Notsofast

hucom2000 said:

iOS_Guy80 said:

hucom2000 said:

So the 50 billion of (partly/mostly additional) consumer debt is now a thing to brag about?

So are 1.5 billion in excessive interest rates?

You wan’t to play (have a credit card)  you better be willing to use it responsibly or you will pay. That holds true for any credit card. 

The question for me is how high of an interest rate is necessary to run a successful business and where it crosses over into greed. Just because everyone else is charging excessive interest rates doesn’t mean that Apple has to do that too.

Interest rates for credit cards in Switzerland for example average 12%... and they are profitable too. https://www.deposits.org/world-credit-card-rates.html

Please, you are ignoring facts to make a political statement.  You may think the banks and other card issuers are just evil, greedy people, but like most every other product, supply and demand regulate the price, as there are countless companies to choose from, so if the interest rates were simply made up out of thin air based on nothing but greed, then companies who wanted to get more customers and make more money would lower their rates.  But it turns out that the card issuers all charge roughly in the same range, based on your credit raring.  Why is that?  Well, read on.

You cherry picked Switzerland, but that chart shows that Switzerland is pretty much an outlier compared to most of the world. Is that because the Swiss are "less greedy?"  Of course not.  The Swiss have just about the highest per capita income in the world, meaning they pay their credit card balances. They have nothing like our extremely liberal bankruptcy laws which allows people to run up large credit card debts and then simply walk away from it.  Who pays for that?  You and I, in terms of higher interest rates.  Banks know that the people with the worse credit rating will cost the system the most in non-payments, etc., so they try and lessen those losses in the form of higher interest rates for those customers.  

We also have massive fraud. You love the fact that you aren't liable when you card is used fraudulently, but all of us pay for it.

You also want cash back and all the other free services, but those cost money, so that has to be made up for in higher interest rates.

You also ignore the huge amount of money that has to go into developing and maintaining the system to support your credit card system. 24/7 data centers, support centers, etc. etc.

Finally, and most importantly, you make the mistake of assuming the credit card issuers get their money for free.  That's not how it works.  All the money that allows you to buy on credit comes from people who demand a rate of return on their money, or there wouldn't be credit cards.  That has to be recouped in the form of higher interest rates.

That's the facts without the emotion.  

22july2013 said:

When you say there's no sharing of the card, I have a question. Does that mean it's against the rules or physically impossible to share a card? I imagine that an iPhone can be programmed with multiple people's fingers to the same touch-based login. How can Apple stop multiple people from using the same card?

Of course, anyone can share their card with anyone they want.  What's not allowed, at least for now, is a shared "account."  Which means you can't have multiple people each having a their own card for the same account as you can with other credit cards- it's one account, one person.

mac_128 said:

macxpress said:

Never a fan of what Steve would have though articles or comments....oh well. Nobody truly knows what Steve would have though. I guess it was kind of a Steve Job jobs type Keynote, especially the movies portion at the end. I will say that was very well done. Hopefully it turns out as good as the Keynote did in the end. 

Frankly I can’t believe any legitimate article, opinion or not, would trade on the concept of “Steve Jobs would have ....”. And I’m absolutely stunned AI would do it. Such articles completely undermine the credibility of not just the person presenting the article, but the website itself.

Not one of DED's best efforts as it seemed to lack some focus, but you seem to be suggesting Steve Jobs was some type of deity whose name can not be uttered except in the most reverential tones.  I am confident that is something Jobs himself would have rejected.   

firelock said:

What AI is pointing out is the classic non-doer critic's response to the doers. Whether or not Apple succeeds at everything it is trying to do right now in services is an open question, that they are making the attempt is what is more important. And if something fails Apple has shown its willingness to let go of what is not working (Ping, AirPower, Newstand, trashcan Mac Pro) and try something else rather than cling desperately to failing business model until it is too late. To quote Theodore Roosevelt: 

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” 

TR's quote was  more apt for Apple's early years with Jobs and Wozniak's struggles where they put it all on the line and "dared greatly," versus the "struggles' of the now most valuable company in the world in their efforts to produce a minor accessory like Airpower or some like Ping as those weren't the "high achievements" or "worthy causes" that TR was speaking about.

dysamoria said:

Anticompetitive practices are starting to really look like what they are. Apple bought out a competitor to control an existing product while they prepared their own...

Please stop feeding late stage capitalism. The cancer gets worse when you feed it.

You have to do some basic research on anti-trust law and on the facts. I'll leave you to do your own research on that topic, but here are some facts from one of the current survivors hanging on during late stage capitalism

1- Texture wasn't a competitor; Apple didn't offer a magazine subscription service.   
2-  You can buy everyone of the magazines and newspapers in Apple News Plus directly from the publisher or from dozens of sources including Amazon.
3-  There are multiple competitors selling all in one magazine subscriptions.

Facts matter.