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.

and the numbers McDonalds is pulling prove that people who cook their own meals are an utterly irrelevant minority as well.

That’s not a sensible comparison.

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.

As a person that's been using Android since 2.1: that's a feature that's completely unnecessary to the average consumer.

I use it frequently as I use f-droid, but let's face it: Android is a (less successful) walled garden too.

Nothing would change if Apple allowed third party stores either.

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.

> 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.

I don't think that's a real hidden premium. The android scene does worse on this front, and used to do significantly worse.

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.

Did you really compare having an iPhone with abusing your wife and heroine addiction?

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.

Ahh yeah, the good ol' "you're too dumb to understand my spaghetti analogy". My hero.

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.

No it doesn't. That's like saying they obliterate the fiction that people want cheap phones, or 10 day battery life, or easily repairable phones.