Oh, sick burn dude! But sorry, no, squarely Gen X. I own a boutique PR and marketing firm targeted at the independent music industry (among other content sectors), so obviously I have an agenda and a viewpoint, one based on the marketplace I work in and the artists I serve and the reactions from those artists and their record companies I see to how Apple Music does business. Your viewpoints and experiences may be different, and I respect and support that. We're here to have a discussion, right? So you can learn from me and I can learn from you, right?

Oh sorry. Apple Music is the best!

And therein lies the core problem with Apple Music: It is to streaming services what Top 40 was to radio in the 80s. Apple is far more concerned with whether Apple Music appears to be aligned with what is "now" than building a vital and comprehensive music service, much less fixing the oft-documented problems with the garbage that is Music.app. The end result is not something that comes across as cool and essential, but rather a bunch of boomers wearing tight-fitting jeans and inviting themselves to industry parties. 

Before the Swifties descend upon me like a ton of bricks: Tay-Tay is not, er, my cup of tea, but she's an amazing business person and I don't find her music actively terrible, or anything. It's the form of Apple's myopic partnerships, not the individual artists.

Another example would be the weird amount of attention they kept giving Billie Eilish, who admitted in a couple interviews she found it all "very strange," and that it was entirely a construct between Apple and her record company. She had nothing to do with it, despite Apple continually selling it as a partnership between her, individually, and Apple. Again—boomers in jeans making sure to be seen rather than thinking about: Is this what my users actually want?

rue said:

lordjohnwhorfin said:

The immersive videos are absolutely completely incredibly mind blowing.

Agreed! And I want to see something other than dionsaurs. Why not an immersive tour of Apple Park? Or Yosemite? Or a flight along the Monterry coast? Or to get really adventuresome an immersive view of Machu Picchu? The possibilites are endless. 

Or, you know, take a trip to those places instead of wearing a goofy face-mounted iPad for masturbatory sizzle reels. 

The success of the AVP will be in its ability to apply spatial concepts to everyday computing—expanding and improving the process of working with information. The recent stories of the AVP being used in operating rooms is a great example of this. Stupid 3D videos for the easily distracted? Come on now. What a waste of the technology. 

The author of this article I’m sure means well and is good at what they do, but may not realize the headaches they can end up causing people like me, as a creative agency art director that often farms projects to contractors. The eps and pdf files the Serif apps create are hot garbage that often don't pass basic preflight requirements. I should know, I’ve had to fix a bunch of them. Canva’s editable exports are worse and their cheeseball templates are visible a mile away. 

blastdoor said:

What exactly are apples values?

Money. Which, I mean, is not some huge surprise or unexpected plot twist. It's just that Apple is two very different beasts: A massive corporate machine, one of the largest ever created, who's success makes it beholden to large swaths of the economy that expect it to keep producing returns and keep growing, and a formidable yet paper-thin construct of marketing, cuddly and beloved, representing every protected class, representing American entrepreneurism, representing the environment, representing creativity, representing... A whole host of things no corporation should ever take the place of in the hearts and minds of its customers. 

The two heads are often going to push in opposite directions, serving their masters. I agree with Blastdoor. For every concession and move on the chess board we hear about with regard to Apple and China, I'm sure there are 10 more we never will.