charlesn

If you're as pissed off about this mindless and wildly expensive lawsuit as you should be--the DOJ will spend tens if not hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to try and force an Android-style open ecosystem down your throat and thereby lessen consumer choice--then don't just rant into the void here. At least email Merrick Garland here: https://www.justice.gov/doj/webform/your-message-department-justice  And if your state is on the list of those that have joined the suit, copy and paste that same email to your state's AG, and let your Congressional and Senate representatives know, too. 

pslice said:

I realize the DOJ is an independent entity from the political parties,

I hope this was sarcasm. Nothing could be less true in reality. 

blastdoor said:

quakerotis said:

Let’s rearrange the deck chairs.

I actually non ironically would like a deck chair rearranged. My father has an old iPhone from the era of Thin. I happened to pick it up the other day and was struck by how nice it is to hold a thin and light phone. So maybe it’s time to create an iPhone Air whose main feature is thin and light. 

Guess what, blastdoor? You're in luck! The "era of thin" iPhone of your dreams--you know, like the iPhone 5, so thin and light--is available for purchase today! It's called the iPhone SE. Not only is it "as thin" as the iPhone 5... it's THINNER! Just 7.3mm vs 7.5mm for the 5. Sad news, though... it IS heavier! Yes, the SE weighs a whopping 1 gram more than the 5... actually, 1.1 grams... so that might be a deal breaker for you. But did I mention that the SE, while being thinner and about the same weight as a 5 has a screen that's 18% larger and leaves the 5 in the dust in every other aspect of the phone, in both performance and capabilites? So there's your "iPhone Air" available for purchase today! How hard was that?

BeOS User said:

If this report is true, (a huge IF) a folding iPhone would be the first major design change since 2007 and the original 4GB iPhone. Yes, Apple has lost it, they've been riding the Ghost of Steve Jobs influence ever since. 

You should learn how to read a financial report. Apple Services--a division that didn't exist while Jobs was alive--is now Apple's crown jewel, producing 33% more revenue at the higest profit margins than the Mac and iPad businesses COMBINED. Meanwhile, the Wearables division--also not in existence while Jobs was alive--generates about 50% more revenue than either Macs or iPads. So much for "riding the Ghost of Steve Jobs." And even what is arguably the crown jewel of Steve's creations--the iPhone--is WAY more successful now than it ever was while Steve was alive... as is Apple, as an overall company. The iPhone X--which was Apple's defining leap into the mobile phone future--didn't debut until six years after Steve's death. Meanwhile, Samsung has been in the foldable screen phone business for the past four years and it remains barely a pimple on the butt of mobile phone sales. But yeah, Apple should definitely be rushing to get its share of that nothing burger or it is doomed! 

I've worked in television for over 30 years. Here's what you need to understand:

No major streamer except for Netflix is making money. They all continue to lose money, hundreds of millions, quarter after quarter. This is not a sustainable business model in any business. The losses have dropped since ad-supported tiers were introduced and it is hoped that these tiers will be the path to eventual profitability. One thing is clear: without these tiers, the streamers couldn't have survived. 

So what happened? The reasoning behind the ad-free subscription streaming model was that Netflix would get to a billion subscribers, with the other major streamers getting into the mid to upper hundreds of millions. At that scale, the subscription ad-free model works. But then Netflix hit a wall at under 300 million subscribers and the alarm bells went off that the subscriber universe was going to be a whole lot smaller than anyone thought. And this happened while spending tens of billions of dollars each year on scripted shows, the majority of which almost no one was watching because that's what happens when you release more than 500 new shows to the public each year--who can possibly even know what's on? It would be a full time job just to track it all. 

So... the lower-priced, ad-supported tier became a necessity for streamers to have a shot at remaining in business. And still some might not make it to profitability and survive, even with that extra revenue stream--we shall see. As for Apple: their bottom line for Apple TV+ must look terrible. I can't imagine how much they're losing per quarter. They likely have the smallest number of subscribers among the major streamers and, while they don't produce nearly as much content, a lot of what they do produce is incredibly expensive, especially in the sci-fi genre that plays a big role in Apple TV+ shows. Every episode of those series is at movie-level quality, and that costs tens of millions per episode to produce. Of course, for Apple, streaming is just a side business, and almost more like a marketing effort to further burnish and enhance Apple's high-quality brand. But still--it can't make sense even for Apple to continue sustaining huge losses in streaming, so an ad-supported tier would make sense. 

Personally, I got hooked on ad-free streaming and I hope it can remain an option without getting ridiculously expensive. If you haven't noticed, the streamers are working hard to push people to their more profitable, ad-supported tiers by offering deals for them and not ad-free subscriptions. And, of course, there isn't a way to "DVR" streaming content and fast-forward through the ads--you're stuck with them playing through, which is a giant step backward from the DVR set-top box era.