ichbinglitched

The headline really should say .. wipes 50% of apple "employees" ... since actual employees didn't have their accounts deleted.

as other folks have pointed out, that headline is fairly ridiculous. you can’t “beat” somebody to something if they aren’t even going that direction. 

i’m not sure what the fuss is. the times i’ve tried carplay in rental cars i’ve found it lacking.  the built-in tesla system is no better or no worse.  they both handle music and phone calls from my phone and since that’s all that i care about the built in tesla interface is fine for me.  

i’m always amazed by the fact that there are people out there who think that anybody was going to get around apple’a 30%. 

Nobody complains when Best Buy adds a 50% markup from the wholesale price on software they carry in their stores so it’s weird when people acts like the an app store is out of line. 

the App Store is a retail store just like Best Buy and as such Apple buys each copy sold at a wholesale price (70% of MSRP or more accurately Developer Determined Retail Price).  Once Apple has bought that copy at the agreed upon price they can do what they want with it so long as it doesn’t exceed the DDRP.  That’s how apple can put items on sale or give them away as a promotional item. 

App stores also have many key advantages over traditional retail because an app isn’t purchased until it’s sold… so there’s no such thing as unsold inventory and prices can be adjusted up or down at any point (in close to real-time) by the developer if they want. 

there used to be so many risks associated with making physical copies of games and other software (over production. shipping, storage, theft, etc) and because almost all the physical costs of software are gone we, as consumers, now get our apps at fantastic prices and instantly. and the developer makes more money per copy sold since the eta get 70% of retail now rather than the 50% they used to get. 

seems weird that people complain about the 30% that everybody charges. it’s a great deal no matter how you look at it ESPECIALLY if you take history into consideration. 

ireland said:

The stars are aligning where Apple eventually makes a TV. 

I used to want an Apple branded television, back when steve jobs was enthusiastic about the idea, but the i came to realize that television margins are razor thin and there really isn't anything that Apple would do that would differentiate themselves in the market.   One of apple's biggest strengths is efficiency in the supply chain.  example: iMac boxes are oddly shaped so they can put one right side up and another upside down right next to each other which enables them to fit more iMacs in a container.  they got rid of the keyboard and mouse and power brick for the Mac Mini which let them ship a tiny computer in a tiny box.  the profits on a Mac Mini and an iMac are already pretty good so that just adds to the bottom line.  A TV barely makes any money and they take up a LOT of room on shipping containers and in warehouses and in a retail store and are obnoxious to deliver.  Let other folks deal with that drama and just ship a quality user interface (in a form factor that can be upgraded every few years while the TV itself can live out its useful lifetime (my oldest working tv right now is about 11 years old and I've never used a single "feature" on it.  I just connected any relevant devices to it and did everything i needed through those.

On that note, the ideal TV for me is a dumb box that has nothing but a power button and an input selection button.  I don't even want built-in speakers in my ideal TV.  i don't want to be able to change channels on it.  i don't even want to be able to adjust the picture on it (I realized that was actually possible a couple days ago when i tried to calibrate my old Apple TV 4K and it said that it was "not required" due to my TV having "Dolby Vision"... i hadn't realized that was a thing, but i was pretty stoked about it)

22july2013 said:

Fair point, but my point which I made several times is also valid, that Apple won't sue you if you jailbreak your iPhone, which also makes me think they might make installation of other OSs a legit feature just like they do in macOS. They don't void the warranty if you install Windows. And if they void a warranty it's only on the jailbroken OS, not the phone itself. It's easy enough for the user or Apple to install a valid OS again later.

i don't think that there is a single person alive who has been afraid of being sued by apple for jailbreaking their own phone.   jailbreak your phone... you lose your warranty.  if your phone is so broken that you have to actually bring it to apple for repair then you're probably not going to be able to "install a valid OS again later" so the voided warranty is still the deterrent...

and the idea of an officially tolerated (not even supported... just "tolerated") "OtherOS" seems pointless.  the A-series processors are so heavily customized from ARM that you'd never get the same performance or optimizations from a guest OS so it'd be easier and cheaper to just buy an Android / Windows / whatever device and get on with your life.  At least with the Macs they were running off the shelf Intel processors so are almost instantly compatible with other operating systems.