bshank

ilarynx said:

bshank said:

The worst employees at the Apple Store I used to work at now want to unionize. They harass people they don’t like, engage in subterfuge of management to undermine the company’s goals, and after 15 years feel entitled to just stay forever with piss poor behavior and attitudes. They are a detriment to the company and should have left at least 10 years prior to find better opportunities for themselves. Yet they have not. They want to hang out in the same retail store with their buddies to joke, undermine Apple, and continue to harass anybody they don’t like. Now they’ve partnered with the worst of the new employees who are just out of college and want a job for life. In addition a friend of the two biggest perpetrators became Leader of the Genius Bar and with those two perpetrators called the repair room “an HR free zone.” If you are a loser who makes bad decisions it is not Apple’s responsibility to give you a job for life so you can hone your hobby of harassment of other Apple employees, make fun of customers, and undermine Apple’s priorities. I for one absolutely do not support unionizing as I’ve seen what it can result in. 

Sounds like the Manager of that store is doing a horrible, failing job of 1- hiring good people for the job, 2- actually managing his crew though example, education, etc., to bring out the best of the employees, and 3- failing to show poor performing employees the door. The most hilarious part is the charge of "greed" applied not to the C-suite or stockholders of the most profitable corporation on the planet, but to the retail employees!

Most people whining about unions while enjoying the benefits of their own job, 40-hour work week, etc., are simply showing their ignorance of the subject as well as US history. 

Back in the summer, Microsoft entered into a labor neutrality agreement which lets its employees “freely and fairly” unionize. That's the smart thing to do. Why is Apple acting so stupidly in this area?

Whomever at Apple is responsible for their short-sighted and counter-productive anti-union policy, needs to be shown the door. 

avon b7 said:

davidw said:

avon b7 said:

foregoneconclusion said:

avon b7 said: Take away the 3rd party software element from an iPhone, or a phone from any other manufacturer, and it will not be successful.

Take away the OS and the hardware and 3rd party development won't exist. There's no chicken/egg dynamic for iOS/iPhone. Apple had to put the R&D into iOS and the iPhone first. If Apple had screwed up the execution of either of those then customers and developers would have looked elsewhere. The original iPhone was a radical product relative to the rest of the market at the time. It was closer to desktop/laptop functionality than what developers were accustomed to with smartphones. Obviously there would have been very few developers anticipating that type of product at all in 2007.

But none of that changes what I said. 

No matter how good the hardware/OS, if third party apps aren't there, the phone won't be successful. Apple isn't going to serve up a first party app to handle everyone's banking needs. No bank would allow it. 

Take the hardware away and people will migrate to the web/G network. Most people's daily key apps are web/G dependent anyway. As 5G IoT becomes ubiquitous and 'distributed' systems become more widespread, the role of the 'phone' will be lessened. 

Actual on device tasks are probably better suited to laptops/tablets anyway. 

Where do you really want to edit that video you just recorded?

Or on your AR/VR/XR glasses? Now there's a thought!

Ditto reading and replying to social media and the like. I can imagine plenty of situations where having the equivalent of a large screen projected before my eyes would be preferable to squinting at a phone screen. 

Quit making it sound as though developers are developing apps for iOS and Android out of the goodness of their hearts, just to see that Google and Apple are successful. It's making you sound silly.  More consumers are using smartphones than computers. There are many more consumers that don't own a computer than don't own a smartphone. And many more that have not bought a new computer in years. There are many more consumers that will stop using their computers because they can edit their videos on the smartphone, than there ever be smartphone users that will get rid of their smartphones because they don't want to edit their videos on a small screen. Twice as many consumers are surfing the internet on their smartphone than a computer. Remember people saying Google (with their search engine), have nothing to worry about because ..... who wants to surf the internet on a small screen? Well, it's a good thing Google didn't listen to those people and invested heavy on mobile search. Developing for smartphones is where the money is now, in the resent past and in the future. Developers are not going to abandon developing for smartphones. There's a reason by PC sale (including laptops) are declining. Though there have been a resent increase due to more people working from home. 

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/11/pandemic-boom-in-pc-sales-is-over.html

Developers are developing for the apps stores because they want to make money. It's a capitalism at work. The bottom line is that developers would not be developing for iOS or Android, if they did not some how benefit from it. Not even the developers of free apps. Developers are not stupid. They are not a charity organizations.  

Apple don't need to provide the likes of banking apps to their customers, it's the banks that will want to provide banking apps to their customers. And banks are not developers making money with their apps. They are in it for their customers satisfaction and must compete with other banks that do provide banking apps. Banks with banking apps are more likely to attract accounts. So banks will hire developers to develop their banking apps. Apple sees these apps as a benefit for their customers and have no problem not charging the banks for hosting their free apps.

And since the likes of banks will also provide their Android users the same free apps, their apps do not make the iPhone any more attractive to consumers, than an Android phone with the same apps. And this is true for nearly all third party apps that are available on both platforms. Why is the iPhone widely more popular and successful than most other Android phones, when both of them practically have the same third party apps, if third party apps are what makes the iPhone a success? If Apple wants to make their hardware more attractive to buyers, they need to develop their own first party apps and services. Apps and services that are not available on Android. Apple Music is one of them. So is the Apple Watch. iMessage another. For free, Pages, Numbers and Keynotes (iWorks), Photos, are others. It's nothing but capitalism and competition at work.  Apple having an app store with practically the same third party apps as on the Google Play Store on Android, offers Apple zero advantage of their hardware being more successful that Android devices.  Apple don't have to worry about providing a free Facebook app to their iDevice customers, Facebook would be stupid to not provide a free app to their social network customers, on any platform. So would all the other social network platforms. 

When the app store first appeared, developers saw an opportunity to keep 70% of the sales vs the 20% from selling their software through retail channels. Ask any old time software developers here about how much it cost to sell their software through stores like CompUSA, BestBuy, Walmart, Target, Fry's, etc.. They would consider themselves lucky if they got to keep just 20% of the sale price of their software. 

When the app stores came along, they eliminated 2 middlemen for the smaller developers. The publisher and the distributer. Thus developers got to keep 70%, instead of 20%. So getting to keep 70% was seen as more than "fair" by all the developers that flocked to the app stores.  What's even more "fair" was that they got to set the price of their apps and they only had to pay a commission based on actual sales. There was no left over inventory to get rid of. Unlike having to pay a publisher and distributor, even if you ended up selling nothing. Developers also got easy access to customers from all over the World. There is nothing "unfair" about app stores platform owners charging developers a 15/30% commission. Except for the greed of developers like Epic and Spotify.

The original iPhone sold 6M in the first year at $499 or $599, unsubsidized and with a 2 year cellular contract from ATT.  At the time, one could have gotten a high end Nokia, Samsung or Motorola for $99, subsidized, with a 2 year plan. Ballmer had every right to be skeptical about the iPhone success. Developers did not make the first iPhone a success. The first iPhone did not include an app store and it was still highly successful by all account. And the second iPhone sold over a 1M in the first weekend, even though there was only about 700 apps in the app store at the time. Apple biggest gain in iPhone sales didn't happen because of developers. It happened when carriers began subsidizing the iPhone at $200, (with a 2 year contract). That increase of sales drove more developers to develop for the iPhone. 

Apple and Google created an ecosystem that greatly benefited themselves, their customers and developers, from the start. Neither Apple or Google are forcing developers to develop for their platforms. They are developing on their own free will, driven by the opportunity to make a lot more money, than from selling software through retail channels. If the developer did not benefit at all from their apps being in the app stores, they would be the first to leave and neither Apple or Google will or can, stop them.

Apple and Google had no problem what so ever with kicking Epic Fornite out of their app stores, even though Apple 30% commission generated for Apple,  over $100M in a year. Epic was making over $25M a month from just Fortnite on iOS. Until Sweeney gave all that up just to show the World how greedy some developers can be. Who would have thunk that Epic could make so much money from gamers that wanted to play games on a small screen. Yet, just 7% of Fortnite players playing on iOS, generated over $1B for Epic in about a year. So don't underestimate how much developers can make from just a small percentage of their customers using smartphones. Just 5% of smartphone users amount to over 30M customers. 

You need to educate yourself on what it was like to be a developer for phones, before Apple introduced the iPhone and a year later, the Apple App Store, before claiming how unfair it was for Apple to charge a 30% commission to developers for developing for iPhones and how lucky Apple was to have them develop for iPhones anyway. Plus developers could not develop for iPhones without Apple developing and offering at a very reasonable cost, the SDK that allowed them to do so. 

https://www.larvalabs.com/blog/2017-10-24-15-1/app-development-before-the-iphone

and while you're at it, educate yourself on what it was like for developers to have to sell software through retail channels, before app stores. 

https://successfulsoftware.net/2008/04/21/selling-your-software-in-retail-stores-all-that-glitters-is-not-gold/

The app ecosystem that consist of platform owners, consumers and developers, is not a case of a"parasitic" ecosystem but a case of "mutualism". Everyone in the ecosystem are benefitting and wants to see all the others benefitting. Well, everyone except you and the EU. Both you and the EU seems to think the platform owners are parasites that are taking advantage of the consumers and developers. One of these days, the platform owners are going to go home and take their ball with them. Leaving the consumers and developers standing around playing patty-cakes with each other. 
    

You really should re-read what I wrote because not even a ten gazillion word essay will change it. 

iPhone depends on third party software. 

Without it, satisfaction levels and sales would tank. 

There is absolutely no doubt about it. 

Not just iPhone. Any modern smartphone in the digital age.

You are obviously not seeing the forest for the trees. Or you are being deliberately obtuse. 

sunman42 said:

bshank said:

What is not mentioned is how many small and medium sized businesses make MFi products. Apple supports these businesses by having such a certification program that gives people “choice”, something I thought the EU was all about. So much for fake anti-trust and anti-competitive narrative. The EU will be doing damage to those small businesses that make the majority of their profit off the MFi program, some being European. That’s another reason Apple hasn’t changed from Lightning I would assume, so they don’t pull the rug out from other companies that depend on selling certified Apple accessories. But I guess Margarethe Vestager and her cohort will feel like they are powerful or some crap, while subverting the EU and EC’s own stated goals. Seems equally short sighted as decrying violent tyrants like Vladimir Putin while creating an energy policy that depends on that dictator. 

The EU is for a choice of European-made goods. When it comes to South Korean or US companies’ products, not quite so much.