rogifan_old

sog35 said:

IMO Apple should stop being so concerned about privacy.

They need to think of ways to increase services revenue. And one of the low hanging fruit is search and advertising. They just have to make the ads less intrusive. Most people don't give a crap about ads. Ads/Search alone could add $20-$30 billion in additional services revenue to Apple. 

So Apple should ignore one of its tent pole values as a company just to increase the top and bottom line? What nonsense. The last thing Apple needs to do is waste time on things it's not good at or that run contrary to its values as a company. Thank god investors like you aren't the one making decisions.

Rayz2016 said:

I think the main problem is that Apple's stance on privacy doesn't sit well with the needs of advertisers. If Apple hadn't abandoned iAds then it would end up pretty barren a year from now, which would look even worse. They made a choice: privacy or ads – they went with privacy so it best to just throw in the towel now.

Except iAd isn't going away as a platform; it's just becoming all programmatic. The question I have is will Apple still be able to control the privacy aspect now that they're no longer directly involved?

macky the macky said:

Slowly but surely Apple is squeezing the air out of Google's advertising balloon. Meanwhile Google's struggle to find another income stream to replace search/advertising is going nowhere... as hair-brained acquisitions are oft to do.

People keep saying this but it seems wishful thinking more than anything else. Kind of like when DED said Google was ready to abandon Android because of IP issues. If Wall Street is concerned about Google's search revenue they have a funny way of showing it. If you look at a 1 year chart Google is up 40%. That same chart for Apple? Down 9%. If Apple doesn't post a record holiday quarter or guidance is weak for this quarter Google will likely Google will likely be back on top. The difference in market cap between two companies is now only $55B.

According to John Gruber Scott Forstall was the only executive that was a big believer in iAd; nobody else's heart was in it. He's surprised it lasted this long after Forstall left. My opinion? The more things that leave Eddy Cue's plate the better.

I would really love to see a program for the Sport and SS models where you can trade in just the watch (no bands) towards the purchase of a new watch. The biggest problem with the Watch right now is how slow it is. If it was just a software issue you'd like it would have been fixed by now. Which leads me to believe Apple has some major improvement coming for the S2 chip.

vvswarup said:

robbyx said:

I honestly cannot understand how Eddy still has a job. Everything he manages is problematic in one way or another. Cloud services are unreliable. App stores are a mess and still don't offer obvious features like upgrade pricing. iAd has been weak since day one. He's utterly incompetent yet Forstall was squeezed out so that every exec could be a technically illiterate marketing wonk. 

I don't get the hero worship of Forstall. Perhaps it plays into the narrative that people are hoping plays out with Apple. Tim Cook is the next John Sculley who will lead Apple to the brink of bankruptcy. Scott Forstall who is seen as the heir apparent of Jobs will be the one to swoop in and save the day. His first move will be to fire Tim Cook the chief bozo and all the other bozos. 

If the rumors are to be believed, the picture about Forstall is not very good. There are rumors that he was known to take credit for successes even though he may not have had any part in it. He was also rumored to blame others for failures, even if he had a hand in those failures. He was also rumored to be extremely political. I think that the allure surrounding Forstall comes from these kinds of qualities. Steve Jobs was a great CEO but questionable human being. I believe that people are looking at that and thinking that such qualities are a prerequisite for the CEO of Apple. 

In case people are forgetting, iAd was started while Steve Jobs was CEO. With the kinds of restrictions on it, iAd was pretty much doomed from the day one. If it was the restrictions that were getting in the way, then it doesn't matter who is sitting in Eddy Cue's chair. The result is going to be the same. 

As for Apple Pay, I read the article. I don't see anything criticizing how Apple implemented the service itself. The problems with Apple Pay don't appear to be peculiar to Apple Pay. The problems mentioned in the article are issues that would hinder any mobile payments solution. 

According to John Gruber the biggest advocate for iAd within Apple was Scott Forstall and after Forstall left no one else's heart was really in it. He said he's surprised that it took Apple this long to shut it down.

i agree with you though about the Forstall narrative. Part of it too is people tend to look at the past with rose colored glasses. So everything in the past was good but sucks now. It must have been pretty bad with Forstall because Apple's press release announcing the org changes never even thanked Forstall for his service and Cook's internal employee memo just had one line thanking him. Also, Apple never refuted any of the rumors that came out after the announcement. Contrast that to when Greg Christie retired; immediately Apple PR was out with a statement refuting the notion that he left on bad terms. Also read the press release of Bob Mansfield and Peter Oppemheimer's retirements. Glowing and full of praise and thanks.

I remember something Ben Thompson said on a podcast once. He owns the blog Stratechery and was an intern at Apple. He said all interns get to meet with each member of the executive team. He said he was most impressed with Tim Cook and that Scott Forstall came across as someone who knew he was the smartest guy in the room and wanted you to know that too. My guess is Forstall's worst tendencies were kept in check when Steve was alive and after Steve died tensions that always existed bubbled up. And Tim Cook doesn't want conflict. He wants an executive team that gets along and can work together.