Notsofast

sbdude said:

If Apple were to buy Tile, which is horizontal integration, and hold a dominant share in and of themselves, that would be a monopoly."

No, a monopoly is more than a dominant share.  Every company legitimately strives to be the dominant player in their industry.   A monopoly market structure is characterized by a single seller, selling a unique product in the market. In a monopoly market, the seller faces no competition, and is the sole seller with no close substitute. For example, Spotify is by far the dominant music streaming service in the world, but they are not a monopoly. If Apple bought Tile there would still be other trackers for sale.

Rayz2016 said:

echosonic said:

SpamSandwich said:

I have a Beats branded audio system in my car and I’m not convinced Apple understands how any of this works. It’s literally the worst in-car audio system I’ve ever had. My previous car had Fender audio and it was fantastic. As things are now, I’d never consider another Apple audio system or even these AirPods headphones based on my negative experience with Beats.

And I hasten to add I have absolutely no reason to trash Apple without cause. Most of my personal wealth is tied to their stock.

I am a music producer and mixing engineer. A few years ago I went out and bought the top of the line Beats headphones for just north of $500. Tried them out for 60 seconds, and then returned them. They were such absolute crap I was offended to have had my time wasted like that. I went right back to my trusty ATHM50s and have still not found a better set of phones. MY wealth is also with AAPL. But now I am starting to doubt for Apple's future because the Beats acquisition was clearly done for marketing and money. There is no fathomable reason why a company as adept at innovating and not cutting corners as Apple should ever have gone anywhere near Beats (a company whose name was chosen by a toolbag record executive long before the actual product was ever decided upon).

So the rumours are true: the infection rate of STUPIDITY-21 has overtaken COVID-19. 

As anyone with a clue knows, the Beats deal was done, as with most of Apple’s acquisitions, to acquire expertise and contacts in the music industry, along with a streaming service that was ready to go. The billion dollar revenues from the audio line was a nice to have. And still is. 

So tell me, Mr Industry Audiophile, do you think Apple, as adept at innovating and not cutting corners as it is, shouldn’t be have been hiring experts in the film and tv industry? Do you think Cook and Cue should be scripting and directing the TV shows themselves?



Christ on a bicycle …

aderutter said:

Personally I think Beats really suck.
I think Apple buying Beats was a really bad move.
I expect the opposite from new Apple headphones but we’ll see if they are as good as Sennheiser which is the same price bracket.

vanfruniken said:

Talking about holdouts, in Belgium, only one major bank (Fortis), and a few small internet outfits, are NOT holdouts.
There is an abundance of individual bank apps for payments, as wel as a few dedicated apps that are pushed by the major debet card companies (payconiq, bancontact), but no general acceptance of Apple Pay whatsoever.

Apple is very slow on the draw for several of its technologies:
- Apple Pay (worldwide rollout)
- FaceTime (SJ: we will open it up for others, so it becomes a standard)
- HomeKit
- Apple TV,
even now Apple can't count on repeat performances of late entries in the market like when the iPod blew away the MP3-player scene.
A good thing that the appStore and Music are getting more worldwide exposure now.

=======
About the appStore:
  for international use, the appStore review system is still fatally flawed, because users can only see the user reviews from the LOCAL APPSTORE. How weird is this?

In smaller appStores, (EVEN OF SMALL ENGLISH-LANGUAGE COUNTRIES), users won't be able to access statistically relevant reviews that they can easily read and understand.

All it takes is a user preference for the AppStore.app where one can select the appStores/languages.

I for one am able to read Dutch, English, French, German and Spanish reviews. The most important community is the English language one.

After all, most apps are country and language-agnostic: Unless they are developed for local use, they remain relevant for a very large community, that we are now missing completely.