Darth Sidux

xmhillx said:

Wow apparently Samsung had already made similar wireless ear buds already. Never heard of them. And of course they sucked. But surprisingly are way more expensive!! They're freakin $199. Fuck. Have nowhere near the same functionality. 1.5 hours of Bluetooth music use. 

Anytime someone tries to tell you Airpods are too stupid expensive, should be cheaper, only 5 hours playback even with 24 hours of carrying case charge with 15min charge giving you 3 hours use, etc. Show them the shit competition for 25% higher cost.

williamlondon said:

Darth Sidux said:

At its heart, Apple makes money selling hardware. It is slowly adding services like Apple Music and such to add profits, but every decision it makes is to move more hardware. Having iMessage and Facetime just on Apple hardware is their way of selling the advantage of staying in the Apple Ecosystem. 

Looking at it another way, I can't talk to friends with FaceTime who don't have Apple devices, essentially meaning the product is less valuable to me. Looking at it in still another way, someone who has lots of friends not on Apple has no incentive to go to Apple if once doing so means they can't use the base functionality provided by Apple to communicate to their friends, which they do with their current equipment. This, "let's keep it in Apple's ecosystem" argument isn't very strong in my opinion and actually goes against the original intention of FaceTime, which was to be an open standard such that it could become the de facto video calling app people used, regardless of system. Patent conflicts I think killed that plan, but the vision was written at the time it was launched, there was never any intention of keeping it all Apple only.