All of Apple's services thus far are just meh. Music, TV, Arcade, News. Just meh. None of them are an awesome deal or must have content. They are just meh. Apple Pay would be OK but it only works a few places so it too is meh.
Apple Pay works in a lot of places. Any place that takes a contactless payment takes Apple Pay even if they don't advertise or know it. When I travel to Canada, Apple Pay works pretty much everywhere without exception because all of their credit card terminals are enabled for contactless payments unless the terminals are 10 years old.
ApplePay is an interesting one. I really was intrigued with the idea. I wanted it to work. But as I mentioned earlier in the thread I had very poor luck with it and abandoned it after a couple of weeks and several attempts. There are supposed to be two benefits to ApplePay: Increased security, but I haven't had a problem with this. Chip and Pin is quite secure so any improvement is theoretical. Improved convenience, this was something I did not see at all. I'm either pulling out my wallet, getting the card, and tapping or I'm pulling out my phone, fiddling with it, and tapping. There really is, for me anyway, no difference or advantage to ApplePay over what I'm doing, what I KNOW is going to work every time. In the end I saw no reason to continue the experiment. I might have fought harder to get ApplePay to work for me but it was going to be a fair amount of hassle and retraining old habits, for essentially nothing.
Oh and for the record I'm in Nanaimo BC. I had one successful transaction and three flat out failures.
Cloud services will expand to add Dropbox-like features and at some point become required for iPhone users (AWS is a completely different animal that Apple won’t go after anytime soon), Card services will continue to expand internationally and grow its base through aggressive marketing & promotions, Apple Pay will become a bigger threat to PayPal & Venmo. Apple TV will continue to poach the best in the business, continue to develop content and go head to head with Netflix - but it will take time, Games will also slowly evolve until one day Nintendo will wonder where their market went. As for new services .... maybe a real alternative to Microsoft Office 365? Apple Health will be a standard for personal health record keeping adopted by health providers, and finally Siri will still be as useless as ever :-)
Apple should have bought Tesla and made Musk Apple’s CEO. Perhaps Cook is a talented COO, but he has no vision and no place to be CEO of Apple.
Ok now we know not to take you seriously. Replace Cook, who built the first trillion dollar public company, with Musk, who struggles to earn a profit. Hmm nope. You misunderstand the job duties of the CEO. Being a product visionary is not it. In fact, that’s a rare CEO who handles product development, I can only name one or two. Running the company well is the job duty of the CEO.
Don't quit your day job.
Do you really think that Cook was the one who built the $1T company? As a CEO, Cook is doing very good, but IMO, the one who really built the $1T company was Steve Jobs.
Apple should have bought Tesla and made Musk Apple’s CEO. Perhaps Cook is a talented COO, but he has no vision and no place to be CEO of Apple.
Ok now we know not to take you seriously. Replace Cook, who built the first trillion dollar public company, with Musk, who struggles to earn a profit. Hmm nope. You misunderstand the job duties of the CEO. Being a product visionary is not it. In fact, that’s a rare CEO who handles product development, I can only name one or two. Running the company well is the job duty of the CEO.
Don't quit your day job.
Do you really think that Cook was the one who built the $1T company? As a CEO, Cook is doing very good, but IMO, the one who really built the $1T company was Steve Jobs.
You forget that for the last ~five years before becoming CEO, he was already doing much of the job. SJ was very sick and had a couple of extended leaves of absences. SJ was doing some of it, but TC was doing the hard day in and day out stuff. So yes SJ might have had great ideas up until the end but it was Cook who actually built Apple into a trillion $ company.
Apple should have bought Tesla and made Musk Apple’s CEO. Perhaps Cook is a talented COO, but he has no vision and no place to be CEO of Apple.
Ok now we know not to take you seriously. Replace Cook, who built the first trillion dollar public company, with Musk, who struggles to earn a profit. Hmm nope. You misunderstand the job duties of the CEO. Being a product visionary is not it. In fact, that’s a rare CEO who handles product development, I can only name one or two. Running the company well is the job duty of the CEO.
Don't quit your day job.
Do you really think that Cook was the one who built the $1T company? As a CEO, Cook is doing very good, but IMO, the one who really built the $1T company was Steve Jobs.
You forget that for the last ~five years before becoming CEO, he was already doing much of the job. SJ was very sick and had a couple of extended leaves of absences. SJ was doing some of it, but TC was doing the hard day in and day out stuff. So yes SJ might have had great ideas up until the end but it was Cook who actually built Apple into a trillion $ company.
My point is that SJ is the one who built the foundation for the $1T company, not Tim Cook. Tim Cook is doing an excellent job as a CEO, but the business SJ gave to him was already a strong one. If you asked me, I'm more impressed by Jeff Bezos, that build his company from the ground up, or even Satya Nadella with the turn around he made with MS, something many consider an impossible task. And just to be clear, I still consider that Cook is doing very good as a CEO, IMO...
Apple should have bought Tesla and made Musk Apple’s CEO. Perhaps Cook is a talented COO, but he has no vision and no place to be CEO of Apple.
Ok now we know not to take you seriously. Replace Cook, who built the first trillion dollar public company, with Musk, who struggles to earn a profit. Hmm nope. You misunderstand the job duties of the CEO. Being a product visionary is not it. In fact, that’s a rare CEO who handles product development, I can only name one or two. Running the company well is the job duty of the CEO.
Don't quit your day job.
Do you really think that Cook was the one who built the $1T company? As a CEO, Cook is doing very good, but IMO, the one who really built the $1T company was Steve Jobs.
You forget that for the last ~five years before becoming CEO, he was already doing much of the job. SJ was very sick and had a couple of extended leaves of absences. SJ was doing some of it, but TC was doing the hard day in and day out stuff. So yes SJ might have had great ideas up until the end but it was Cook who actually built Apple into a trillion $ company.
My point is that SJ is the one who built the foundation for the $1T company, not Tim Cook. Tim Cook is doing an excellent job as a CEO, but the business SJ gave to him was already a strong one. If you asked me, I'm more impressed by Jeff Bezos, that build his company from the ground up, or even Satya Nadella with the turn around he made with MS, something many consider an impossible task. And just to be clear, I still consider that Cook is doing very good as a CEO, IMO...
Bill Gates is the one who built the foundation for the $1T company by stealing from Apple, not Satya Nadella.
Apple should have bought Tesla and made Musk Apple’s CEO. Perhaps Cook is a talented COO, but he has no vision and no place to be CEO of Apple.
Ok now we know not to take you seriously. Replace Cook, who built the first trillion dollar public company, with Musk, who struggles to earn a profit. Hmm nope. You misunderstand the job duties of the CEO. Being a product visionary is not it. In fact, that’s a rare CEO who handles product development, I can only name one or two. Running the company well is the job duty of the CEO.
Don't quit your day job.
Do you really think that Cook was the one who built the $1T company? As a CEO, Cook is doing very good, but IMO, the one who really built the $1T company was Steve Jobs.
You forget that for the last ~five years before becoming CEO, he was already doing much of the job. SJ was very sick and had a couple of extended leaves of absences. SJ was doing some of it, but TC was doing the hard day in and day out stuff. So yes SJ might have had great ideas up until the end but it was Cook who actually built Apple into a trillion $ company.
My point is that SJ is the one who built the foundation for the $1T company, not Tim Cook. Tim Cook is doing an excellent job as a CEO, but the business SJ gave to him was already a strong one. If you asked me, I'm more impressed by Jeff Bezos, that build his company from the ground up, or even Satya Nadella with the turn around he made with MS, something many consider an impossible task. And just to be clear, I still consider that Cook is doing very good as a CEO, IMO...
Bill Gates is the one who built the foundation for the $1T company by stealing from Apple, not Satya Nadella.
First of all, I didn't say that Satya Nadella was the one who built the foundation of MS, it's obvious it was Bill Gates. If you noticed, I mentioned that I'm more impressed with the turn around SN made with MS over what TC has done with Apple after SJ left. And again, it's my opinion.
Second, I have heard of MS stealing from Apple, and I suppose you refer specifically MacOS and Windows GUI elements in the early years. But it's interesting how Xerox filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming Apple had infringed copyrights Xerox held on its GUI's. Looks like at the time, Apple neither MS were the best companies to trust your secrets, don't you think?
Please - just stop using Apple products and move on. You are just miserable
I can't stand a whiner either - but what exactly that he said was inaccurate? I read it twice - all I see is facts and constructive criticism of Apple, which it deserves for how lacking iCloud is for how long it's been in existence.
If you have some specific criticism of his post, let's hear it. Without whining please.
I'm pretty sure you’re paying monthly for a lot of things. Cable, Internet, Electricity, Water to name a few.
I pay for what I use with Electricity, Gas and Water. Apart from Water, I can shop around for better deals.
Cable? No way. Some deals top out at over $200/month. I use free to air Satellite.
Internet? Yes but I have a choice of 20+ providers so I can shop around. I'm not tied to one ISP where I live (UK). Changing ISP's is very,very easy.
What I was trying to say is that this drive to get us to subscribe to basically 'life as we know it' will only end in trouble. All those 'Only $7.99/month' offers soon add up and you could easily end up with no money to live on at the end of the month.
There is a reason that we used to call it 'The Never-Never'.
Please - just stop using Apple products and move on. You are just miserable
I think it's fine being somewhat critical. It's not like Apple's services are all wonderful as the marketing makes it out to be. Apple Arcade is already stale and it's just out. Some iCloud services still have decade old data-destroying bugs. Where is Apple going next with services? Making them reliable and up to par with what's available in the market I hope.
All of Apple's services thus far are just meh. Music, TV, Arcade, News. Just meh. None of them are an awesome deal or must have content. They are just meh. Apple Pay would be OK but it only works a few places so it too is meh.
Apple Pay works in a lot of places. Any place that takes a contactless payment takes Apple Pay even if they don't advertise or know it. When I travel to Canada, Apple Pay works pretty much everywhere without exception because all of their credit card terminals are enabled for contactless payments unless the terminals are 10 years old.
ApplePay is an interesting one. I really was intrigued with the idea. I wanted it to work. But as I mentioned earlier in the thread I had very poor luck with it and abandoned it after a couple of weeks and several attempts. There are supposed to be two benefits to ApplePay: Increased security, but I haven't had a problem with this. Chip and Pin is quite secure so any improvement is theoretical. Improved convenience, this was something I did not see at all. I'm either pulling out my wallet, getting the card, and tapping or I'm pulling out my phone, fiddling with it, and tapping. There really is, for me anyway, no difference or advantage to ApplePay over what I'm doing, what I KNOW is going to work every time. In the end I saw no reason to continue the experiment. I might have fought harder to get ApplePay to work for me but it was going to be a fair amount of hassle and retraining old habits, for essentially nothing.
Oh and for the record I'm in Nanaimo BC. I had one successful transaction and three flat out failures.
It can take a few goes but I persisted & won’t look back. I’m on a iPhone8 so a double-press of the home button and I’m there with the default debit card. Tap the card list an I can pull from any of 2 debit & 2 credit accounts all TouchID secured (safe from any random NFC scammers). Way better than cards.
- Music -- Looked into this. Compared to Spotify (which I'd already been using in the free tier) setting up Music for shared (family) use seemed more involved that Spotify did, so we opted for Spotify. It's been great.
How is adding a Spotify family plan easier than turning on Apple Music for my pre-existing Apple Family Sharing? I tried Spotify for a while but the App was too clunky.
Second, I have heard of MS stealing from Apple, and I suppose you refer specifically MacOS and Windows GUI elements in the early years. But it's interesting how Xerox filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming Apple had infringed copyrights Xerox held on its GUI's. Looks like at the time, Apple neither MS were the best companies to trust your secrets, don't you think?
Oh yeah. That’s straight out of the MS Supreme Court defence against Apple vs MS. The problem is, when you use Windows1 vs Star 8010 vs Mac System 1 under emulation you realise how much Apple added to create the cohesive product Xerox never had & how much of that MS stole.
I’d like to see Apple release iCloud Pro. Let’s face it Google & MS business ‘productivity’ offerings are crap with MS requiring significant vendor or in-house support & Google just being web apps. A huge gap for a self-managed, native-first player.
Health and fitness services is the next big thing? I strongly doubt it.
The Apple Car would be trivial project compared to health and fitness.
Health and fitness is all about sensors and hardware monitoring bodily functions and the exponentially difficult task of researching reliable proxies to measure. And kiss off embedded sensors entirely.
With all due respect, iCloud is nothing like Azure or AWS.
Azure and AWS are not only storage services but mostly cloud compute services. You can run your entire data center in AWS or Azure. Can you run anything in iCloud?
For crying out loud, iCloud can't even implement folder sharing among family members. That's just embarrassing, provided that Dropbox was able to do this 10 years ago.
Apple had MobileMe with cloud storage before Dropbox was founded, and now, over 15 years later, we still can't share folders! I upgraded all my Macs from Mojave to Catalina a couple weeks ago in order to be able to share folders among family members. Guess what I found out? This feature, which was promised during WWDC 2019, was not implemented in Catalina and was delayed until "Spring 2020". Seriously, Apple? Another disaster project from hell, just like Car Play, Apple Maps, and Siri.
iCloud does very very little compared to even Dropbox. Don't brig up Azure or AWS in the same article with iCloud because those services are lightyears ahead of iCloud.
When one speaks of Apples services, iCloud should be used as an example of how NOT to do services. Apple did well with Apple Pay and perhaps Apple Card (I wouldn't know anything about Apple Card, as I am not planning to have it). Apple TV+, Apple Maps, CarPlay, Siri, and iCloud, are serious flops on Apple's part. Yes, Apple Maps is still a disaster just like it was in 2012. CarPlay is so inferior to Android Auto that it's not even close. Even when running Google Maps on CarPlay, you can't get anywhere near in functionality of what Android Auto can do, and that's mostly because of how inferior Siri is to Google Assistant. Apple Maps is so bad that you can't use it to navigate to any POI reliably. It simply lacks the intelligence of Google Assistant + Google Search + Google Maps running in Android Auto. For that reason, I keep a cheap Android phone permanently connected to my car's head unit in order to use Android Auto. All my other phones are iPhones.
Nothing like Azure and AWS? Icloud has to be something like Azure because it’s built on top of Azure, at least. Not aware if Apple uses AWS. They are unlikely to be using Oracle’s or IBM’s cloud service.
Can't believe others are taking Podcasts, an Apple invention, and monetizing it as their own with exclusives. For a decade Apple ignored gaming and Podcasts. Apple is getting what they deserved there.
Wasn’t the concept of a podcast developed by Adam Curry (of MTV fame)? What’s the source for Apple investing them?
Seems I've heard Apple include AppleCare in its services breakout.
Anything else?
For financial purposes AppleCare, iCloud storage, AppStore IAP and Apple’s cut of other companies subscriptions are all considered “services”. In fact it’s most likely that Apple’s cut of AppStore IAP, AppleCare and iCloud make up the bulk of services revenue.
Second, I have heard of MS stealing from Apple, and I suppose you refer specifically MacOS and Windows GUI elements in the early years. But it's interesting how Xerox filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming Apple had infringed copyrights Xerox held on its GUI's. Looks like at the time, Apple neither MS were the best companies to trust your secrets, don't you think?
Oh yeah. That’s straight out of the MS Supreme Court defence against Apple vs MS. The problem is, when you use Windows1 vs Star 8010 vs Mac System 1 under emulation you realise how much Apple added to create the cohesive product Xerox never had & how much of that MS stole.
So Apple created a cohesive product that copied from Xerox, while MS copied from Apple. If you ask me, at the end both companies benefit from the Xerox innovation, and built their foundations from it. Maybe Xerox was the one who deserve to be on the top, don't you think?
I’d like to see Apple release iCloud Pro. Let’s face it Google & MS business ‘productivity’ offerings are crap with MS requiring significant vendor or in-house support & Google just being web apps. A huge gap for a self-managed, native-first player.
Do you really think Apple could do better than Google and MS cloud services for business when I can't even do something as simple as share a folder in iCloud?. And MS Office is miles ahead of the iWorks apps. Apple has to do a lot of work if they want to compete with Google and MS in the business cloud / productivity market.
Comments
There are supposed to be two benefits to ApplePay:
Increased security, but I haven't had a problem with this. Chip and Pin is quite secure so any improvement is theoretical.
Improved convenience, this was something I did not see at all. I'm either pulling out my wallet, getting the card, and tapping or I'm pulling out my phone, fiddling with it, and tapping. There really is, for me anyway, no difference or advantage to ApplePay over what I'm doing, what I KNOW is going to work every time.
In the end I saw no reason to continue the experiment.
I might have fought harder to get ApplePay to work for me but it was going to be a fair amount of hassle and retraining old habits, for essentially nothing.
Oh and for the record I'm in Nanaimo BC. I had one successful transaction and three flat out failures.
Bill Gates is the one who built the foundation for the $1T company by stealing from Apple, not Satya Nadella.
Second, I have heard of MS stealing from Apple, and I suppose you refer specifically MacOS and Windows GUI elements in the early years. But it's interesting how Xerox filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming Apple had infringed copyrights Xerox held on its GUI's. Looks like at the time, Apple neither MS were the best companies to trust your secrets, don't you think?
The Apple Car would be trivial project compared to health and fitness.
Nothing like Azure and AWS? Icloud has to be something like Azure because it’s built on top of Azure, at least. Not aware if Apple uses AWS. They are unlikely to be using Oracle’s or IBM’s cloud service.