Notsofast

The way the article is written is confusing some readers obviously based on the comments thus far.  This is not an engineering position; it's a marketing position.  The person is supposed to work with social media to see what folks are saying and communicate that back to others so they have that input and so they can coordinate marketing messages.  

Also, the article skims over the entire comparative capability question and merely repeats an internet meme about Siri being behind.  In truth, the situation is much more positive. I am a heavy user of Siri, and have family members who have Alexa and Google in their homes.  ALL three have a long way to go, but in contrast to the author's comment,  recent tests have shown Siri to be ahead of Alexa and getting close to Google in terms of accuracy.  

As far as "skills" that is true in absolute numbers, but it is misleading. Yes, people have written thousands of "skills" for Alexa, but surveys show most people haven't used a single one of them.  In contrast,  surveys show that Siri does pretty much everything most people use their smart assistants for, as does Alexa and Google.   Yes, someone has written a skill for Alexa so she can fart on command, but it turns out people use things like smart speakers to:  play music and podcasts (#1 reason), check weather and traffic, check and send messages, make and listen to phone calls, set timers and alarms, and control their home automated devices. ( Believe me, Siri on the Homepod's audio quality and listening ability in noise, blows away the low quality Amazon and Google products)

Again, Siri is still in the infant stage, but so are the others, and it will be great to see what Apple does with their acquisitions like Vocal IQ, but  in the meantime,  Siri is the most used digital assistant in the world, and knows more languages by far, and what is glossed over by almost all writers is that you aren't sacrificing your privacy to use Siri. 

People are missing the whole point of a subscription service. It's correct that no one is going to pay for the current free version of Apple News, but you are comparing a news aggregation of free article to one where you would have access to the articles behind paywalls. Just two or three subscriptions to a news journal or magazine would cost more than the likely monthly fee Apple would charge. Folks are missing out on how attractive that would be to millions of people who don't want to pay for, or manage, multiple monthly subscriptions to magazines or news journals. If they can get WSJ or NYT in a package with magazines and other newspapers for $9.95 a month, this will take off like a rocket

Please correct this misinformation.  You skimmed the article way too fast that you are posting . 

They specifically said they weren't predicting a $15 a month subscription cost!  They were just using it as an example of how revenue, even at that high of a monthly cost, would still be a small portion of Apple's total revenue.

fastasleep said:

That's a bummer. So if it's an app, can it have a thing linked to it in Wallet? If not, I probably won't bother, though the card readers at the self checkouts at my local QFC are infuriatingly unreliable. Been hoping to be able to use Wallet on the Watch to check out at some point. Oh well.

Try Safeway!

Amen.  When you combine this with their purchase of Ring; Amazon is a growing international threat to everyone's privacy.