Flytrap

AF_Hitt said:

trashman69 said:

Flop.

I really think Apple are missing the mark on this.  I’m confident - in a years time - they will have to rethink 
this strategy.

Yeah, I'm not seeing the mass appeal here. Netflix has some pretty great, established original shows... Apple's entire "services" pitch is, I think, going to struggle pretty bad. News+, Apple Arcade, and this are nowhere near anything I would actually spend money on.

I must admit that I also expected Apple to come in at about $5.99, to begin with, and then slowly increase as their library builds up and starts to compete with the other streaming services.

That said, Apple's "services business" alone is already more than twice as big as Netflix's entire business, judging from last quarter's reported revenues... and it is only going to get bigger (Apple's services revenue is growing at almost 20% per year, while Netflix has had to raise $2.2 billion in further debt since October 2018).

The problem that Netflix has is the same problem that Spotify has... they do not have another source of revenue with which to subsidise the growth of their main business, so it is funded on mounting debt. This is not a bad thing if there is a point in the future where revenues start to exceed expenses - but the streaming wars are just beginning, and all the services are going to be spending more and more on original content over the next decade or so. Amazon and Apple, on the other hand, can run their streaming services at a loss or break-even for the next decade (subsidised by their other revenue streams) while they build up their libraries to more competitive levels. That is why I expected Apple to launch at about $5.99.

If Apple launch at $9.99 and a library of 20-odd middling shows, then it is going to be a long slow journey for them. But if they have one or two Game of Thrones level blockbusters, the total number of shows may not matter so much. People will pay the $9.99 a month so that they can escape reality to an Apple-made fantasy world for a few hours a week if Apple delivers a reasonably compelling fantasy story for them to believe in.

I’d have like to have Journal on iPad and Mac because those are my main platforms for when I am going to sit down and jot down my thoughts for the day.

But, I am optimistic… it only took 14-odd years for Apple to port the Calculator app from iPhone to iPad… so I am expecting Journal app to be ported in more-or-less that same time frame

chris_kalan said:

On device VPN apps may not circumvent this, but a router-based VPN should, as the traffic being sent to and from the iPhone will masked at the router level, so the iPhone shouldn't be any the wiser.

This does not make any sense… a router-based VPN is not going to change the location eligibility indicator that is generated on your iPhone and sent via the VPN to Apple’s servers… it will simply change the IP address based location - which Apple does not even use to determine eligibility.