Perhaps the carriers should be 'fixing' the problem of the high prices Apple charges for its goods and services by telling them to lower them.
In all seriousness; if Apple thinks roaming charges are a problem they should create their own wold-wide mobile network or just buy Vodafone, then they could address the 'problem' in the correct way, by providing a cheaper alternative themselves, not by telling other companies what they should be charging.
Perhaps the carriers should be 'fixing' the problem of the high prices Apple charges for its goods and services by telling them to lower them.
In all seriousness; if Apple thinks roaming charges are a problem they should create their own wold-wide mobile network or just buy Vodafone, then they could address the 'problem' in the correct way, by providing a cheaper alternative themselves, not by telling other companies what they should be charging.
So is it Sprint or AT&T that you work for? A reaction like that must come from someone with a vested interest in allowing the gouging to continue.
If the carriers had charged reasonable prices to start with - say 40%-60% markup, nobody would need to step in and help correct the problem. I'm disappointed that it has to be Apple and wasn't the government - but 10,000% markups (or more) on roaming data has always been a scumbag move by the carriers. Deceptive marketing misleads the less-educated users into thinking it will be affordable (only $0.05/kb) instead of something easily understandable like $30/picture uploaded to FaceBook!
Anyhow - Apple did not say they are telling the carriers what to charge - they said they are working on a solution to the problem. It was the author of the article that speculated it might be taking place by negotiating with the carriers.
And if you do want to compare the markup on the iPhone to the historic markup on roaming data - you'd be paying 4.8 million dollars for that iPhone instead of $799.
I think that the only people who are not disgusted by the pricing strategies of these carriers are those that share in the profit. It should be illegal to charge so much without adequate safeguards and opt-out mechanisms FOR THE AVERAGE USER - and without meaningful pricing examples for consumers - the kB that costs a nickel is barely enough to do a DNS lookup! They should be required to inform that downloading a song is $20, uploading a picture is $30, watching a 22 minute TV show on Netflix is $400!
Someone needs to reign in their greed and corruption. If that ends up being Apple - so be it! I hope that Karma is real and that those in management positions at these companies that take advantage of the less educated travelers, get exactly what they deserve!
So is it Sprint or AT&T that you work for? A reaction like that must come from someone with a vested interest in allowing the gouging to continue.
If the carriers had charged reasonable prices to start with - say 40%-60% markup, nobody would need to step in and help correct the problem. I'm disappointed that it has to be Apple and wasn't the government - but 10,000% markups (or more) on roaming data has always been a scumbag move by the carriers. Deceptive marketing misleads the less-educated users into thinking it will be affordable (only $0.05/kb) instead of something easily understandable like $30/picture uploaded to FaceBook!
Anyhow - Apple did not say they are telling the carriers what to charge - they said they are working on a solution to the problem. It was the author of the article that speculated it might be taking place by negotiating with the carriers.
And if you do want to compare the markup on the iPhone to the historic markup on roaming data - you'd be paying 4.8 million dollars for that iPhone instead of $799.
I think that the only people who are not disgusted by the pricing strategies of these carriers are those that share in the profit. It should be illegal to charge so much without adequate safeguards and opt-out mechanisms FOR THE AVERAGE USER - and without meaningful pricing examples for consumers - the kB that costs a nickel is barely enough to do a DNS lookup! They should be required to inform that downloading a song is $20, uploading a picture is $30, watching a 22 minute TV show on Netflix is $400!
Someone needs to reign in their greed and corruption. If that ends up being Apple - so be it! I hope that Karma is real and that those in management positions at these companies that take advantage of the less educated travelers, get exactly what they deserve!
See on the right, just under the user name where it says 'location'? So no, I don't work for any phone company, let alone a US one. I'm not defending their pricing. There is always the option of if you think something is too expensive, don't buy/pay for it, which would be the main reason I don't have an iPhone and don't use or pay for mobile data.
European carriers have been just as bad. Thankfully the EU took legislative action to limit the practice. That is probably what the US government should do too, but to have one company that charges what the market can bear criticise other companies that do the same is hypocritical. As I said, Apple should buy Vodafone and then charge less than the other carriers for roaming.
Apple could direct users calls outside you operators space to a country datacenter that transfers the call to the destination countrys datacenter and its a local call then to the destination. Well two local calls actually... If they want they could make it an end to ens IP data call with SIP et. al., and all it is, is data for the wireless operator. Im pretty tired of that bad call quality, that the mobile network has to offer. It would be much better to dump that old bag of hurt.
See on the right, just under the user name where it says 'location'? So no, I don't work for any phone company, let alone a US one. I'm not defending their pricing. There is always the option of if you think something is too expensive, don't buy/pay for it, which would be the main reason I don't have an iPhone and don't use or pay for mobile data.
European carriers have been just as bad. Thankfully the EU took legislative action to limit the practice. That is probably what the US government should do too, but to have one company that charges what the market can bear criticise other companies that do the same is hypocritical. As I said, Apple should buy Vodafone and then charge less than the other carriers for roaming.
Nobody has ever been deceived by the price of an iPhone, and a 40% margin is much different than a hidden 10,000% margin.
If the carriers were upfront about their pricing, nobody would use that service (roaming data) and they would have to, as you say, adjust the price to what the market will bear. But what actually happens is that they make the price sound affordable by saying that it only costs 5 cents per kilobyte. The majority of users don't know what a kilobyte of data can be used for! They don't know that a picture, depending on the resolution, can easily be 2,000 kilobytes or more. People don't find out until their trip is over and they've returned home that the data they thought would cost them 20 or 30 dollars has actually cost them several thousand dollars! That doesn't happen when somebody buys an iPhone. Nobody has ever walked out of the store thinking their new phone only cost them $40 and then found out a month later that it was actually $800! They know the price from the beginning and they make an informed choice. That should also be a requirement for roaming data charges - especially since the price is so far out of line with what people normally pay for the same service at home - and so far out of line with what residents of the country they are visiting pay for the service. It's a shady business practice no matter how you look at it and it is obvious that they are intentionally trying to prey on the average, less educated user. So - by all means - let them charge what they want - but force them to make sure that the user understands those charges before allowing them to incur charges for them.
I think the answer is Apple needs to give options to users, and not dissuade use of Apple Music because of this enforced approach.
For those that are not impacted by availability and cost related issues re:cellular data, by all means use it.
At the least they need to provide:
- an option to allow offline listening of Apple Music on your IOS devices with local iTunes sync
That alone would help quite a bit
- an option to auto download Apple Music selections, just like the slider in Settings to auto download purchases
- an option to auto remove Apple Music based on certain criteria...(not listened to in more than x months, or simply after x months)
- a playlist that shows what has been removed, where you can re-download or permanently forget
Those provide a reasonable, controllable compromise between local availability and local storage issues
And...
- improved search and sort options
- simplified Music interface. There are so many elilipses, arrows, hearts in so many places, it's a mess. How about lightly coloring the line items of titles not on your device, or using a slightly different typeface, rather then the tiny faint icon? Perhaps simplify the bottom menu with three options "My Music - Apple Music - Radio", with the search icon on the right. Allow disabling of the radio button for those that don't use it.reduce th header graphic and give room for larger playbar area with proper buttons and scrubber
I have not dived into Apple Music and I am not sure I will. I think the GUI of the Music app is very unintuitive.I am very tech savvy and I do not get frustrated or give up, so I figure it out. But, I see the frustration or look of surprise among my clients when dealing with the app. Granted, it might just be the learning curve of going from the old interface to the new one. But I find that I am always looking for things that used to be obvious. Also, even though I have turned off "Show Apple Music" in settings, I still get alerts all the time that I must sign up for Apple Music if I want to do this or do that. Toggling off that option, would imply that the Apple Music options are gone from the Music app. Nope. It is annoying.
I think the answer is Apple needs to give options to users, and not dissuade use of Apple Music because of this enforced approach.
For those that are not impacted by availability and cost related issues re:cellular data, by all means use it.
At the least they need to provide:
- an option to allow offline listening of Apple Music on your IOS devices with local iTunes sync
That alone would help quite a bit
- an option to auto download Apple Music selections, just like the slider in Settings to auto download purchases
- an option to auto remove Apple Music based on certain criteria...(not listened to in more than x months, or simply after x months)
- a playlist that shows what has been removed, where you can re-download or permanently forget
Those provide a reasonable, controllable compromise between local availability and local storage issues
And...
- improved search and sort options
- simplified Music interface. There are so many elilipses, arrows, hearts in so many places, it's a mess. How about lightly coloring the line items of titles not on your device, or using a slightly different typeface, rather then the tiny faint icon? Perhaps simplify the bottom menu with three options "My Music - Apple Music - Radio", with the search icon on the right. Allow disabling of the radio button for those that don't use it.reduce th header graphic and give room for larger playbar area with proper buttons and scrubber
Both of your posts are spot on. As much as I like Apple Music with iTunes Match it has many many annoyances as you have so clearly pointed out. None of these would inspire me to switch to a data mining company like Google for my music and other content - but I am disappointed. Steve Jobs had some good points regarding the limited value of asking customers what they want, but I think there are times when Apple takes things too far and stubbornly refuses to acknowledge and take action on thoughtful critical feedback from customers. I hope they are listening.
Both of your posts are spot on. As much as I like Apple Music with iTunes Match it has many many annoyances as you have so clearly pointed out. None of these would inspire me to switch to a data mining company like Google for my music and other content - but I am disappointed. Steve Jobs had some good points regarding the limited value of asking customers what they want, but I think there are times when Apple takes things too far and stubbornly refuses to acknowledge and take action on thoughtful critical feedback from customers. I hope they are listening.
What bugs me about this whole thing is the app and service feel like a bit too much emphasis was placed on Apple's plans for forcing more use/revenue of the cloud; perhaps hoping establish a paradigm to limit or reduce storage in phones in the future; giving their carrier partners a chance to make more revenue via data plan increases/overages; and maybe even acquiescing to lablels/artist because of some yet unknown security issue that forcing a cloud library satisfied.
When you think about it, it's a quick set of dominoes that fall, and not in your favor.. Pay for Apple Music - Pay for ITunes Match if you want your complete library uploaded DRM because of the offline listening "trap" - and then Pay for more cellular usage. And this was not necessary - and is in fact detrimental - to a stellar user experience. That's why it feels that the business pieces dominated the user experience piece (not to mention the poorly designed app itself).
Whether all, none, or some of my above musings, this is is the first time in a while where I don't feel the right balance between end user needs and their goals as a business were equitably considered. Generally, Apple has been excellent at increasing revenues because of the surprise and delight of what they do, and the people came in droves. This, not so much.
As far as @pmz and @applzilla have commented, I wont spend much time rebutting why this is a terrible piece of software, but someone else already has (for desktop) and I strongly agree that this has been the worst and most confusing release in Apple's history, and it should be recalled.
I've had nothing but problems with it across laptop, desktop, and iPhone. In addition to being awful in UX, on a flight home to Chicago from Europe(read: looooong), iTunes deleted every song on my phone, even the paid purchases of media, and all of the offline content I had from my iTunes music subscription. I can't believe I paid for even a minute of this terrible service. I'm definitely canceling my subscription.
Additionally, the roaming issue in this article is not the one where iOS 9 turns on cellular boosted connectivity when wifi isn't working, but rather roaming data plans in general by having a built in sim chip in the phone that can be programmatically updated through the phone depending on the carrier you're in range of while abroad.
Rates are extremely expensive for data (100 megs cost something like $50 on Verizon I think), and the voice roaming and texting rules are sort of convoluted to understand. It would be beneficial to have 1 iPhone that could travel anywhere over the same rate without having data caps. T-mobile may have unlimited roaming, but it caps you as soon as you start roaming to super slow speeds and asks you to buy data burst packages to actually make service usable. I don't think that's a very good answer to the problem.
Comments
Perhaps the carriers should be 'fixing' the problem of the high prices Apple charges for its goods and services by telling them to lower them.
In all seriousness; if Apple thinks roaming charges are a problem they should create their own wold-wide mobile network or just buy Vodafone, then they could address the 'problem' in the correct way, by providing a cheaper alternative themselves, not by telling other companies what they should be charging.
If the carriers had charged reasonable prices to start with - say 40%-60% markup, nobody would need to step in and help correct the problem. I'm disappointed that it has to be Apple and wasn't the government - but 10,000% markups (or more) on roaming data has always been a scumbag move by the carriers. Deceptive marketing misleads the less-educated users into thinking it will be affordable (only $0.05/kb) instead of something easily understandable like $30/picture uploaded to FaceBook!
Anyhow - Apple did not say they are telling the carriers what to charge - they said they are working on a solution to the problem. It was the author of the article that speculated it might be taking place by negotiating with the carriers.
And if you do want to compare the markup on the iPhone to the historic markup on roaming data - you'd be paying 4.8 million dollars for that iPhone instead of $799.
I think that the only people who are not disgusted by the pricing strategies of these carriers are those that share in the profit. It should be illegal to charge so much without adequate safeguards and opt-out mechanisms FOR THE AVERAGE USER - and without meaningful pricing examples for consumers - the kB that costs a nickel is barely enough to do a DNS lookup! They should be required to inform that downloading a song is $20, uploading a picture is $30, watching a 22 minute TV show on Netflix is $400!
Someone needs to reign in their greed and corruption. If that ends up being Apple - so be it! I hope that Karma is real and that those in management positions at these companies that take advantage of the less educated travelers, get exactly what they deserve!
If I had to guess, I think they may be talking about voice roaming and doing with FaceTime Audio to calls what Apple iMessage did to SMS.
So is it Sprint or AT&T that you work for? A reaction like that must come from someone with a vested interest in allowing the gouging to continue.
If the carriers had charged reasonable prices to start with - say 40%-60% markup, nobody would need to step in and help correct the problem. I'm disappointed that it has to be Apple and wasn't the government - but 10,000% markups (or more) on roaming data has always been a scumbag move by the carriers. Deceptive marketing misleads the less-educated users into thinking it will be affordable (only $0.05/kb) instead of something easily understandable like $30/picture uploaded to FaceBook!
Anyhow - Apple did not say they are telling the carriers what to charge - they said they are working on a solution to the problem. It was the author of the article that speculated it might be taking place by negotiating with the carriers.
And if you do want to compare the markup on the iPhone to the historic markup on roaming data - you'd be paying 4.8 million dollars for that iPhone instead of $799.
I think that the only people who are not disgusted by the pricing strategies of these carriers are those that share in the profit. It should be illegal to charge so much without adequate safeguards and opt-out mechanisms FOR THE AVERAGE USER - and without meaningful pricing examples for consumers - the kB that costs a nickel is barely enough to do a DNS lookup! They should be required to inform that downloading a song is $20, uploading a picture is $30, watching a 22 minute TV show on Netflix is $400!
Someone needs to reign in their greed and corruption. If that ends up being Apple - so be it! I hope that Karma is real and that those in management positions at these companies that take advantage of the less educated travelers, get exactly what they deserve!
See on the right, just under the user name where it says 'location'? So no, I don't work for any phone company, let alone a US one. I'm not defending their pricing. There is always the option of if you think something is too expensive, don't buy/pay for it, which would be the main reason I don't have an iPhone and don't use or pay for mobile data.
European carriers have been just as bad. Thankfully the EU took legislative action to limit the practice. That is probably what the US government should do too, but to have one company that charges what the market can bear criticise other companies that do the same is hypocritical. As I said, Apple should buy Vodafone and then charge less than the other carriers for roaming.
Nobody has ever been deceived by the price of an iPhone, and a 40% margin is much different than a hidden 10,000% margin.
If the carriers were upfront about their pricing, nobody would use that service (roaming data) and they would have to, as you say, adjust the price to what the market will bear. But what actually happens is that they make the price sound affordable by saying that it only costs 5 cents per kilobyte. The majority of users don't know what a kilobyte of data can be used for! They don't know that a picture, depending on the resolution, can easily be 2,000 kilobytes or more. People don't find out until their trip is over and they've returned home that the data they thought would cost them 20 or 30 dollars has actually cost them several thousand dollars! That doesn't happen when somebody buys an iPhone. Nobody has ever walked out of the store thinking their new phone only cost them $40 and then found out a month later that it was actually $800! They know the price from the beginning and they make an informed choice. That should also be a requirement for roaming data charges - especially since the price is so far out of line with what people normally pay for the same service at home - and so far out of line with what residents of the country they are visiting pay for the service. It's a shady business practice no matter how you look at it and it is obvious that they are intentionally trying to prey on the average, less educated user. So - by all means - let them charge what they want - but force them to make sure that the user understands those charges before allowing them to incur charges for them.
I think the answer is Apple needs to give options to users, and not dissuade use of Apple Music because of this enforced approach.
For those that are not impacted by availability and cost related issues re:cellular data, by all means use it.
At the least they need to provide:
- an option to allow offline listening of Apple Music on your IOS devices with local iTunes sync
That alone would help quite a bit
- an option to auto download Apple Music selections, just like the slider in Settings to auto download purchases
- an option to auto remove Apple Music based on certain criteria...(not listened to in more than x months, or simply after x months)
- a playlist that shows what has been removed, where you can re-download or permanently forget
Those provide a reasonable, controllable compromise between local availability and local storage issues
And...
- improved search and sort options
- simplified Music interface. There are so many elilipses, arrows, hearts in so many places, it's a mess. How about lightly coloring the line items of titles not on your device, or using a slightly different typeface, rather then the tiny faint icon? Perhaps simplify the bottom menu with three options "My Music - Apple Music - Radio", with the search icon on the right. Allow disabling of the radio button for those that don't use it.reduce th header graphic and give room for larger playbar area with proper buttons and scrubber
I have not dived into Apple Music and I am not sure I will. I think the GUI of the Music app is very unintuitive.I am very tech savvy and I do not get frustrated or give up, so I figure it out. But, I see the frustration or look of surprise among my clients when dealing with the app. Granted, it might just be the learning curve of going from the old interface to the new one. But I find that I am always looking for things that used to be obvious. Also, even though I have turned off "Show Apple Music" in settings, I still get alerts all the time that I must sign up for Apple Music if I want to do this or do that. Toggling off that option, would imply that the Apple Music options are gone from the Music app. Nope. It is annoying.
I think the answer is Apple needs to give options to users, and not dissuade use of Apple Music because of this enforced approach.
For those that are not impacted by availability and cost related issues re:cellular data, by all means use it.
At the least they need to provide:
- an option to allow offline listening of Apple Music on your IOS devices with local iTunes sync
That alone would help quite a bit
- an option to auto download Apple Music selections, just like the slider in Settings to auto download purchases
- an option to auto remove Apple Music based on certain criteria...(not listened to in more than x months, or simply after x months)
- a playlist that shows what has been removed, where you can re-download or permanently forget
Those provide a reasonable, controllable compromise between local availability and local storage issues
And...
- improved search and sort options
- simplified Music interface. There are so many elilipses, arrows, hearts in so many places, it's a mess. How about lightly coloring the line items of titles not on your device, or using a slightly different typeface, rather then the tiny faint icon? Perhaps simplify the bottom menu with three options "My Music - Apple Music - Radio", with the search icon on the right. Allow disabling of the radio button for those that don't use it.reduce th header graphic and give room for larger playbar area with proper buttons and scrubber
Both of your posts are spot on. As much as I like Apple Music with iTunes Match it has many many annoyances as you have so clearly pointed out. None of these would inspire me to switch to a data mining company like Google for my music and other content - but I am disappointed. Steve Jobs had some good points regarding the limited value of asking customers what they want, but I think there are times when Apple takes things too far and stubbornly refuses to acknowledge and take action on thoughtful critical feedback from customers. I hope they are listening.
What bugs me about this whole thing is the app and service feel like a bit too much emphasis was placed on Apple's plans for forcing more use/revenue of the cloud; perhaps hoping establish a paradigm to limit or reduce storage in phones in the future; giving their carrier partners a chance to make more revenue via data plan increases/overages; and maybe even acquiescing to lablels/artist because of some yet unknown security issue that forcing a cloud library satisfied.
When you think about it, it's a quick set of dominoes that fall, and not in your favor.. Pay for Apple Music - Pay for ITunes Match if you want your complete library uploaded DRM because of the offline listening "trap" - and then Pay for more cellular usage. And this was not necessary - and is in fact detrimental - to a stellar user experience. That's why it feels that the business pieces dominated the user experience piece (not to mention the poorly designed app itself).
Whether all, none, or some of my above musings, this is is the first time in a while where I don't feel the right balance between end user needs and their goals as a business were equitably considered. Generally, Apple has been excellent at increasing revenues because of the surprise and delight of what they do, and the people came in droves. This, not so much.
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/review/apples-itunes-12-is-apples-worst-software-ever-should-be-withdrawn
I've had nothing but problems with it across laptop, desktop, and iPhone. In addition to being awful in UX, on a flight home to Chicago from Europe(read: looooong), iTunes deleted every song on my phone, even the paid purchases of media, and all of the offline content I had from my iTunes music subscription. I can't believe I paid for even a minute of this terrible service. I'm definitely canceling my subscription.
Rates are extremely expensive for data (100 megs cost something like $50 on Verizon I think), and the voice roaming and texting rules are sort of convoluted to understand. It would be beneficial to have 1 iPhone that could travel anywhere over the same rate without having data caps. T-mobile may have unlimited roaming, but it caps you as soon as you start roaming to super slow speeds and asks you to buy data burst packages to actually make service usable. I don't think that's a very good answer to the problem.