Bart Y

ITGUYINSD said:

It may not be a popular opinion here, but I like Spotify better than Apple Music.  Like so many others have said, Spotify has better playlists and I prefer their interface to Apple's.

I don't own a HomePod or anything that ties me to AM, so I choose Spotify.  

Exactly!  It’s a choice, choice involves competition and Spotify is there competing against all comers including Apple Music.  Some will choose and some will stay with what they like.  Spotify need to learn how to truly compete rather than cry to regulators “to protect” them and their profits.  HEY EU, try making a technology platform so that Spotify can dominate.  

johnbear said:

normang said:

PDRPRTS said:

normang said:

And in other news,

A cart vendor rolls into a Mall, sets up shop, never consulted the management of the mall, has no contract.

After he is removed from the mall, goes down the road to another mall. does the same thing and gets kicked out.  

Unfortunately in the real counterpart of this analogy, the cart vendor is not allowed to set up shop anywhere else. Many do not wish to be in the App Store Mall, as many cant compensate the high sellers fee (which is totally lawful), but they cant go outside and sell either. That is the reason why this whole ordeal is even an issue - even if it is legal now, sideloading is actively deactivated at each system update - one can now legally circumvent this thanks to the jailbreaking court-ruling, but it is not easy for all, and it can be a hassle. At the very least it is difficult to sustain commercially.

Remember that in many legislations and countries your analogy is real and a cart vendor cannot set up an honest shop for survival anywhere simply because malls, or other government-favoured shops do not want competition (or need cheap labour/slaves). This is all fine until it is us needing to survive and make commerce, and as the world economy is going, i wouldnt think it is just something happening in an other continent.

This legal battle may be the grounds for how we and our children will be living in as short as a decade, as this will update Anti-Trust laws to global digital times. Capitalism becomes totalitarianism when monopolies go unchecked, so Anti-Trust laws are conisdered pillars of Democracy. Epic is acting so aggressively that they almost seem to want to wreck this all up in an otherwise valid case - but they are closer to 99% of humans than any monopoly will ever be.

The cart vendor has a choice, if he wants to be in the mall, he has to pay the fee that the mall requires to be there to use "their" space.   Your trying to create fairness where there is none, you can compete or you cannot.. If you decide to setup a cart in a saturated market, you had better be able to market and show that you have a far superior product, or your going to fail..    

Epic has no valid case..  They are trying to upend the app store, and in the process even if somehow they succeeded, its unlikely that things would really improve for anyone else..   It would merely show that if you legally force your will on someone its no different than totalitarianism I assume you decry.. 

imagine if visa and MasterCard charges merchants a 30% fee per transaction. Apple made over 50 billion in revenue from the AppStore last year. Unless they employ 100 mil people or something like that to work for the store and its platform, it’s ridiculous to say they need to charge those high fees to maintain it.
maybe Epic’s approach is not the best one but it seems that they are at the end of their rope after trying to work this out with Apple the nice way. Too many developers are angered and most likely this will hurt Apple too in the end

You seem to think, as many do, that all those revenues somehow are done for free.  They all have real costs and expenses.

Read the 10Q quarterly reports.  Apple in Q3 2020 made 13.16B in Service revenues.  But it cost them 4.3B to make those revenues, about 32.7% goes to expenses, and we are not even considering SGA and R&D expenses.  Apple also has to create, sell and support the hardware all these Apps run on. (Plus new iOS versions that support 90% of all current active iPhones and iPads).  For that, they had product sales revenue of 46.5B with 32.7B in Expenses, about 70% goes to expenses.  Add expenses together and divide by total sales and you get the gross margin of 38%, a fairly consistent point for Apple.  So charging 30% for App transactions (in the first year, remember, then it drops to 15% in successive years), is LESS than their overall gross margin and actually pulls it down.

There are roughly 2.2 million apps in the Apple App Store.  Let’s say 75% of them update at least once a year.  Assign 3 people to review each update taking 2 hours each to review and 1 hr each to document. That’s 6 hours of work for each app update, assuming all goes fine.  That’s 1.65 Million updates x 6 hrs.  Figure you pay $25/hr (flat pay, no benefits).  That’s ~$250M or $0.25 Billion in app update reviews alone.  Then there’s the thousands if not 100’s of thousands of new apps that are submitted annually which likely take much more time to review, test, dialog with, iterate with developer, till acceptable.  

Services is not a simple enterprise, at least not for a company as big as Apple.

jcbigears said:

Just practicing my email:

Dear Tim,

Please make the ECG feature available to Australians.

Your company has registered devices with the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods already https://bit.ly/3h2tZnt

The ARTG accepts evidence from overseas regulators including FDA, Health Canada, European Union and Japan https://bit.ly/3kObtkR

Please?

Thanking you,

John

jcbigears said:

anantksundaram said:

It is already there. It's your regulators or government that are likely the issue. Weird, considering how long ago the US FDA approved this for the Watch.

How do you know it's already there?

All Apple Watches have the same hardware, simply because it’s easier to build one hardware module per series and encase in different materials. The hardware works in conjunction with approved apps in each country which allow hardware functionality and software management and monitoring.  For example, all Watches have a version of a pulse oximeter which is derived from the pulse monitor.  However, it’s never been turned on because either Apple has not asked for or received approval for it (in various countries) or it is not accurate enough (unlikely).  Pulse oximetry is rumored to be available with Watch 6 and / or the next Watch OS update.  We will see if all versions of Watch with the capability will activate this function.

ECG hardware function is built into Watch 4 and 5, but only turned on in countries where it has received regulatory approval.  But approvals can be slow or lobbied against by other device makers or the medical establishment.  For example, S. Korea has just approved ECG function after 2 years.  This came on the heels of  of approval of similar function for the new Samsung Watch 3.

both you and I hope that Apple has applied for various Watch health functions to be approved in most countries it sells Watches in, but the speed (or slowness) of approval is in the hands of governmental health departments or ministries, most of whom have been quite occupied recently.  That is no excuse, but it is reality.

GeorgeBMac said:

DAalseth said:

I suspect all retailing will look very different. Especially after this has continued, albeit at a less intense level, for a couple of years. People will have gotten used to ordering things online be default. Before this started malls and department stores were in a major slump. This is going to accelerate it dramatically. I’d give even odds that Apple gets out of the brick and mortar store business within five or so years. Would not surprise me at all. 

I agree that the virus will increase the trend to online shopping.   But I think there are limits there -- particularly with high-cost, high-end merchandise such as what Apple sells.  You can only tell so much from specs and product reviews and sometimes you just need to see it and touch it to know which product is the right one for you.

But that last -- "touching it" -- is a problem areas.

Like any virus the Corona is not just spread with coughs and sneezes but by inanimate vectors where people contaminate something by picking it up and the next person picking it up gets infected -- as well as the person after him and the person after him, and the....

I wonder if Apple will be monitoring their display products like a jeweler monitors his jewelry and, in this case, disinfect it immediately after the customer puts it down?
Or, possibly, as implied by the story, they will attempt to disinfect the customer by asking them to use hand sanitizer as they enter the store.

Maybe the Apple Store would be better served by handing out gloves to each customer as they enter the store.
But, I am reassured that Apple is taking their cues from S. Korea who, unlike the U.S., has managed the virus well.

Hand sanitizer and gloves for each customer, if they are to touch something, would be quite useful but I suspect Apple employee cleaning is to be the gold standard, simply because the the store employees ensure it is humanly done to standard.

IMO, because ebay had owned and created PayPal, even after they became separate companies, they still have a very cozy and integrated relationship.  PayPal knows if ebay allows other electronic payment systems or direct electronic bank access like Zelle, it would lose out on fee big time, IMO that’s why there is feet dragging at ebay.

re: Current-C from Walmart/Lowe’s/Rite-Aid/Home Depot, etc., their attempt was to avoid the extra fees and transfer of fraud protection for that cost to Europay, MasterCard and Visa when the EMV mandated chip cards and EMV compliant chip and NFC enabled readers were to be deployed by Oct. 2015.

EMV advises that after that date, merchants were responsible for fraud instead of the CC unless they implemented new readers and paid the relatively small additional transaction fee.  A ton of retailers in Europe and much of the world had complied but US retailers dragged their feet citing costs, integrating into their systems, and general procrastination.  They also liked their old, unsecure, skimmable mag stripe system because it was cheap, already paid for and CC covered the fraud costs.  

Walmart, et. al., also envisioned a huge consortium of retailers who, banded together, would have enough clout to bypass or avoid fees, create their own electronic contactless system, collect cumulative transaction data to share with each other plus target ads and offers to you, in exchange for a system which would pay directly as a check or debit from your checking account.  What could go wrong???

All you had to do was register your checking account info directly with the participating retailer in this MCX (Merchant Exchange) Current-C system and the retailers would be responsible and secure your bank info and contact information. (Yeah, right!!). 

MCX came up with this system - buy your goods at cash register.  Cashier would then generate a transaction QR code and show it to you.  You scan QR code with your smartphone app.  It verifies your account.  You ok the costs and account.  You authorize the transaction.  The transaction goes through and you show cashier, she gives you receipt.  Merchant has your transaction data, what you bought and where, which they share with every other retailer, building your profile, which they may sell as customer info.  How convenient!! NOT!

They got as far as recruiting (for a fee or dues) about 50-60 fairly major retailers, grocery stores, gas stations, etc. and took about 9-12 months to develop their system.  In the meantime, many retailers already had EMV NFC compliant readers and had allowed Google wallet/pay and early Apple Pay but then shut that function (NFC) off to discourage contactless payments!!  Pissed a lot of early adopters off.  It was only a software switch in their billing transaction system.

But Rite-Aid buckled and started allowing NFC and Apple Pay due to demand and loss of sales.  MCX threatened to “fine” them but additional retailers like Target were getting customer blowback on social media and some boycotting.  By the time MCX rolled out a pilot testing program in a couple of small cities in the Midwest (where stalwarts Walmart, Lowe’s, Home Depot are headquartered, more than half of the retailers had defected, the Pilot was pretty mediocre and MCX faded from sight.  Later Chase bought their back office tech to create Chase Pay.  

Today, Walmart, Sam’s Club (naturally) Lowe’s, Home Depot among others, steadfastly refuse all NFC payments.  I haven’t been in a Best Buy for years so I don’t know about them.  But 3/4 of the vendors and stores I frequent in SoCal accept Apple Pay and it’s growing.  The US is still so far behind in dropping mag stripe fraud-fraught 60’s technology and moving to modern digital mobile pay systems and full EMV compliance.  (Don’t get me started on similar old, old POTS landline telephone “service”, callerID, and spam robocalls!!!!)

Apple Pay had driven and disrupted (again) the contactless payment world through its well thought out security, privacy, tokenization, CC and growing bank acceptance, and of course, it’s willing-to-spend-and-use-Apple Pay affluent demographic compared to the underused, poorly supported/connected and lower spending Android demographics of Google Pay.  Samsung subsequently bought US based Loop pay to allow mag stripe emulation through its wireless charging loop, allowing transactions with the foot dragging major and mom/pop retailers.  But Samsung’s system doesn’t monetize much for Samsung (as does little of their software “services”) so they have little, IMO, little incentive to support it well - after all, they are primarily a hardware company through and through.

IMO, Apple is obviously the leader in smartphone based electronic POS payments through Apple Pay even with Android’s huge user base precisely because of Apple’s demographics and users, and that isn’t lost on retailers seeking an ever shrinking retail transaction and shopping market.  That’s also why some online retail systems (IMO) continue to resist Apple Pay, preferring to try to capture you, Your CC data and personal data through memberships, and use your transaction data (looking at you Amazon) for their purposes or sharing/selling, still.  

Same old same old old school retail thinking, disrupted and clinging.  Same goes for TV, Movie, and content creation and distribution vs digital distribution via cable/satellite vs now streaming and mobile consumption.  IMO Jobs knew where Apple TV was headed for as a skinny bundleless internet distribution system but like the record and music industry saw with iTunes, the TV/Movie industry did not want its old school broadcast/cable distribution model disrupted (IMO old white guys in power positions) and wouldn’t play along with Jobs, and Cook couldn’t get focused on content till the last few years.

now see where we are following Netflix’s lead.