mylovino

In Germany they increased the price for the iPad mini by 100€ without any advancements, considering it to be anyway quite expensive already before…let‘s see how the market reacts, seems the count on the Holiday season, but that might be a dangerous gamble given today‘s time!

rogifan_new said:

AppleExposed said:

Don't bite the Apple that feeds you.

This may be an early move is desperation due to Apples coming service.

I hope Apples service dominates like everything else Apple does. Couldn't care if Netflix became the next Nokia.

So you want Netflix to fail because they don’t want to give Apple 30/15% cut? How is that good for anybody?

Totally agree with rogifan_new. There is a thing called "competition", monopoly so far only served the monopoly owner, never consumers. And though I like the enthusiasm, being an Apple fan myself, but given the recent product diversity and general market conditions I see too major issues with the movie service in particular and the charging of fees in general :

1. The level of bugs have significantly increased for a while, Apple is losing focus on doing things right. Siri, HomePod, iOS sync between devices, and generally looking more into peoples day-to-day life and the ways they use software to remove a lot of the small little obstacles particularly iOS and macOS, are just some examples. Also it took them many years from iDIsk to iCloud Drive to get something remotely competitive to Dropbox running. It does not make me confident them approaching another line of service, as much as I would like to see it, don't get me wrong on this!

2. Why should any company accept a 30% cut? To me iTunes becomes more and more a service like any other payment service. Yes, iTunes itself may get credit card charges which they have to path through, but I think they should just do it as for Apple Pay, i.e. a small cut of the payment fee, that seems fair and I doubt that the service providers would have a problem with that.

So overall, greed is never a good adviser when you want to keep both suppliers AND customers stay on board, best is to find a balance everybody can live with. All the recent quality issues (e.g. the bending problem of the new iPad Pro) and excessive fees may hurt Apple badly going forward. And I am personally considering a single developer who spent days and nights on getting the result on the App Store (and already pays for the Apple Developer program); a 30% cut is just outrageous and this community might be grateful that some biggies pave the way for a change (even for solely selfish reasons ;-) ... but like I said, this is just my personal opinion.

Still a problem here in Germany, just had it an hour ago on my iPhone with latest iOS version, so just not true what Apple is stating…or they just referred to the US

Agree with previous comments, "Thunderbolt 4 Multimedia Pro Dock" does not deserve its name, it is at the end an old fashioned, classical USB(A) hub :-(

entropys said:

Also, this article is a bit too much a sit on your laurels type of article.  The real question is, how much money has Apple left on the table, how many sales has it not made, by: not adding the to iOS proper file management and peripheral support for the iPad; how many sales has Apple not made because upgrades of memory and storage are too high; how many iPhone sales has Apple not made by not having a small size, up to date iphone? You could go on of course.

Its the sales you don’t make, the market gaps you leave to competitors, that matter. Apple of todays does remind me of Apple in the early nineties. And Jobs is no longer alive to rescue her.

Hi,
somewhat have to agree! Though still a firm Apple believer, the picture got some scratches:
- HomePod: total desaster, stereo mode got lost again an again, Siri not able to find the most common radio stations, and sound quality far behind e.g. the B&W Zeppelin. 
- Beats: cushions of the headphones crumbling to dust, and really just after ocxational use.
- MacBook Pro 2014: Retina foil is loosening, and as it was also just a bavkup laptop with occasional use I just did not see it > no proactive info like with car manufacturers and just 3 weeks outside the callback programm :-(

For me the simple summary: though the company is still making billions, the shareholder value pressure is taking more and mkre its toll and the company is losing its quality angle. Really a shame, as they play with their some differntiator from comlanies like Google, Samsung, Microsoft, etc.

Here is Tim Cook again, he can‘t shake off his COO roots to constantly bargain state-of-the-art features for a better total cost tag. 
I was looking for an affordable full screen budget phone from Apple to supplement my corporate phone. The SE was always a meager compromise with all it’s limitations, particularly the super old fashioned screen layout. Now, that is obviously fixed with the 16e, and certainly there are some other improvements which makes the phone qualify for what I was looking for to begin with…just to find out about the limitations again in other areas: no MagSafe (seriously? that alone totally disqualifies the phone!), no colors (again, ever thought about kids or just people who‘s world is not black and white?), just to name the two most prominent problems…oh, the price tag being among them for sure.

So again a phone with compromises, facing the need to please shareholders and keep the margin up. As much as I am a fan of the Apple ecosystem, how long do they believe to keep their monopoly? Every year they increase the risk to ultimately reach the breaking point where even loyal users have enough of this shareholder game and want to see well thought through products across the entire budget line! A normal consumer has little understanding for a company accumulating billions of dollars and not investing in the right things. Guess what, it is our money that makes you run, maybe you should remember that now and then…

I use the action button of my ultra 2 regularly for cycling. I do a lot of it, whenever I can leave the car in the garage and use my bike for all sorts of stuff (grocery shopping, post, etc.) it is my personal preference. Especially in winter times when I am all packed up it is super convenient to just press this button instead of finding my way through the menu…