convince some people that I actually just prefer Apple's phones to competing phones and that I'm not actually brainwashed or forced by Apple to never leave.
It will never happen. Those people are just not mentally able to understand that other people have different needs, wants, values, and opinions than them.
Based on the stridency android users tell me how "they're sorry for me" I fear never.
I didnt want a religious war, I just want to use my phone in peace without hearing how you feel about my vendor of telephone. I cant even mention it in passing.
I was around for the Mac/PC wars and the console wars. I just don't have the energy to give a shit about some "side" anymore, I'm gonna use what I want.
Let's also not mention the social stigma and peer pressure kids exert on each other because they don't have an iPhone and their name is apparently some different color one chat window.
Yes, the green vs blue bubble. Blue bubbles indicate iMessage. Green bubble is for sms. It’s brutal in group chats because just one green bubble user forces everyone to downgrade and get shittier pictures, etc. So it’s not the color itself, it’s the worse experience that accompanies it.
I tried Android years ago when I bought an abominable B&N Nook Color, and it became clear very quickly that there was no plan to keep the device updated with security patches, etc. Not only that, but the OS had been grotesquely hobbled in an attempt to keep you within B&N's sad walled garden.
I understand there are flagship devices that don't have this problem, and maybe this is unfair of me, but I came to expect that devices using Android would likely be riddled with garbage from whatever OEM was relying on the OS. While I do think it's cool that Google made Android so open, it also opened a bit of a Pandora's Box.
The Nook was a failure because B&N does not have the resources to maintain their own platform. Samsung is probably the only real competitor to Apple here.
However, in the long run, it is likely that open platforms will win. Eventually, the Android ecosystem will get to a point where such software updates stop being a challenge. Then you can just buy a generic Android phone and nearly everything will work. Probably it becomes similar to buying a Windows PC.
You already can buy a generic Android phone, and everything works in it, if the manufacturer is sane.
But you can't get security updates for a long time, except for a few models into which manufacturers or enthusiasts put efforts.
Linux kernel does not have a stable binary interface. Most phone devices (cameras, fingerprint sensors, even video controllers and radio modules have closed-source drivers. You can't expect manufacturers of these parts to update the drivers for their 3-year-old components for a newer kernel: they want to sell this year's parts instead. Reverse-engineering these drivers is tedious, and only buys you a few years on a handful of models.
Long-term support works for Apple because they have essentially one line of phones, with a narrow set of components, and an enormous power over suppliers. So they can afford to buy serious users' loyalty.
I have an iPhone SE (1st gen) which I believe is also 2016, and I still get updates as well. In fact, this SE is still amazing. When I pull it out, nearly everybody says things like, "wow, I haven't seen a phone that small in a long time" and "I hate my gigantic phone". It still works fine. I have been thinking about getting an indestructible case for it. I haven't used a case yet, but I really don't want to have to buy a gigantic replacement phone, and I worry about dropping it and finally having it break.
I wish they would make another small-form-factor phone again. I hear the 13 mini or something like that is reasonable, but it is still bigger.
My very first iPhone (first gen) was the all-time best.
Yeah. I went from iPhones to nexus phones for a couple gens. I went back to iPhones because I liked them better. At this point, it’s whatever someone prefers.
I always found the Android vs Apple thing to be hilarious. You like Apple, cool - go for. I used to use them. Not any more. But that is my choice just as much as yours is.
There are deeper questions of privacy and eco-system lock in on all sides. But to most people is just isn't that big of an issue.
Honestly my big gripe still is - I miss Windows phone!
Pretty soon actually. Android as a power user device is pretty much done. Hardware remote attestation will ensure that everyone is running unmodified Android. Without the freedom to sideload, root and hack the phone and its apps, there's no point. It's just a poorly kept Google walled garden and I have zero interest in that. My next phone will be an iPhone.
Apple makes the best phone hardware, in best class of cameras, best battery life, best update policy. I can totally see why anyone would buy one.
But I just can't stand using the thing. So, I'm an Android user.
But you'd have to be really misinformed to not be able to admit on paper, they are superior devices.
Probably battery life and processor. Apple smokes everything Android, with a battery not nearly as big. Then there's cohesiveness - watching Android chat apps come and go is laughable.
That aside, it feels certainly like Android leaves you with Goldilocks syndrome. You -can- buy phones with great battery life, great cameras, and great software/ui, but not all 3. Pixel has middling battery life. Samsung's UI/software is slow and bloated. Moto has terrible cameras.
iPhones make money, but services make more. The App Store alone made over 80 billion dollars in estimated revenue last year, just by existing. That's without accounting for Apple One, Apple Fitness, Apple Arcade, AppleTV Plus, or iCloud. Apple simply makes $80 billion annually for writing a payment processor everyone else has to use.
Services are one thing, but playing both the gatekeeper and competitor to a number of corporations is not a sustainable business model. Apple needs to double-down on their hardware dominance and leave the software distribution to software writers. All their other services can stay, Apple users can drown in AppleTV+ shows for all I care. The App Store is a fundamental de-facto monopoly on software distribution and (as we've seen with Spotify) service development. That quite literally cannot be the status quo going forward.
> That quite literally cannot be the status quo going forward.
Honestly, I disagree. The Apple customer experience and product ecosystem is just so far ahead of any competitors I don't want to use anything else. As far as the store is concerned specifically, I want to be able to use one store with a clear policy around payments, subscriptions and refunds - not a myriad of half-baked competitors with fragmented offerings.
That's great, I support that option for you. Personally, I just want to use the Open Source apps that Apple won't let me install. If I can have that, then there's no reason we can't both live in perfect harmony. That system works perfectly fine on Android and Google even manages to make a handsome bundle off the Play Store to boot.
I used to think of this in terms of, “it doesn’t hurt me if other people can install whatever they like on their phones.”
However, when I thought it out, I realized that if the App Store wasn’t the one and only distribution model for apps, then profit motives would push companies to use those other mechanisms—presumably competing app stores like steam, or just installation of apps ala carte.
I realized that I’m not even completely in control of which apps I need, because if there’s an app I need for a car, or I need to install something for work, I’m just not always in a position to decide NOT to install something.
So even though I like the idea of keeping my App Store and letting anyone else do what they want… isn’t there some truth to the idea that if there were ways around the App Store then it would create a wedge that effectively forced a lot of fracturing?
Correction: profit motives would push Apple to fix the App Store, since it would no longer be competitive with the offerings smaller companies can build for themselves. Which is a good thing - Apple admit the 30% cut was excessive and reluctantly dropped the cut for select users. The long-term solution is forcing them to compete with the rest of the industry, which is what will foster healthy relationships with developers instead of Apple holding their users and developers in a Mexican standoff.
Nope. See Android, where Facebook is available on the play store, and so is every app, because you simply cannot afford to not be there. Apps like Telegram offer both a play store version, and a self-managed APK that offers other features that Google refuses in the play store.
You're not getting an official GNU repo if Apple still takes a cut. They'd only set one up on their terms, which Apple is chronically incapable of cooperating with.
The _moment_ there's an option, there will be a Facebook store, and it will have things like that vpn app that routed all traffic through Facebook so that they could do analytics on it. There will be cross app device/user level identifiers.
Facebook will drive something like 10-50% of people to add their store if it's the only way they can have their insta/whatsapp/fb/whateverthehellelse.
Google will probably roll out a play store as well. I don't think they're going to be as overtly evil, but they're still going to be be going around Apple's privacy protections if at all possible. (Why not? I get the feeling that FB is more on the back foot with metaverse and other flat/failing metrics, and google has more to drive people to them between Chrome, Android, and GApps.)
And others? There will probably be at least 10-100 app stores, and I would be shocked if there wasn't one that attempted to do things like a hidden RAT/Rootkit. I'm not saying that the app store review process solves a malware problem, but it is one layer in a defense in depth. It certainly has kept my extended family's devices in better shape than their computers, which I've had to clean occasionally.
This is a version of good of the many vs good of the few (Sorry, been looking at Star Trek lately). On the one hand, there are companies that would like a bigger hit of the pie, + a fringe of people who have enough knowledge and skills to manage to manually setup a secure phone with alternative/os/apps. On the other, there's Apple and a vast swath of humanity where the iPhone/iPad is probably the most secure computing device they can hope to own, and is yet still useful.
Florisboard is a nice minimalist alternative to GBoard. Offers decent theming and lots of settings for haptics/layout, makes a very quick/easy replacement on new devices.
NewPipe is a minimalist frontend to YouTube that lets you download videos and use PiP/background playing without paying for Premium (or logging into YouTube, for that matter)
Bromite offers a de-Googled Chromium experience for mobile users, pretty barebones and basic.
Glider is an awesome FOSS Hacker News client that I use for checking headlines on the go. Hugely recommended if you're an Android user!
The last big one I use is KeePassDX, which is a password manager integrated with the open KeePass standard. All my passwords get locked up in a nice encrypted, portable file I sync across my devices.
Now, I also use the Play Store for stuff like Discord and Spotify, and iOS users probably would still use the App Store if Cydia became officially supported overnight. That being said, having FOSS replacements for shitty defaults saves the modern Google-based Android experience for me. If they removed sideloading, I'd probably jump ship to a more minimalist fork.
It doesn't matter what the EU wants, it's not legally credible that a company can be forced to support a product with a warranty when the end user can modify it enough to brick it.
The courts would almost certainly rule against such a law, that forces both a warranty and openness, if challenged.
I think the App Store model is probably still currently the best model for the average user who doesn’t know how to secure a computing device. I know we may be heading towards a future where we’re totally locked down, but what alternative do we have?
I’m always hesitant to install software on my desktop because I never know if there’s a trojan hidden in the software. I’m a relatively technical user, but I have no idea how I would determine if the software was safe. So at the moment I’m content to let Apple handle it. Note, this is coming from a pro-Apple user.
Conversely, it would be interesting if an independent pro-privacy company (such as DuckDuckGo?) were to make a configurable smartphone for the more technical crowd that was both secure and allowed side-loading. I’d like to see such a product offered as an alternative to the offerings from the big tech companies.
> I know we may be heading towards a future where we’re totally locked down, but what alternative do we have?
Well, Apple could just... let people install other stores. The App Store will still exist for new users and security-paranoid users, but the right to install/manage software needs to be a universal right when you buy hardware from someone. Arguing the opposite is almost insanity.
> I’m a relatively technical user, but I have no idea how I would determine if the software was safe.
Do what F-Droid does, compare the downloaded binary against a first-party checksum for the release (usually provided by Github). Then you can tell if the software you're loading has been tampered before it runs, simple as that. This is what the App Store does internally (along with cert-checking) to provide your "premium" security experience. It's largely designed to be distributed.
> Conversely, it would be interesting if an independent pro-privacy company (such as DuckDuckGo?) were to make a configurable smartphone for the more technical crowd that was both secure and allowed side-loading.
That's not the point either. The iPhone is fully capable of loading alternative App Stores and even alternate OSes. Apple is the only one stopping the user from doing these things. The fact that Apple explicitly does not allow people to distribute software unless they profit off has drawn incredible antitrust scrutiny. All of this can and will be alleviated with Apple giving up their iron grip on the 30% tax. What alternative do we have?
> Well, Apple could just... let people install other stores.
The only way I would be okay with this is if Apple required any app you provide in an alternative store must be available in the official App Store as well.
The last thing I want is for Meta to come along and mandate you install their 3rd party app store in order to use Instagram. I don't even want this app on my phone but I use it to keep in touch with friends that just won't use anything else. It's not _necessary_ but it's nearly necessary.
I would never install an app from a Meta-controlled app store, and the first thing they would do if Apple was forced to allow it is launch their own and take Instagram etc. off the official Apple App Store.
> the first thing they would do if Apple was forced to allow it is launch their own and take Instagram etc. off the official Apple App Store.
How do you know? First off, Google allows this on Android, and Meta hasn't made their own store on there. Second off, their revenue from Instagram is largely supplanted by an advertising business that Apple happily supports. They have no reason to remove it from the App Store. Third off, stopping businesses from making anticonsumer decisions isn't an argument against abolishing anticonsumer practices. We wouldn't be in this situation in the first place if Apple didn't unfairly use their position of power to impose a tax on all payment processing that happens on their operating system.
Again, nobody arguing for sideloading is forcing you to install anything. If Meta leaves the App Store and stops updating the version of Instagram everyone has installed, that's their loss. If Apple feels threatened by other services eating their lunch, they can always take a lesson out of Microsoft's playbook and start adding more first-party ads to iOS.
You're right, I don't know for sure. But I have a feeling they'd be eager to escape the 30% cut of transactions. [0] Not to mention bypassing the rules around user tracking.
> Third off, stopping businesses from making anticonsumer decisions isn't an argument against abolishing anticonsumer practices.
I don't fully follow, what do you mean by this?
> We wouldn't be in this situation in the first place if Apple didn't unfairly use their position of power to impose a tax on all payment processing that happens on their operating system.
That I agree with. 30% is steep and feels excessive. But I'm just arguing as an end user I value the peace of mind that I can install any app from their App Store with a reasonable amount of confidence. It's not perfect and things do slip through the cracks, but it's better than nothing.
If you make less than a million dollars a year through the App Store, you pay 15%. This covers almost everybody.
If you are earning over a million dollars a year, but you are selling subscriptions, then you pay 15% for all the subscriptions that have been in place for longer than a year.
The only people who are paying 30% are the people making a lot of money through the App Store from something other than long-term subscriptions.
Apple’s rules against apps tracking users were a massive blow to Meta’s ads business, so they’d certainly take the opportunity to avoid Apple’s restrictions if they could.
> The changes Apple made in iOS 14.5 — asking people if they wanted to opt-out of apps tracking them across the web — is causing tumult for advertisers who rely on Facebook to sustain their businesses. Performance marketers, i.e., those who want you to buy immediately after clicking, are particularly struggling. The masses, they believe, have opted out of letting Facebook track off of Facebook, so they can’t be sure if people are buying their products after seeing their ads. Facebook expects them to spend less money as a result.
How does any of that rely on the App Store, Apple's 30% cut, or even the state of app distribution on iOS?
Apps have to respect the opt out to be listed on the app store. If they could be sideloaded or installed via a third party app store then they would no longer have to abide by Apple’s policies, such as not tracking users if they have opted out.
I agree with your point about the 30% tax being somewhat unfair... however, I think your average user would honestly just prefer Apple be the gatekeeper to their phone for them, and not have to worry about which App Stores to trust and which not to.
Apple does not have to be in the business of making phones for the (extreme~!) technical + security conscious crowd.
> Well, Apple could just... let people install other stores.
So the solution is to let another big tech be the gatekeeper? If a customer thinks Google is a better gatekeeper then they should stick with Android. Nothing wrong with that.
> Do what F-Droid does, compare the downloaded binary against a first-party checksum for the release (usually provided by Github).
But my issue is not that something has been tampered between source and binary, but that I don’t have the expertise to look through the source and verify that no trojan has been added by one of the contributors. A checksum doesn’t solve this problem.
As for the right to install/manage software, I view it similarly to what the FDA is doing now to protect me from products that are dangerous. I don’t have the knowledge to be able to vet all chemicals that are dangerous to me so I’m happy to let them handle it. Is such a view considered insanity?
> All of this can and will be alleviated with Apple giving up their iron grip on the 30% tax.
In the end is all this talk about rights and freedoms really just a veil for the fact that some devs just want to make more money?
> So the solution is to let another big tech be the gatekeeper?
No, the solution is explicitly stopping big tech from being a gatekeeper. Apple can continue to sell their "premium" App Store with amazing security benefits and brilliant moderation, while advanced users can toggle the "freedom mode" setting or whatever and go get IPA files off Github. It's not some pie-in-the-sky concept, it's how software distribution was meant to be done.
> I don’t have the expertise to look through the source and verify that no trojan has been added by one of the contributors. A checksum doesn’t solve this problem.
Good, then don't use any app outside the App Store. Apple will do their job to keep you perfectly safe from all those nasty, moneygrubbing developers who disagree with their rightful tax. You can remain loyal, but their monopoly literally cannot persist in a just world.
> As for the right to install/manage software, I view it similarly to what the FDA is doing now [...] Is such a view considered insanity?
Not until you start telling me that I don't have a right to eat food that the FDA hasn't approved for me. If you only eat FDA-certified food, good for you. It's a service the government provides free-of-charge, and some people like it. If you try shutting down your next-door neighbor's kid for selling non-certified lemonade, their dad is going to give you a black eye. The problem is, we quite literally lack an institution large enough to give Apple a black eye. There are governments fining them millions of dollars and they shake it off like Godzilla worrying about some pests. Their attitude towards democratic leadership is appalling, and deserves to be brought to heel.
> In the end is all this talk about rights and freedoms really just a veil for the fact that some devs just want to make more money?
It's absolutely mind-blowing that you will say that in defense of a company that consists of "some devs [that] just want to make more money". Yeah, maybe they do want a chance at competing against the largest software company in the world. Is that a big ask? Maybe I want to install FOSS apps that Apple won't let people publish to the app store. You don't have to, but you can't argue that I shouldn't be able to. Apple doesn't have the right to decide which browser I use when I pay for their hardware. They shouldn't make you pay $99/year to temporarily install a nerfed app to your iPhone. It's one of the most oppressive rackets in modern internet history, and I'll gladly refute any arguments against that claim.
> Not until you start telling me that I don't have a right to eat food that the FDA hasn't approved for me. If you only eat FDA-certified food, good for you. It's a service the government provides free-of-charge, and some people like it.
It is illegal to import unapproved drugs, so yes FDA can stop you. And no the FDA is not really “free-of-charge” since you pay them through your tax dollars. But I concede that, like most analogies, this one is flawed because we don’t get to vote for the governing body that controls Apple’s decision-making.
> No, the solution is explicitly stopping big tech from being a gatekeeper. Apple can continue to sell their "premium" App Store with amazing security benefits and brilliant moderation, while advanced users can toggle the "freedom mode" setting or whatever and go get IPA files off Github. It's not some pie-in-the-sky concept, it's how software distribution was meant to be done.
To me it sounds like you would prefer not to be an Apple customer. Apple is selling their walled-garden approach, if this is not what you want there’s always Android which allows your preferred software distribution approach. Why the necessity to force Apple to do the same?
In my case, I don’t want iOS to allow third party app stores because I don’t want another attack vector to be introduced into the system. It would be like Adobe Flash all over again. At the moment if there’s a major security issue that arises in iOS I can squarely blame Apple because they’ve taken on that responsibility. That is what I’m paying for. If the day comes when I think Apple is no longer keeping me secure or is unfairly restricting software that I want to use on their platform then I can switch over to Android.
> Why the necessity to force Apple to do the same?
Because both of us can coexist without forcing the other out of the room. John Deere didn't have a right to fleece farmers just because some people would pay for their premium services and others would not. They were sued for antitrust violation because of this[0], which isn't a far cry from the way Apple treats their repair partners or developers. The precedent of the law doesn't appear to align with Apple's business values, and I'm frustrated with the way they disregard the freedom of their users. They should put their money where their mouth is and empower users instead of trying to squeeze a few more dimes out of them. They are the largest company in the world, I should not be hearing "technical excuses" vis-a-vis distributing software like we have since the stone age of computing. It's not healthy, and it shouldn't take a village to argue that.
> I don’t want iOS to allow third party app stores because I don’t want another attack vector to be introduced into the system.
You don't need to use third-party software, or ideally even enable package installation by default (a-la Android). As-is though, Apple still has generic files for installing packages internally (IPA), and that "attack vector" is still there, just behind a small gate. Meanwhile, people are installing iPhone rootkits through invisible iMessage exploits... it's not a great look.
> John Deere didn't have a right to fleece farmers just because some people would pay for their premium services and others would not.
I don’t believe that the John Deere case is an apples to apples comparison (pun intended, sorry). From my understanding the case mainly revolved around third party mechanics who previously were able to repair their tractors, but were later locked out by John Deere’s software updates thus eliminating a whole third party repair industry.
In Apple’s case I see Google apps, Microsoft apps, Facebook apps all available on the App Store. I see independent apps written by small developers. I see a multitude of competitors on the App Store.
> Meanwhile, people are installing iPhone rootkits through invisible iMessage exploits... it's not a great look.
Similarly, Android was affected by the Stagefright bug which used MMS, so I’m not sure what your example is trying to prove. Every vendor has vulnerabilities, it’s an unending arms race. If anything the fact that Android is so fragmented makes it more difficult to protect against vulnerabilities. IMO adding more app stores is just creating this same fragmentation.
Going back to side-loading for iOS, can’t you compile and deploy your own code via XCode onto your own iPhone? There’s definitely hoops you need to jump, but it is possible. You don’t even need to use XCode, you can do so in VS. Doesn’t this process provide the freedom that you asked for without the need of a third party app store?
> Because both of us can coexist without forcing the other out of the room.
So can't you just, like, not be an Apple customer?
Your own solution to another commenter not wanting alternative apps stores is to "just not use it". So why don't you "just not use" iOS?
People who like the Apple Way can continue to buy Apple products. People who don't can continue enjoying products from Apple's competitors. No need to force anyone out of the room.
What do you think should be the parameters / conditions / requirements Apple should establish for such 3rd party app stores? For instance, any requirements on them for a baseline of security checks?
Or would you want Apple out of that loop too?
As a side question, are there stats on which are the most popular Android app stores (e.g. top 10 ranked by usage or something like that). I ask because I wonder, in practice, how many app stores are really used at any scale on Android.
> What do you think should be the parameters / conditions / requirements Apple should establish for such 3rd party app stores?
None. Apple doesn't deserve authority over what other people publish on their platform, just as they don't deserve to be liable for the ways people abuse iDevices. In my opinion, they should use this as an opportunity to strengthen app sandboxing and the overall iOS security model. If their current sandboxing system is as good as they say, it should do a great job at isolating third-party apps.
> As a side question, are there stats on which are the most popular Android app stores
Not really, there's no centralized way to collect those stats. Individual projects will give download stats sometimes though.
> I ask because I wonder, in practice, how many app stores are really used at any scale on Android.
Honestly? Not that much. I use both the Play Store and F-Droid alongside one another, and they do a good job complimenting each other. F-Droid fills in the gap of Open Source apps that don't make sense to distribute on a traditional app store, while Google Play offers a nice place to get my other apps.
The goal is for the App Store to live in harmony with developers. Right now though, iOS developers have literally zero bartering power with Apple besides leaving their ecosystem or screaming at some poor call-center worker. Offering sideloading gives them (rightful) leverage against Apple, while also letting me install my cool nerd porn like QEMU and emulators.
> Why do iOS developers as a group need the government to grant them bartering power?
Because Apple won't give it to them in good-faith.
> If so why can't every other sizeable group, such as commenters on HN, demand government granted bartering power?
They can, they just won't necessarily get it. I think there is ample evidence to support the claim that Apple is holding back software distribution and service innovation with their actions. If found guilty of anticompetitive practice (eg. in the case of Spotify), the most fitting consequence would be breaking Apple's monopoly on app distribution. The only law we'd need is one mandating the installation of third-party software packages (APKs on Android and IPAs on iOS).
Is forcing the App Store to compete with the free market a bad thing? It shouldn't be, if the value proposition is there.
Thought experiment: if Apple didn't provide an App Store on iOS, would you argue that they must provide the capabilities for others to build and deploy App Stores? What would be the argument to force them to do that?
> So the solution is to let another big tech be the gatekeeper? If a customer thinks Google is a better gatekeeper then they should stick with Android. Nothing wrong with that.
> As for the right to install/manage software, I view it similarly to what the FDA is doing now to protect me from products that are dangerous. I don’t have the knowledge to be able to vet all chemicals that are dangerous to me so I’m happy to let them handle it. Is such a view considered insanity?
You're fine to think so, but why can't I opt out?
> In the end is all this talk about rights and freedoms really just a veil for the fact that some devs just want to make more money?
There are whole classes of applications where the margins don't really make sense because of apple's cut. I don't know why they need to extract so much rent?
> The App Store is a fundamental de-facto monopoly on software distribution and (as we've seen with Spotify) service development.
This would be true if Android didn’t exist. But it does, so apple isn’t.
What would be funny is if Google stops developing android, since it’s lot lucrative, so they can sue under antitrust to improve their ad business that apple keeps hampering.
This is underappreciated. You're not just buying an iPhone, you're buying a system of life accessories.
Which has clunky ugly corners, but still sort of works smoothly most of the time. (Mostly.)
I'm increasingly convinced Android only exists because it allows Google to pretend it's not just an ad company, and Apple to pretend it's not a monopoly.
Apple's stranglehold on the mobile market, with its mix of hardware, software, and content services, is far more extreme than Microsoft's 90s-era stranglehold on the PC desktop.
You're taking the perspective from places where iPhones are in a majority, or a plurality of people's pockets.
In Asia, Africa, Middle East, South America etc, Android has a much larger share of the market, even if it is spread across large numbers of models and manufacturers.
Apple's "stranglehold" is about as strong as it's "stranglehold" on the desktop/laptop market with Macs.
The results are there big as day. This is obviously isn’t true.
> The App Store alone made over 80 billion dollars in estimated revenue last year, just by existing
Apple accounts for revenue as all of the money it takes in for the App Store before distributing 70%-85% to app makers.
> for all I care. The App Store is a fundamental de-facto monopoly on software distribution
Good thing we have a real judge who has said just the opposite in the Epic vs Apple trial. The judge thought it was foolish to claim that someone had a legal “monopoly” on their own platform. That’s just like saying Sony has a monopoly on the PlayStation
It is, but it didn’t used to be. Way back at the dawn of the smartphone era I was working in consumer telco here in Aus, and half of my day was spent making sure people kept their data between phones. Even going from one android phone to another wasn’t a great guarantee, and for iPhones we used to have a computer to take a backup via the 30-pin.
These days cloud backups and the like make it pretty simple on both operating systems.
For you and I, definitely. For your average consumer back in the late 2000s? Nah they struggled with it and lost data constantly despite the fact that Apple tried to make it easy.
The other day I thought of that... I was wondering if there would be people walking around with an iPhone 14 with photos taken with the camera of an iPhone 1st gen which they transferred every time they upgraded.
Me. Unfortunately, back then the photos didn't have much metadata, mostly just time and date. No geolocation.
Since i like to search for photos on the map on the macOS Photos program, this can be problematic. So when i was looking for a specific photo the other day, i had to scroll back by date to find it and that's how i found out it was taken on an original iPhone.
Interestingly, my photos didn’t make it. But the voice memos and other app settings did. It’s actually neat because it’s the only recordings of loved ones who are no longer living and discovers serendipitously.
Originally it was syncing through iTunes but the past years it’s been iCloud syncing.
Honestly the whole cloud backup thing wasn't all it was chalked up to be, at least during my time at Verizon, since it's so easy to reach the max on the base level cloud account they give out for free(at the time, 5GB?) We almost always just used an app(for iOS and Android) that did the data transfer.
The actual iPhone backup when you switch to a new device is actually now entirely ignoring the 5GB limit.
(But it’s possible it wasn’t the case in the past)
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT212732
I trust Google with my data so little I go out of my way not use their services if I can help it. Apple has a pretty good track record for privacy and reliability and that's worth something to me.
Sometimes the newer model has a feature you'd like to have.
Sometimes you've discovered something you don't like about your current model.
Sometimes outside factors influence you (deals from your service provider, for example).
Many people (especially here on HN) can afford to get the new device every year, or every 2-3. So they do.
I don't really know what to say, though. People gonna people. Humans are often irrational, sub-optimal, and easily influenced. Happens to the best of us.
My phone is my most used (personal) daily device, I use it for maps while driving, to text people, call people, browse Reddit/HN, occasional YouTube etc. I can also easily afford to replace it every year if I want to. I do but usually the upgrades are incremental so I do it every 2 years.
I’m gonna pass on this years iPhone because of the lack of a sim tray though.
If you replace your phone every three years, you would be getting that upgrade now. If you replace your phone every five years, you would have to wait another two years for those features.
A few things that stand out are: a better display, a much better camera, much better battery life, much better performance, faster Internet, a tougher and more water-resistant build, and dual eSIM support. These are all concrete improvements that make my day-to-day life better. Why wouldn’t I upgrade if I can afford it?
The camera in particular stands out. Thirty years from now, you aren’t going to remember how fast your phone was or how much it cost. But you’ll still have the photos and videos it took. Your upgrade frequency today affects the quality of the photos and videos you look at for the rest of your life.
In addition to this, Apple devices hold their value very well on the second-hand market, so selling your old phone while it’s still useful offsets the cost of the new device by a significant fraction. If you keep your phone until it wears out, it’s less cost effective overall.
For an awful lot of people, upgrading every two to three years is a good deal, which is why Apple are making so much money.
> As someone who buys a good smartphone then hangs onto it for 5 years, can someone help me understand the need for this?
There's no need for it. However, the cost difference between the two extremes (upgrading every year vs. upgrading every 5-6 years) might be less than you think.
Last time I ran the numbers, I estimated that trading in every year for 5 years cost about $500 more than trading in once after 5 years. In other words, you pay ~$100/year to always have the newest phone.
I think that many people replace after 2-3 years because 1) that's when the warranty runs out; and 2) you don't save much vs. holding on to the phone for longer.
I like to get new phones every year or two. I enjoy it because I like gadgets, new phones always seem a bit more futuristic and beautiful than my old phone, and I like feeling I have a top of the line phone. On the other hand I drive my cars until they won't pass inspection and the repair cost exceeds the value of the vehicle. I don't care about cars. I know some people replace their cars every 2 or 3 years. People care about different things.
I'm not in the yearly upgrade cycle, but I do tend to replace mine every few years.
In terms of speed, ever since the OnePlus One I bought back in like ~2014, I can't think of a time I have been unhappy with the raw performance of a phone by the time I go to upgrade.
Battery life is also not something I usually use as justification for a replacement, as I am fine going with a third-party place or doing it myself, depending on the complexity—the one exception was when I woke up to such a swollen battery while I was traveling in Russia that the screen fell out; it was such a mess and at such an inconvenient moment that I just bought another phone for the time being.
Rather, there is usually some sort of other nicety that is finally compelling, or circumstances force it upon me.
My example will seem silly given the fact that the solution is one to a bit of a manufactured problem in the first place. But despite the fact that Vivo, Xiaomi, etc., launched the first in-display fingerprint sensors almost five years ago, Apple still insists on Face ID. Normally, this works fairly well and doesn't bother me too much, so I keep my absurdly long and inconvenient iPhone password as I am rarely entering it when I have it on me.
However, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and everyone began masking, good lord, it made me stop wanting to use my phone at all outside. It was so ridiculously inconvenient entering 30 characters each and every time I wanted to check anything at all, especially since I have my boomer-esque 45 wpm typing speed when I am using my phone.
Apple, multiple years late, finally released their feature to unlock your phone while wearing a mask. But it requires an iPhone 12 or newer.
This is an example of a scenario where even though I'd probably have been happy with an iPhone X, XS or 11 otherwise, the newer device still becomes very compelling.
(also yes, I know they let you unlock your phone while wearing an Apple Watch, but I don't want to have to have one just to use Google for 30 seconds while outside)
Of course, the true solution there is probably not to buy yet another iPhone but rather a device that respects you, but everything is a tradeoff, and at times, I need an iOS device specifically, etc. It is what it is, but I am locked into this ecosystem for the time being ;-)
> Took a day to get it through my carrier and it immediately restored from backup with minimal data loss, despite not having access to the old device. That ease of use and confidence I won't lose data is worth the premium.
I’m a mostly happy iOS user but it’s exactly the same with Android. You connect to your Google Account and everything is back exactly as it was.
I think US users don’t realise how close to each other Android and iOS actually are especially if you use a Pixel phone. I switched because of the Apple Watch which had no equivalent.
Good point here. Reminds me of how this is also how GM Ford etc made insane amounts of money in the 50s. They sold a car to almost everyone in the united states every 3-5 years. It made them and the city of detriot insanely rich.
I don't think they make best in class devices, Apple has become in may respects a fast follower, but they do a great job of locking people into their ecosystem. It just turns out that their ecosystem doesn't suck, but it's still kind of a white collar app prison.
If I had to ferment a revolution into a democracy, Android would be much closer to the ideal I would want in that future.
You’re right, and that came as a real surprise to me. My current phone is 5 years, and I’m into tech, so I assumed that the average people was at least as long as what I usually do.
I used to and now have a phone that’s 4 years old. I don’t plan on upgrading any time soon. There is nothing compelling about the newer models. “Better camera” pushed a lot of upgrades for a while, but my camera is good enough.
Happy Samsung Galaxy owner here. Migration from my last Note to current S21 Ultra was completed in less than half an hour, including "settings", contacts, data etc. I had to log in to Fastmail and Telegram with a seamless sync. Using BitWarden to manage passwords. That is worth the premium too! Dropbox syncs my files (and back ups) seamlessly. No sweat. iCloud is pathetic in terms of features (no delta sync) and generally limited storage space.
lol. The average iPhone user isn’t wasting their time managing fast mail, telegram and bitwarden. The whole value is that it’s seamless, across devices and Macs
I would like to use iPhones, they have really good cameras and very good video-recording capabilities. But sadly a lot of the apps I use are not available in the app store.
To me, this is a deal breaker. Hardware-wise the product is good, but I'm not just taking pictures and chatting on snapchat. I do a bit more with my phone. For my mom, however, the phone is great and does everything she expects it to do.
This is interesting cause it’s exactly the opposite for me. I’ve pixel 6a right next to me but my sim is still on my iPhone cause I just can’t find the apps I want on the android :)
I don't know if the number comes anywhere near the truth, but if for the sake of the idea imagine that the average iPhone costs $750 USD then $205 billion USD worth of iPhones is around 273,000,000 units. That means there is about 750,000 iPhones sold every day, or 31,250 iPhones sold every hour.
Imagine the environmental impact 31250 phones a hour must cause. All the material that went into them had to be mined, transported, smelted, carried to a factory, assembled, then sent to 1000s of locations by 1000s of vehicles.
Of course it's the same for all physical products.
I find it more depressing than anything else. The amount of those sales that was actually needed instead of upgraded for vanity is quite small. Imagine all the wasted resources and e waste so someone can have a different model number that is one higher for their phone, so they can feel better than their friends and spend more time looking at their phone. Our largest company is based on profiting from human greed and self-esteem issues. Doesn’t speak highly for us.
Well put, really catches the uneasy sentiment I feel reading consumerism threads like this.
It seems large enterprises conveniently downplay the Reduce and Reuse tenets of the 3R reduce, reuse, recycle mantra.
All this vanity and waste at such a great cost, for what? IG, tiktok, memes? I'm guilty of it myself at times, but I try to repair and repurpose as much as possible.
I think we are better than this. The time and energy of so many brilliant minds (here on HN, present company included) is squandered.
A bit off topic, apologies. Hopefully I can direct this energy to being more focused and finding clarity.
Status seeking is a fundamental motivation for people and catering to it has always been a source of wealth. In the past it was gold, silver, gems, ivory, beaver pelts, or purple dye. Now at least it's a device that performs a function.
You're right, not much status in just owning an iPhone. You need to own the latest iPhone, preferably the "pro" model to gain status. However, you can lose status by having cheap or old gear. When I was a kid if you wore off-brand sneakers other kids would make fun of you. Now I understand that kids feel some pressure to appear with the right colored chat bubbles in iMessage. The status game is pretty complex.
In the US almost anyone can afford the “latest phone” on a no interest payment plan from either Apple or the carrier. T-mobile doesn’t even run a credit check if you have been with them for a year.
Apple has kept the same design for 3 years. You can’t tell whether it’s the “latest” or not. You definitely can’t tell whether it’s pro or not if you have a case.
On the other hand if you had a hunk of gold, in 20 or 200 years that's still a valuable hunk of gold. Buying an iPhone for the status symbol is like buying a hunk of gold, and every six months you chisel off a huge chunk of it and lob it into the ocean to simulate depreciation on technology.
It's more like a potlatch thing (an America Indian status ceremony where people destroy or give away things to prove how wealthy they are) Spending money on perishable items is a power move in the status game.
Also, it has AirPods which sell like crazy. It has some hit shows like Ted Lasso so I guess people paid for AppleTV. Also, it has the crazy commission it charges for app purchases, people also like Apple Music. And it probably has a decent chunk of money from ads as well.
I feel like oil companies are somehow hiding it. Oil is absolutely everywhere from transportation to shipping to energy to packaging to building materials. I simply can't believe that Apples revenue is larger than some of the biggest oil companies
> I simply can't believe that Apples revenue is larger than some of the biggest oil companies
Then this might blow your mind even more: In 2017, at a market cap of more than $2.1 trillion, Apple's market capitalization is larger than 96% of country GDPs, a list that includes Italy, Brazil, Canada, and Russia. In fact, only seven countries in the world have a higher GDP than Apple's market cap.
Every new stage of technology development does this. People marveled at the wealth that oil created. Steam engines and coal stunned people by how much stuff they could carrier or quantities of steel they could make. Hell, even hunter-gatherer societies were amazed by the huge populations and cities that agriculture provided. Any future technology will be equally unbelievable, and I daresay even more profitable than what Apple is achieving.
It turns out that making a great product is hard, even with billions of spare cash and an army of LeetCode experts, I mean, extremely talented engineers.
Just look at that Meta VR game thingy. What's it called again?
> ... I can't imagine anything else ever topping it ...
In 2500 (say) this will probably seem like a very funny statement (because some amazing developments we can barely imagine will surely come along and be monetized to an extent we can also barely imagine).
Either that or you're right which would be very bad news for humanity (think the great filter).
For the record, I was very surprised to get a downvote for this. I think it's very common, more or less universal actually, to forget that we are only alive for a tiny slice of human history - and it's basically absurd to imagine that things that happen right now will remain uniquely important for all of future time. Basically this is flawed thinking, like those fallacies that people routinely debunk here. Of course one way that this thinking might not actually be flawed is if it turns out there's not too much future time (for the human race). And my comment covered that too, more elegantly than I'm doing here.
There are other companies including Walmart or Amazon having larger revenue. But what truly exceptional is Apple's net income. Trailing 1 year is almost 100B !! Only Saudi Armaco can touch that
Its fascinating to watch US corporate sector catch up to state sponsored or partially nationalized entities. Like wow, what a powerhouse. Taking hundreds of years of the corporation concept to do it, but make a country whose culture is only that and its working in that regard.
Apple, Google and Microsoft are all arguably partially-nationalized entities. They aren't literally owned by the government, but our government does wield it's unfathomable economic power to push US-based tech companies to every corner of the globe. It's a sad, perverted form of imperialism, but I consider it partial-nationalization none the less.
This is a really bizarre take on what a nationalized or even "partially-nationalized" might mean. I could argue Apple is more impeded in its capabilities and growth by the US govt (anti trust concerns, labor relations concerns, tax liabilities, etc) than it is directly boosted. If it's just a benefit from being a US based corp... that's not at all nationalized?
Not sure if it counts, but one of the main reasons US big tech is big is bc it was largely sponsored by federal reserve stimulus over the past 14 years.
Did the tech companies in question receive federal reserve stimulus over the past 14 years?
I find it hard to believe that the businesses selling the highest profit margin products and posting the highest profits received stimulus funds.
A likelier explanation for how big tech got big is that they delivered something of very high utility to people around the world and it has low marginal costs and high barriers to entry for competitors.
Stimulus isn't a huge part of it, but it's hard to deny that the US has ample safety nets for domestic business. The larger problem is our Laissez-faire attitude towards tech regulation and already predatory consumer practices. The US government has had considerable oversight over Big Tech for at least a decade, but it refuses to roll out consumer protections when Democrats or Republicans are in office. The European market balks at the stuff Google and Apple get away with, and rightfully so. Our regulators, legislators and executive leaders all turn their backs on software distribution and internet regulation because it makes us so much money! The US lives or dies on the health of it's economy, it should be no small secret that our leadership will keep these companies on life support as long as they can.
That's more subtle than that, and probably closer to how French treat their wine business for instance.
An example of gov intervention: banning Huawei as it was rising as a global phone maker, international tarriff negociation (the whole stupid tarriff war happened as China was rising as high end device exporter), protecting Apple's business when challenged on anti-trust grounds (Apple's open stance to the judge was "we need extortion to make money, let us keep brinig money in"). In doubt, look back at these photos of Tim Cook cringing next to Trump because he can't just say no.
The push against Huawei started in Australia as we started to deploy 5G. Our government essentially banned our telcos from installing Huawei equipment.
The UK had set up a different approach where Huawei exposed their entire stack to UK security authority scrutiny.
The "Five Eyes" security alliance (US/CA/UK/AU/NZ) basically then decided that they didn't want Huawei "inside" the 5G network, partially because of oversold promises of what 5G would enable.
There is a new "cold war" between the US (and the "West") and China and a realignment of alliances since the 2nd term of Xi began and he started rolling back the opening up of China's economy.
This has accelerated after the crack down in Hong Kong and the sabre rattling about Taiwan.
They’re partially actually owned by the Swiss central bank which literally creates francs just to purchase tech company shares with that form of funny money
And yet, I don't say these companies are anything else than they are
There are many forms of sovereign ownership and influence in them, who cares
I actually agree with you. The point I'm trying to make is that these companies all have strange benefactors with their own agendas. Some people are out to make money, other people barter for power, and larger institutions yet make bids for surveillance capacity and government contracts.
It's beyond the understanding of your or I, and probably anyone. The relationship between these stakeholders is too complex to accurately dissect, but their actions speak louder than press releases.
Sure, but Apple books revenue gross and a lot of it is from components they buy from other people in other countries, which would be excluded from a GDP calculation.
An extreme similar example of this is Mckesson [0], which does $260bn of revenue a year (mostly buying pills from pharma companies and re-selling them to pharmacies) but only $11bn of gross profit, since they spend $250bn/year just buying those pills.
'only' for a middleman, who doesn't even do the bare minimum job of saying: hey, we're shipping more opiate pills to this zip code every month than there are people x 100
Of all the links in the chain for the Opiate Crisis, you're going to blame the distributor of the pills?
I get it, hindsight in 20/20 etc., but those pills were prescribed by highly-trained doctors and fulfilled by highly-trained pharmacists who thought they were doing the right thing and you expect some non-M.D. to have the foresight and understanding to say 'Sure, CVS is ordering this amount from us because they have this many pharmacist-approved scripts (keep in mind, this is one of thousands of items CVS is ordering), but I think something is fishy.'
It just seems like that expectation diffuses blame from the actual villains here (the pharma companies that specifically worked to manipulate pharmacists and doctors into writing/approving those scripts).
there were HUGE amounts of MDs purposefully not doing the right thing and running pill mills.
And yeah, distributors for sure have experts and resources to hire experts. And they were repeatedly warned/directed to stop the insane volume. They knew of this. They weren't ignorant, even on purpose.
The opiate lobbyists slyly got the law changed so the DEA couldn't enforce with stop notices.
IIRC In Gibney's documentary they interviewed some of the Congresspeople who voted for it and they thought the bill did the opposite.
pharmacists also had the right to refuse and some did! but Purdue often intervened and pressured them to fill the scripts. I think that was shown either in gibney or maybe the great hulu purdue miniseries?
Harry Truman said in 1945 about the atomic bomb, "We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies". I feel the same way about Apple and FAANG and Silicon Valley as a whole (and Wall Street, and Hollywood, and SpaceX/Tesla, and the Ivy League), that they are in the United States.
That doesn't mean I approve of everything they do. That doesn't mean I can't or won't decry their putting thumbs on scales toward a certain type of bien-pensant ideology. That does mean that, overall, I am very, very glad that they are American instead of Russian, Chinese, or even British, French, or German.
Does it help the average American that they are a US company?
Big companies lobby and push hard politically, and they aren’t usually pushing for the best interests of Jane and Jo Average.
There's an argument to be made for one or all of Microsoft, Tesla, and Google to be included in there (I'm not calling them Alphabet and I'm not calling Facebook Meta I don't care how much you pay me).
They've got a huge market cap at an absurd P/E ratio, but they don't have anything approaching a huge market share of vehicles, quick search shows 19% of the EV market, which is only 10-20% of the overall vehicle market.
uhhhhhhhh whaaat? this has such a limited worldview. you can form companies in any of those places regardless of your citizenship or even residency, you can start companies in the US regardless of your citizenship or residency, you can get access to the speculative fury and cheap capital on Wall Street without you or your company being domiciled in the US. All combinations are possible and you need all combinations to make that magic happen.
Choosing to do this with a US nexus for most purposes was intentional and helped this outcome.
For an example of this combination. Baidu is a chinese search engine and advertising platform.
It is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, its board members and management are several US citizens living in the US, several are Chinese. Its primary operations are in China with several subsidiaries in other countries. The shares are repackaged as foreign depository receipts to trade on the US Nasdaq. And also trades on a Hong Kong exchange as of 2021.
You only limit yourself with this kind of nationalism.
The chosen regulatory environment does affect the potential size of the business. Its a choice for the company, and the management. A low growth French or German company chooses to stay in France or Germany.
Holy moly, the Mac keeps growing like crazy. It’s amusing how Apple wanted the iPad to disrupt the Mac but the advent of M-Series chips on the Mac has really nipped that ambition in the bud.
I remember when I got my first Retina laptop screen, it was nice but I quickly just got used to it.
Then, I found myself using the earlier machine, without the high DPI. That learned me. It was hard to imagine all the work I'd done staring through a screen door at those pixels.
Similarly, I've been using the M1 MPB since I got it. I only remember that it never makes noise when I'm reminded of it, such as in this conversation.
At some point, I'll end up using an Intel laptop of any sort, and I'll hear that whirring noise. It will be jarring, I've grown used to laptops not making sound they way phones and tablets don't.
I thought my M2 MBA was making noise today, but it turned out it was the neighbor's HVAC unit. With my Intel MBP, I wouldn't have been able to even hear the neighbor's HVAC through our closed windows. Life is good!
I got the M2 air recently as a DJ and was really exited for it to have no fam or loving parts. I don’t mind fan noise too much but my old 2010 MBP would constantly increase and decrease the fan speed which was extremely annoying for me.
Anyway, I’m so focussed listening to the lack of fan noise that I sometimes hear a ‘phantom’ fan noise. Like the lack of fan noise doesn’t seem right so my brain makes it up.
Outdoor unit makes noise, but noise travels up and out, not over. Problem is vibrations. Screw a metal vibrating thing into a concrete pad, vibrations travel through pad into ground, across the ground, vibrating the foundation, walls, glass, etc. of neighboring home. Rubber grommets between the metal and the concrete pad mitigates vibration. It's actually supposed to be there for all metal feet screwed into pad, but you rarely see it, causing unnecessary low frequency noise pollution, and the vibrations themselves, as far as vibrations go, are bad vibrations.
Oh man, I'm sitting with an M1 Mac mini and an M1 Pro MacBook Pro on my desk, and until I read your comment, I'd completely forgotten that computers used to make noise!
> Similarly, I've been using the M1 MPB since I got it. I only remember that it never makes noise when I'm reminded of it, such as in this conversation.
I take a lot for granted about my M1 MBP.
And it all becomes noticeable when using anybody else's computer.
The screen, the speed, the battery life, the fan, the heat. Its all so... crippling on other people's machines.
That's the same feeling I have when I step outside my Tesla and into just any other car.
It isn't that it is superior in every single way, but it is the balance of features that hits a sweet spot, making other cars feel like they have noticeable bugs.
I had the opposite feeling stepping into a Model 3 every day while my 4 series was shipped across the country.
Things that I thought had been solved decades ago, things like how to make basic switchgear that doesn't feel like it's going to break off in my palm*. How to indicate a turn signal in the center of my field of vision rather than where non-essentials like HVAC normally go. How to let me change HVAC settings without feeling around on a touch screen. How to support Carplay like a base model Corolla. The most basic mitigations for NVH so highway speeds don't sound like a mouse sneaking cheese in a wind tunnel. How to make ACC intuitive rather than a song and dance of checking what color a piece of text is. All suddenly were suddenly lost.
* I guess now we know why the OG Model S needed Mercedes window switches.
This right here. My work requires me to jump back to a Windows machine occasionally (but not for a good long while), and while I always appreciated the silence of the ARM MacBook Air - it's only in firing the windows box back up that I was hit with just how obnoxiously loud it was.
I've had to rip the dGPU out of the machine and cut the fan thresholds back to virtually nothing just to make the machine tolerable now. A lot of what Apple does is stuff you don't need, but it definitely spoils you.
Most laptops have the fan speeds set overly aggressive. I bought a Asus Zephyrus last year and by default the fan was coming on and off every few seconds, I tweaked the fan profile and boost policy so now it rarely comes on at all for regular day to day work. CPU temperatures stay under 55C.
There are M1 machines with fans, but you can rest assured they did the tuning so that you don't end up paying thousands for a machine with poorly thought out fan curves that don't incorporate basic hysteresis.
No. Apple just has their own poorly thought out fan curves just with different priorities. You can see this really easily on the Intel models where they don't even bother to turn on the fan until it hits something dumb like 90C. Quieter sure but I doubt good for long-term life of the hardware. It also had a negative impact on performance.
My M1 handily outperforms my old hot, loud Intel MBP, and the M1 doesn't even get warm to the touch doing the same workloads that would make the MBP turn into a jet engine. It's not just fan curves.
I'm using the Intel 12th gen and I don't hear noises even when compiling Rust projects. The only time I hear noises is when some Electron web app burns my CPU for no reason.
I also get 7-8 hours of work (that is compiling code during these hours) and something like 12 hours without compilation work.
I'm using Archlinux with Sway and enable/disable GPU as needed. It's not as perfect as Apple's new M2 but it's close to competition.
FWIW I've got Linux running on an 11'th gen Intel i5 thin-and-light and the fan only spins up if I do some big number crunching program. And this is with all the extra fat that Ubuntu drags along. I think fan noise is a very specific Window problem, maybe?
So, basically the Retina display didn't do anything except spoil you for tech that was okay before. That's good for the manufacturer, but this sort of hedonic treadmill seems like something to avoid?
Apple improves some things that users don’t strictly need. Like the speakers on their laptops, I don’t really need them to be as good as they are but it sure is enjoyable.
It's not just Apple of course, everyone who can afford it uses high DPI screens now.
Pixels aren't there to be seen, there is literally no display which wouldn't be, ceteris paribus, better at high DPI.
It's like speakers which hiss: easy to ignore until you spend time with ones which don't.
The notion that I care about a clearer picture on the screen I use to make my living, for hedonic reasons, is pretty comical actually. It's straightforward ergonomics which pays off in a lot of ways.
I bought the M1 Max MBP when it came out and the battery still shocks me. 80-90% of the time it's in a dock on my desk but I'll be sitting on the couch and think "Oh, I should probably plug in, I've been running it hard for the last hour or so.... oh.... 70% still, nevermind".
While the energy efficiency is vastly improved with Apple Silicon, the battery technology is still Li-ion. If your dock charges, you're killing your battery letting it charge every time it drops below 100% capacity. Apparently, the ideal way to extend Li-ion battery lifetime is to use the battery, never letting it drop below 20% capacity, but never charging it above 80%.
I bought a pair for my kids and they have been absolutely wonderful school computers. I don't even carry a personal laptop any more, and I personally don't like Mac OS X, and I really don't like Apple's RAM pricing, but the hardware design is truly hard to beat.
I used 3 different MacBook pros for work and after getting assigned a M1 MBP, the battery life convinced met to get an M2 MBA after it came out. I can never go back to Windows or System76 after this.
They’re trying to manage expectations by saying Mac sales in 4Q will be weaker but once they release M2 Mac Mini and M2 Mac Pro, they will sell like hotcakes. It doesn’t hurt that building a PC is now quite a bit more expensive.
It's amazing. I sometimes wonder what value these people see in this stuff. I guess I just "think different" as nothing that Apple offers is compelling to me in the slightest way. Yet one can't deny the reality.
I have been researching for a Linux laptop to replace my M1 for a month now - mostly to get back on x86 for projects.
The non-M1 offerings are relatively terrible. You have to make some trade-off of battery life, thermals, display, keyboard, trackpad, ports, and reliability.
Lots of threads with people saying “well no one needs 2K screens at 120Hz, just get 1080p 60Hz”.. meanwhile those laptops cost >$2K.
The Starlabs Starfighter specs were announced, they look tempting but slow display and no TB4 on Ryzen processors.
The Dell XPS used to be a favorite of mine, but they are plagued with quality control issues.
Lenovo thermals are bad this generation, and my experience getting my work Lenovo repaired was terrible. Plus I’ve read about quality control issues.
I’ve decided to just use an x86 instance somewhere for the specific things, but no doubt Apple hit the magic sauce with the M1.
But despite reviews by spring/summer they never seemed to materialize as actual products available for purchase (note 5xx series, not previous generation 3xx) :/
And considering you probably use your laptop 10x more often than your car spending $2 grand on the best around isn’t really much to ask. Especially if they last long which they tend to, especially do if you get AppleCare.
AppleCare doesn't make it last longer. It's just an expensive insurance policy with often high deductibles. If you manage a fleet of Macs it's much cheaper to just keep extras on-hand since most AppleCare claims require two shipments to get it fixed and you need something to use during that time.
Personal usage it is still an issue. If you have a problem you to send it back in most cases and be without a replacement. The best move is usually to buy a new one, time machine over to it, use it during the repair window, time machine back to your original after the repair and then return the new one. Still unless you are a total basket case with the care of your laptop you are better off saving your money.
This fact amused me when I found out. He did part of the work to port fedora to the M series. He also has stated a few times that he can’t stand fan noise. His home office has a threadripper desktop designed to be silent.
It’s a pretty DIY thing but the asahi linux project has got Linux running on the M series chips and I believe Linus put together his own build of fedora using that kernel.
Supposedly it works for him although there are some features still unsupported like 3d graphics
Asahi is pretty cool, any chance you've tried it on m2? I checked out the feature matrix. As I understand the CPU is doing the work currently and the GPU is unsupported, which leads to quite a bit of battery consumption. Very excited to try it nonetheless.
The m2 is a great piece of kit, I never realized how disruptive heat, vibration, and fan noise was until they were gone. I'm actively trying to put together a fanless desktop similar to the openbsd fanless desktop that is posted here from time to time. https://jcs.org/2021/07/19/desktop
Are you possibly able to understand that other people do other things with their laptops and so see value in the technology?
Like I spend my time compiling things. A fast, low-energy processor is brilliant for me, because it lets me work faster and for longer. Can you not understand how I'd see value in that?
Of course. But I don't see there being enough of those people to drive that kind of revenue to one company. Apple makes money like a fashion brand because that is what they are. They are very innovative and very good at doing it. I'm not trying to detract from their success. Just amazed that it works and has worked for so long.
But I don't own any Apple technology and can't think of a reason I would buy any.
Yes I do work in tech as a full-stack developer and sysadmin.
I don't think it's the mystery you do - they make money because they make the very best technology, that makes people who work with a wide range of workloads more effective, and so those people are willing to spend money with them.
If Apple is compiling my application 1.5x as fast and lets me work 1.5x as long without recharging, that saves me genuine time in the day, either to do more work, or to work on my hobbies, or to take more time out. That's really valuable to me. That's why I buy it, and why so many other people buy it. The cost is pretty insignificant considering it's where I earn all my money and do 50% or so of my hobbies.
I think he's struggling with the question - why do so many people buy sports cars and SUVs when they drive slowly in a city.
Most people don't use a laptop much at home, preferring to consume media on a phone or smart TV. At work, most people use web applications and microsoft office and not much else.
So why do they need a fancy car? People like fancy cars. They have been buying them for years, and they aren't going to stop.
Now you are driving your jeep off road on your mountain ranch saying some people need an SUV and you are right, but you aren't rebutting what he is saying.
> I sometimes wonder what value these people see in this stuff.
And you answered it yourself with your own example:
> Now you are driving your jeep off road on your mountain ranch saying some people need an SUV and you are right, but you aren't rebutting what he is saying.
That's an example of someone seeing value in it right?
> If Apple is compiling my application 1.5x as fast
The M1 Max (the highest end chip available in a Mac laptop) is slower than competition from Intel and AMD, though. I'm not sure what its supposed to be 50% faster than, unless you are only comparing it to old Intel Macs.
When it came out, the new MacBook Air had better single-core performance than every Intel Mac that ever existed. Not just the Airs - all of them ... on a lower power budget.
I'm sure you can get even faster single-core by brute-force burning power, but Apple were trying to do something more intelligent by balancing with power.
I think anyone seriously trying to claim they can't see any value in this is clearly just being silly.
I spend many hours per day on a computer and the M1 MacBook Pro just feels nice to use. The little things on it that make it a pleasure. The speakers sound good, the screen is excellent, the keyboard is fantastic, the battery lasts forever. I don't even do big bad compiling jobs or anything. I can afford it and that's why I got it. My iPhone is the same way. I'll spend $100 on a single dinner. Simple as that. And clearly, millions feel the same way. Not everything needs to be some sort of min-maxing exercise.
My dad switched from a Chromebook to an M1 air, and said something like: “It was like going from a Pinto to a Cadillac.”
He’s a very casual user. In part, his positive impression was due to me setting up Ad blockers on his MacBook. But it’s also due to the speed, screen, build quality, and the expectation of longevity.
Also, he can resell the Apple for a pretty good price if he wants to. His Chromebook is practically worthless on the used markets.
He feels like it was money very well spent. Apple’s numbers suggest there are many like him.
I've switched back and forth over the years. Sometimes 1 laptop, sometimes a desktop and a laptop. It's just easier to only have one computer. Even with cloud, synching, dropbox, etc. Having a single machine is just easier. You can put it to sleep, wake it up, and your own compiled services are still running.
The solution to keyboard / mouse / monitors / webcam / mic / speakers, is a powered USB-C hub. One plug, and you're at a desktop. This wasn't practical on Macs until the M1. With an M1 Air I did tons of work with no slowdowns for two years. It slowed down once or twice so now I'm on a Pro. PS. you can move between rooms very easily. And travel.
Edit: You're right about gaming. Mac fails at this, desktop or no. I played WoW and Stardew on my i7 Mini with an eGPU, but Apple Silicon doesn't have eGPUs, and no good games work on it. This also goes for VR.
My company gives me a hub to put on my desk at home. I plug 1 USB C cable to my work laptop and it charges the laptop, connects to my home LAN, connects to my monitors, webcam, mic, and it would connect to my keyboard & mouse but those are wireless. When I want a change of scenery I can just unplug and sit anywhere. I don't run anything locally that requires the intensity of a desktop.
When I go to the office I just bring my laptop and plug it into a hub at a hot desk. Then I have external monitors and all my processes just as I was running them earlier.
If I need a mouse and multiple screens I can't feel productive, that usually means the software doesn't have enough support for keyboard shortcuts and window management has too much friction.
> I don't know why developers are so infatuated with laptops
I need a laptop now and then either way, and having two computers means double the cost and more work to keep everything between them in sync. And I switched to a console for gaming, Windows 10 updates pissed me off enough that I'll never touch a Microsoft OS again.
I use it with a couple tools like Rectangle which make it usable enough for me. Half the time I'm managing "windows" in Vim and tabs in the browser, and in those the OS doesn't really matter.
The thing that annoys me most is that there's no global shortcut for new terminal windows. It's possible with some weird hacks but never really reliable or fast.
I found it through the yabai window manager - but I'm starting to think I might be better off with something less ambitious - as macos apis are restricted and yabai needs a lot of privileges to work with screen/desktops :'(
But skhd is very simple and powerful - it can run commands and also insert text (I rebind some keys for brackets and tilde which are annoying on Mac intl layouts).
Eg:
# open terminal, blazingly fast compared to iTerm/Hyper
cmd - return : /Applications/kitty.app/Contents/MacOS/kitty --single-instance -d ~
alt - k : skhd --text "~"
My mobile setup includes an Apple BT keyboard and mouse, a Roost laptop stand, an iPad as a second monitor and a USB C powered portable display - video and power from one cord.
As of tomorrow, my wife and I will officially be “digital nomads” flying around the country staying in hotels. I perfected my mobile setup over a year ago.
I visit my parents semi often and work from there.
I would guess it’s because developers are really finicky about the software side of their setup, and a laptop lets them have that wherever they are. With a desktop you need to keep multiple devices in sync, which is not yet quite as seamless as it should be.
A LOT of information is lost, or abstracted away, if revenue is the only thing you look at. There are probably tens to hundreds of latent parameters, where the net sum can come out as a positive (which translates to purchase / not purchase outcome).
I enjoy a lot of things with Apple products, and I get them free via my job - but I absolutely hate their (walled garden) app ecosystem. But still - since Apple is the only thing I can get at work, we / I become one more positive statistic.
HN threads are a bad source for what real people want and feel. It's terrific for talking about the technical side of things or about products and services that are geared towards the HN demographic but at the moment you step out of that comfort zone the disconnect between HN and real people becomes jarring.
And on a different note, and this is an idea that can use some further development, the fact that a non-free, closed source, walled garden, subscription-based software rules our life when free software alternative exists but remain unused by the majority of people is in a way a demonstration of how anarchism (= free software movement) has no chance to take hold in human society. Humans will always be prepared to trade some freedom for comfort.
How many know they want a walled garden or that they are even in one? I don't think most users realize or realize that Android allows getting apps outside the Play Store.
Very aware of it. Only care about 1% of the time, and the 1% isn’t a big deal.
Had Android until about iPhone 6. By that time, iPhone has closed the gap on the dealbreakers for me (and continues to do so). And once I acclimated to the iOS flow it was (and continues to be) a net-positive move. Imperfect, but net-positive.
Isn't it the classic Apple saying that the people don't know what they want? Not to mention the whole 1984 ad being against the Microsoft walled garden.
If anything Apple's own popularity proves that walled gardens should be dismantled at some point.
I like the walled garden. It's one of their competitive advantage. I don't want it dismantled. I don't want to androidify apple. And I am fine paying a premium to keep that walled garden and people who want it dismantled off the platform :)
The hidden premium is that you either pay for planned obsolescence (your hardware going to 3mph after 4 OS upgrades) or you stop upgrading your OS. It makes everything 3x as expensive as you think, I bet we all replace our Apple hardware more frequently than we’d like to admit. Unless one of you winners is still rocking that iPhone 4S.
People smoke, use drugs, over eat and drive drunk if allowed to do so.
Socially, people go back to abusing spouses, practice deshumanizing religious acts, elect politicians that just lied to them and buy products that have let them down before.
We do a lot of things that bad for us, that doesn't mean it's a good thing.
If heroin was legal, I'm pretty sure the company selling it would make a good quarter report as well.
It doesn't mean apple doesn't do a lot of things right. It does. People are not very technical, they want sane default. They don't want to fiddle with tech. And apple provides that. In exchange, however, people accept the lock in.
It implies that people on HN are intelligent enough to understand that analogies are not meant to be a one of one match instead of using it as an excuse to prepare for a twitter like outrage.
I don’t like a walled garden, and yet I use an iPhone because I like reducing e-waste. As soon as a Linux phone is viable (which I expect will be the case by the time my current iPhone kicks the bucket), I’ll switch.
That said, for non-techies like my parents, I recommend iPhone + MacBook. You pay a bit more, but their longevity makes them economical, the integration is top notch, they just work, have less bloatware, have excellent battery life, etc.
Apple’s revenue is what it is for a very good reason.
Or how about those that basically predicted Apple would cease to exist as a company for removing the headphone port, not having exchangeable batteries, or using a non-standard data/charging port on the iPhone.
Everybody needs a smartphone. Their two options are both walled gardens where one of them has a much flimsier wall. Of course if you offer them that they're going to pick the better one of the two.
Apple is unbeatable, what numbers jeez. And to think, Apple’s main competitor being practically forced into giving them money is what saved them.
The government should take something from this and not allow for too much consolidation. I’m sure apple giving a few billion to a few hundred small companies could yield some results.
I’m very curious what would happen to Google and Meta if Apple announced they’re going to seriously pivot into ads with a revenue target of 100B per quarter.
Apple’s main competitor being practically forced into giving them money is what saved them.
That’s a myth. Microsoft bought $150 million in non-voting stock. First, it didn’t save them, even then, $150 million wasn’t much money to Apple. Having Microsoft committed to supporting Office on the Mac for the next 5 years was a trade for Internet Explorer being the default browser for the Mac during those 5 years. That’s when the best version of IE ran on the Mac.
Of course after the 5-year period expired, Apple launched Safari 1.0.
Second, Microsoft made a huge profit when sold the stock.
What “saved” Apple was the success of the iMac in 1998 and then iPod.
They have two trump cards: vertical integration and a brand halo more popular than Jesus. Their engineering chops are first rate but they win because they do everything for quality, charge a massive premium for it and have users line up. Everyone else has to spend energy and resources making something that can compete on value because they don't have the brand. And they have to negotiate with everyone up and down their supply chain and put their products up against dozens of competitors.
Google's insistence on paying the $15B a year is odd to me. I'm sure they've run a bunch of experiments and they view it as making sense financially but I'm not sure how many people would settle with Bing as default search. Their #1 search term being "Google" is pretty telling.
You can also view the $15 billion as a bribe to prevent apple from trying its hand at search. Apple already has a substantial search effort behind the scenes
That doesn't make sense though. If they are already working on it why would Google fund that. Doesn't really make sense as a bribe. Additionally, I don't think Google is worried about a search competitor. It's all about the default search eyeballs. Microsoft has invested an insane amount to Bing and after 13 years they have 3% market share.
Sure it does. Apple isn't short of funding. If they think a search engine would be profitable they have the capital. Whats the $15 billion does is this:
1. Controls the default. Lots of people never change it, so Google gets more customers, worth more than $15 billion
2. Starves potential competitors of revenue such as Bing
3. Reduces Apple's incentive to go full tilt into search engine development. They now have to give up $15 billion
Apple's new ads business changes the calculus though and they may have more incentive to deploy a search engine in the near future
I always wondered why Facebook didn't make their own search engine considering how massive their userbase is and how much technical know-how and experience they have. But then pretty soon I realized it's all about distribution; Google controls Web distribution through Google Chrome, that's what makes them powerful. They can always promote their search engine through Google Chrome which has huge market share among Internet Browsers.
$15 billion makes no sense to me as well; why would you give that huge amount of money to some other company no matter how big and important they are if you believe that you search engine is the best in the world. That makes me conclude that Google has doubts in their own search engine and they are indeed afraid of Bing or some other search engine replacing them pretty soon and pretty quickly in the future.
Nono. It's largely because defaults are powerful. A lot of people simply don't change what they start with. If google has the default they get more money, more than $15 billion, plus they blunt competitors.
>The government should take something from this and not allow for too much consolidation.
What's wrong with consolidation on its own? This is the corporate version of "every billionaire is a policy failure". It is, on its own, a purely aesthetic preference. I'm sure people from ex-Soviet countries wouldn't find it jarring at all.
Apple tried to pivot into ads business several times, but they were simply not able to build a good infrastructure and organization for serving ads at the planetary scale. Apple is indeed one of the best engineering companies in the globe, but it can't be superior on everything; it's still struggling on building competitive online services even with the massive advantage of 30% app store tax + complete platform control.
>I’m very curious what would happen to Google and Meta if Apple announced they’re going to seriously pivot into ads with a revenue target of 100B per quarter.
Real capitalism would start happening or in another words vigorous market competition.
I meant vigorous market competition from the economical point of view not from the entrepreneur's point of view. But yeah the ultimate goal of every "for-profit" company is monopoly but the goal of every economist is vigorous market competition which improves quality of products and drives prices down.
- Q4 wearables of $9.6B, beats est byu close to $1B
- Q4 Services Rev fo $19.2B short of Est by $800M
- Q4 iphone Rev of $42.6B meets Est
- Q4 ipad Rev of $7.2B, short of Est by $600M
- Q4 Rev of $90.2B beats Est by $2B, that also means its up 8ish% YoY
- Q4 Mac Revenue of $11.5B, beats by $2B, nice, forgot they make computers;)
- China Rev of $15.5B, this is interesting, AAPL clearly has alot of China exposure in a time when that can go away in an instant.
- declared a cash div of $0.23/share
Interesting:
- AAPL hiking prices on Apple One, up $2, Music up $1/month, TV up $2,
- they generated over $24B in cash
- they returned $29B to investors this quarter, wow, them and MSFT and cash flow machines, maybe the only two tech companies you want to hodl right now
- they have only spent $300M on acquisitions this year, that doesn't seem like alot.
Watch for:
- lots of currency exposure in this company, does the USD strength help or hurt them, or are they really good at hedging currency risk?
- AAPLE has $23B in cash, down 1/3 from this time last year. Mostly given back to investors. Probably nothing to worry about here:)
- $3 trillion in market cap has been lost in the past year among 7 of the biggest stocks. $GOOG $MSFT $META $AMZN $TSLA $NFLX $AAPL( from twitter)
- from bloomberg, Maestri said Apple will likely see 10 percentage points of currency impact in the first quarter.
That is alot, and a significant headwind.
That could be an entire paypal worth of currency drag
I would love any personal background you’re willing to share just because your writeups are lapidary. Do you do this professionally? how do you decide what to cover? Seems like a broad array of tech stocks but maybe you cover other companies that you just don’t mention here at hacker news?
Again, absolutely none of my business. I’m just fascinated with how great minds operate.
Only if you open the App Store… Which I practically never do. The apps on my phone have been essentially the same for years. If I ever install something, it’s probably through a web link or QR code that goes straight to the right app.
The App Store is clearly a big wasted opportunity. 12 years ago I was actually eager to find new apps there. Why did Apple let it become a slum?
Yeah, it's pretty incredible wasted opportunity. I think maybe 5ish or so years ago they did a big revamp which shifted the focus to obviously coordinated promos of big company stuff, and a more, I don't know, fluff editorial format, and it just become completely uninteresting as a discovery vector.
It's absolutely outrageous that they run confusing ads next to search results -- probably millions of people getting confused and having a bad outcome because of that. Just straight up selling out a good user-experience for $. Shameful.
Wow I really never spent time thinking about it as a product but yeah it really was a wasted opportunity. Discovery is terrible and the quality of a lot of the apps are poor. It's obviously not an easy problem to solve but still I only go to the App Store to specifically get the app that I need.
It probably is at least relatively. The problem is that you (or at least a lot of people) wouldn't like the answer. Make it a very curated marketplace. Yes, that would take some labor but you can also take into account ratings etc. (Though not sure how to deal with the legit crappy online banking app that people give low-ratings too.)
But cue the outrage over my app dropped below a 4.0 rating and Apple kicked me out of the App Store. Or Apple decided I wasn't popular enough. Or any of the other ways in which curation produces losers that will be at least somewhat arbitrary at the margins.
First thing to note. You can browse w/o having to create an account!
You know what else Criterion does? Rather, what it doesn't do? It doesn't cut off the end of movies at the credits to spam me with what it thinks I want to watch next. There's no "you may like this other thing" based on my watch history. Rather, content is grouped already based on attributes of the movies, not based on my watch history.
Criterion cares about movies and about me as a movie watcher, and it shows.
I will pay Criterion $99/year till the end of time.
The only thing I'd like them to improve is their streaming quality a bit. The video stream is okay, but none of the soundtracks are anything but stereo at best, even for movies they also sell as Blu-ray that have multi-channel DTS soundtracks.
Criterion's app is nice but their movie selection is ... not great. I've watched a good portion of their films and less than half have turned out to be worth watching.
But this is no surprise. Per this quora answer by Larry Wright ( https://qr.ae/pvlbgP ) -
> Note that Criterion is a video distribution company. One may still wonder exactly whom makes the selections and with what credentials. Co-founder Robert Stein's background is in electronic publishing. Co-founders Joe Medjuck and Roger Smith produced such Criterion-unworthy fair as "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!" and "C.C. and Company" (respectively). One must assume that they employ a crack team of film historians, critics and assorted movie geeks to curate their titles.
Different strokes for different folks. I watch a lot of old films. My letterboxd watchlist currently contains 365 films which can be streamed thusly:
69 are available on Criterion. 61 are on HBO. 22 are on Amazon Prime. 17 are on Netflix. 15 are on Hulu. 6 are on Disney+.
240 are available as rentals on on iTunes.
(And I have no idea who Larry Wright is or why I should give any credence to his snarky remark where he picked two films that are not at all representative of the full Criterion catalog and neither of those films are currently on Criterion in any case. To pick a random selection of 5 on Criterion from my watchlist: Story of Women, White Material, Woman in the Dunes, Piccadilly, The Thin Blue Line.)
Criterion has definitely been historically film classic/art house oriented. Which, even as a generally film buff, doesn't necessarily line up with what I want and definitely may not line up with a Saturday evening when I just want to relax.
I also remember trying out different new apps on the daily in 2010.
If only those had costed $15 instead of $1, apps might not have become a race to the bottom where the only way to make a buck was to offer shady IAP or to release an uninspired boilerplate app filled to the brim with ads.
> Only if you open the App Store… Which I practically never do.
Which also says a lot about Tim Cook's tenure. They are facing major regulatory scrutiny due to the App Store, in addition to it being a major knock on their brand, instead of it being the asset it once was.
Basically the same reason Amazon let marketplace become a slum. It’s an open platform and becomes a race to the bottom and full of junk and spam and whoever wants to pay for ads for their junk and spam.
Which is wild to say, because it really isn't a very open platform. It's just open enough to be a cesspool while being policed enough to piss off developers and regulators.
Other than maybe games I'm not really sure why/how the app store itself would be useful for discovery?
I think when most people got a phone it was novel to have an app for different purposes - but nowadays people only really want apps they will use. They already have dozens they like so something has to be offering something unique.
And when it comes to finding a new app (like how I recently picked a new app for cycling) just seems like youtube and reddit forums are always going to have more info than an official marketplace.
> Don’t forget Tim Cook also brought you crummy gambling ads next to gambling addiction recovery apps on your $1500 phone.
This was obviously an oversight and the ads were halted when this came to light. Apple has never been good at dealing with ads, which is probably good since we don’t need a single company to takeover all markets.
I used to blame Tim for design decisions that lead to the keyboard fiasco and the touchbar (I just felt like it never would have happened if Jobs was still there).
After seeing the tremendous success that he's lead the company to my view has softened a bit. Even if those atrocities might have been avoided if Jobs was still around, there's no denying at this point that Tim was the right choice for CEO.
Tim was CEO when I personally noticed the keyboard issue on my own devices, and I admit I wasn't paying much attention before I started having problems. I really don't know if Tim made that call or not, I only know that he was around to blame when it affected me.
To the regular consumer both of those things are tied to the same ecosystem as the iPhone and people want to be seen in public with the latest gadgets. I'm not sure people feel that way about buying a new Mac.
This is a vindication for Johnny Ive, who completely founded pitched and launched the projects. Cook is a vision less hack who is chased off the golden goose.
And making the best Macs of all time (and best laptops in the industry), and the best wireless headphones, and the phone with the biggest market share (one measure of best).
> AAPLE has $23B in cash, down 1/3 from this time last year. Mostly given back to investors. Probably nothing to worry about here:)
Didn’t they have over a hundred billion in cash reserves a while back? This seems significantly low compared to what it used to be.
Mac revenue will be down next year but whenever they release the M3 on the 3nm node I think they’ll have another bumper year. Probably 2024.
Also Apple Glass is coming next year. I can see uptake on that being a lot quicker than Apple Watch but all depends on pricing, especially going into a global recession. If it’s over a $1000 it’ll flop. If it’s $500 it’ll do well.
Edit: looks like apples cash reserves peaked around 2019 at $107 billion dollars.
> If it’s over a $1000 it’ll flop. If it’s $500 it’ll do well.
I think we'll have to wait to see what the capabilities are. If it can replace an iPhone, $1000 would be incredible. $500 is only double the price of AirPods Pro, so functionality would have to be pretty limited.
I agree somewhat, in that if the capabilities are shown to be indispensable to achieving a person’s goals or the product becomes a new social norm like smart phones then people may be willing to spend that much. But the $1000 barrier is a steep one. There’s a lot of push back for that on phones as it is and they’re a practical necessity in modern society.
It’s going to take a lot of time for Apple Glass to build up the ecosystem to the point where it meets that indispensable criteria and that time will only increase if there are less users on the platform due to high entry costs. I bought a 1st gen Apple Watch and ended up selling it shortly after because I just didn’t use it. The first gen was a pretty terrible product. It’s come on a long way but it’s only now with the Ultra watch that I’d consider buying again. That’s seven years and I’m a tech person. Your average guy in the street is less inclined to want to purchase.
Maybe, but Apple Watch was a device you could buy on day one and be pretty confident in - at least in terms of what you were getting and that it would work for what it is.
Apple Glass at $1k is not something I could buy day one even if I really liked the promo video. I'd need to see some reviews after weeks and how well the first version works before jumping in - I imagine a lot of people would feel that way - because it seems like something that could so easily just not quite work.
(I don't mean not work in the full-of-bugs way, more like the it-was-a-better-idea-on-paper way).
I don’t think personally they will make the M2 Pro and Max MacBook Pros as 3nm as they’re due next month. I think you might see an M2 Ultra chip at 3nm for the new Mac Pro. I think they’ll wait a year before they release new M3 MacBook Airs and Pros which means you won’t see them appear until either end of 2023 or sometime in 2024. We might even end up in an odd situation where the iPad Pro gets the M3 before the laptops. Could be completely wrong though, just my speculation.
I think because they haven't even announced the M2 14 and 16 inch Macbook Pros yet, which would be on TSMC 5nm like the rest of the M2s. Not to mention the mac mini, studio, and pro.
It would just seem kind of weird for them to announce an M3 on 3nm within the next 14 months given that.
Still not a single crack in its business. And finally making inroads in SEA and India.
A company that is beautifully packaged but arguably has lost most of its soul. And is strategically building up the Chinese Supply Chain and helping them to move up its value chain. While presenting itself as the defender of Fundamental Human Right.
Inflation is a lagging metric. Not a forward looking metric. Hypothetically, todays inflation could be 10%, and if within the next year broad market prices drop 30% YOY, next year inflation numbers would report negative. Meaning you would have been better off holding cash when the inflation numbers were previously stated to be 10%.
> or are they really good at hedging currency risk
How would they be exposed on this, long-term?
Euro stronger than dollar: convert prices 1-1. I saw someone do a calculation that EU customers overpaid ~38% (!) on Macbooks in 2009. Yes, that's with VAT (sales tax) removed.
Dollar stronger than euro: immediately horrendously jack up the prices.
The people "who have nothing to do with the company" are the ones who buy or sell the stock, and end up dictating what the price action would be post earnings call.
So you're technically correct, but it doesn't change the fact that the estimates done by analysts materially influence stock performance.
Somewhat, they are typically generated by the analysts whose job it is to follow the company.
However, Those analysts typically get their numbers in large part by talking to the investor relations/CFO of these companies so the estimates are usually pretty good.
They still provide some guidance on numbers both magnitude and direction, but don't release actual estimates.
I'm confused now.
You claimed to not really understand who makes these estimates and have no knowledge about how they are formed but it sounds like you do know a tiny bit about guidance?
I mean you literally asked how these estimates were created?
> You claimed to not really understand who makes these estimates and have no knowledge about how they are formed but it sounds like you do know a tiny bit about guidance?
next numbers on iphone 14 will be bad. the phones are much more expensive in europe than they were a few years ago. exanging my 12pro for a 14 pro costs me 500€$ in the US and 800$ in europe.
I used to be a die hard android and Linux user, cuz you know it was all hip. I got frustrated with android phones never being updated in the early days. Linux always having video driver issues with multiple monitors and a crappy UI. A buddy gave me his old iPhone 5 to use when like the 7 or 8 was already out. The 5 was still better than my 1 year old android phone that I broke.
Apple just gets hardware right. Id never buy a non Apple product for my phone or laptop. They have the edge now especially more so with the latest silicon.
Vertical integration works when done right and Apple does it best.
It was a long time ago. It was a flagship Motorola phone or something. Either way, the fact remains that android is fragmented as fuck. Has to support a whole bag of different hardware configurations and is quirky, then manufacturers abandon the hardware and don’t provide android os updates. Each manufacturer adds their own bloatware apps to the android ecosystem.
There’s a reason even 5-6 year old iPhones still work like a charm on iOS even today. The hardware is much better integrated and supported by the software.
An iPhone 5 has for sure less software support than whatever Motorola you had.
And no, there's no integration story. Android has issues iOS has not (and the other way around), but performance wise they're pretty comparable on similarly specced devices.
Unless you're comparing a flagship iPhone against a lowend Android, you won't see as big of a difference.
The relatively high probability of any or all of severe economic sanctions, the people who know how to run TSMC escaping, and the TSMC facilities themselves being replaced by large craters.
The iPhone is the greatest cash machine ever. Some people are probably on their 10th iPhone . Some people probably spent thousands of dollars on app store.
The most amazing to me is how Apple reversed its fortunes with the Mac. According to a quick search of Wikipedia (haven't checked further), Mac worldwide market share was 5.7% in 1996 (after years of decline). It then dropped out of the top 5 for the next 20 years -- the page doesn't give numbers other than top 5, but in 2006 Toshiba was #5 with 3.8% so it was below that. Not only did it manage to bring its share back to 1996 levels, but it's now at 9%. And that's worldwide -- US market share is probably larger.
I can't think of another company that has had such a stunning turnaround for a product line that was nearly headed the way of many other hardware vendors (some of whom made pretty good products, I had a NEC back in the day and it was a good machine).
What can't be emphasized enough here is how much Windows created this. They went from the 95-XP arc, some of the best operating systems from a user's perspective, to 7 (another hit), to now windows 10 and 11, which turn your device into a slow always-connected ad platform that you don't really control.
In other words, Windows became one of those toolbars that we all have to remove from our grandmothers' browsers.
For me, the answer was Linux, but for a lot of people who don't want to use a terminal daily, MacOS is the answer.
If you are a user, Windows hates you. MacOS doesn't.
Edit: I forgot Windows 8 and Vista. Memory holed due to trauma.
I this overinflates the importance of the HN crowd a bit.
Yeah, a lot of software engineering types switched to MBPs because the OS isn't a steaming pile of garbage and it reliably works with the hardware. The former can't be said for Windows these days and the latter is generally hit-or-miss with Linux.
But I wouldn't be surprised if that's a rounding error when you're talking Macs doubling or tripling their market share. I'd imagine most people walking into an Apple Store in their local mall and buying a Mac with Apple Pay on their iPhone don't really know or care about the telemetry added in Windows 10. I still think Apple deserves the vast majority of the credit for the success of Mac.
They might not know about telemetry, but they probably recognize:
My Windows PC is slow, ad-ridden, buggy, and unpleasant. Also, the physical device feels cheap and the plastic is separating on the corner, and the hinge is broken.
Hey. Look at that super sleek aluminum MacBook there…
> They went from 95 and XP, some of the best operating systems from a user's perspective
I mean that's some rose-tinted shit if I ever heard it, 95 especially. 98 OSR2 improved quite a bit on the situation, but I don't recall having a great time with 95. It was still a glorified DOS extender in many ways, often slow to start up and shutdown, PC hardware and drivers were a mess and system stability therefore poor. This was right at the beginning of the concept of "PnP" in the PC world (plug and play) and it was a cruel joke most of time.
Windows 2000 being from the NT line was peak Windows in many ways. I resisted XP but it was ok for most people admittedly.
As someone who grew up with Apple computers, yes the overall fit/integration was not as good as Apple's but it did have some semblance of preemptive multitasking (which System7/8 did not have).
The "UI that runs on DOS" was a feature not a bug for legacy game/software support.
Most of Apples market share growth occurred in the Vista/7 era. Probably a bit more due to Windows 8, but overall Windows 10 probably had minimal effect. Most casual users and the press has been pretty positive on Win10.
You can tell all this revisionist history is written by people who did not experience it. Macbook market share grew among developers because it had a BSD shell and worked well with the web and mobile stacks of the mid- to late-2000's that were built on open source. Among non-developers it was an upsell from the success of other Apple products, especially upselling from the iPhone to the Macbook Air for which there was little hardware competition. User-facing parts of the operating system was not a reason in any of this.
Both the BSD layer _and_ the polished interface let me switch to Mac OS X in 2004 as a developer. Trying to get a nice Linux GUI was too much of a time sink for me then.
Fully agree. Didn’t mean to imply that Apples growth was specifically due to Vista or Windows 7, just that it mostly occurred then and not as much in the Win10 era.
The worry is that the person prying it, rather gently, will be Tim Cook.
The only hedge against that is the ecosystem for phone & ipad development is still the macbooks - so it does hurt Apple to take away the ability to write your own apps on a Macbook.
I got a new ipad this week and it is pretty clear that 99% of my non-work life can be lived on it - banks, games and all the streaming apps. I don't have any more collections of DVDs, games or music.
Even writing/drawing is better on a device which I can pick up and sit in a chair to read like a printed document, now that usb-c lets me plug it into my existing setup for screens when I do need a bigger screen.
I haven't heard this particular incarnation until recently, but [cue spooky panicked voice] "the Mac and the iPad are merging, just you wait" has been something we've been warned about for a decade and counting. I've argued before that if Apple really planned to lock the Mac down to the same degree they have the iPad, it would have happened with the move to ARM-based CPUs and the macOS 11+ UX. The fact that that didn't happen strongly suggests that it's not on the roadmap. I stand by that. (I also stand by my contention that increased security making some things more difficult to do is not being locked down. My concerns about Apple's future directions have to do with services and advertising, but that, as they say, is another post.)
At any rate, never say never, but I would be surprised if Apple releases a version of macOS that runs on iPad hardware, even if it's running in a lab somewhere in Cupertino. I've been half-seriously predicting an entirely new operating system built around Swift and SwiftUI that replaces both iPadOS and macOS down the road, but I don't think that's in the near future -- and stuffing macOS on the iPad in the interim just seems implausible to me.
The only hedge against that is the ecosystem for phone & ipad development is still the macbooks
And there are any number of ways around that. "Developer mode" iPads that run Xcode and a Unix shell and that start at $5000, or a web development environment that does builds on Apple's servers, or just release the internal Windows/Linux Xcode versions that they almost certainly have.
Fortunately Macs are currently too profitable for them to kill, but that can change quickly.
Some of the Microsoft hardware form factors are interesting.
For example, the Surface Laptop Studio form factor in MBP form would be really nice.
I'd like to use the iPad form factor for managing photos and reading books. But when I've used an iPad, I usually end up wanting a keyboard, so I add one, then I realize I have a MBP that can't do as much.
So to me it makes sense to take a 13" MBP, add touch to the screen, and hinge the screen in such a way that it turns into a thick tablet.
He is the one responsible for Azure and cares far more about Microsoft 365 and getting their services onto as many platforms as possible. So use your Mac long as you're using Word, Outlook, Teams etc.
I wonder how much money Microsoft could save if they simply maintained Windows with the minimum effort possible, instead of spending all this extra effort doing horrible things to it.
Well how else are they going to keep growing if they don't extract ever increasing rents? Realistically they've [1]plateau'd in market penetration for mobile phones, so their push into advertising, jacking up costs for established services is really MBA 101.
MBA 102 says you always maximize profits. You don't set a goal and then diversify when existing revenue streams plateau, you seek new revenue streams all the time.
And I don't think iPhone has plateaued anyway. Worldwide, iOS market share has gone from 20% to 28% in the past five years[1]. Apple is working hard to accelerate that growth. They may or may not succeed, but it would take an MBA 101 dropout to accept a 28% market share plateau.
Apple said the increase in Apple Music subscription price was due to increased licensing costs. The company said artists and songwriters will earn more per stream as a result of the pricing tier changes. Regarding Apple TV+, the company said the increased price reflects the growing catalog of original TV shows and movies:
Disappointing, that they own outdated combustion engine cars. They should have the money to by the fastest electric car on the market: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimac_Nevera
Apple has 150k employees. Probably get <$15 revenue on average per employee/day, 230 days a year. So <$500M of revenue a year, and with the price/quality of the food, I doubt it's being run at a profit (It's not like they have a wine menu to boost their bottom line).
Most of those 150k employees are in retail, who don't eat at their cafeterias, and $15 is a stretch at that - I think the most I ever spent at a cafe Macs was about $10...
All that to say, you're probably off by about 80%....
I'm not sure to what extent this is true for all their cafeterias, but the Cupertino based cafeterias are very much in house, with quite a bit of executive attention. Steve Jobs made the revamp of Cafe Macs one of his first priorities on his return, and he personally recruited Francesco Longoni, who I think still runs the cafeterias, from Il Fornaio.
Apple essentially makes require hardware(iPhone) most people needs and they leverage that to over other hardware and services around it. Simple and effective, not easy to do though!
A PDF? That is so 1990, when we were still printing out the Internet. Why can't this be a interactive HTML Table? Or some other machine readable format. Even an MS Excel sorry Apple Numbers sheet would be better.
Offsetting the fiscal year from the calendar year is, I believe, fairly common. If nothing else surely it makes for a less miserable holiday season: don't have to spend as much time dealing with end-of-fiscal-year accounting.
My current Macbook cost the same as the Thinkpad before it, yet has 2.5x the real-world performance, four times the battery life, better screen and touchpad, and runs completely silent.
But if calling me a lemming for that makes you feel better then go for it.
Most of the laptops don’t have Linux capacity, 15” screen, and keyboard without a number pad. So far a MBP is the best I can find. The keyboard is a deal breaker.
Not the first company to do it, though. Exxon did it in the 2000s when oil was up to $140, and I think Walmart did it, too.