elijahg

Rayz2016 said:

hackintoisier said:

Xed said:

hackintoisier said:

When the iPhone ecosystem was small, Apple’s level of control wasn’t really on anyone’s radar, but as the iOS ecosystem has ballooned to billions of users and billions of dollars of trade, I can see why governments and courts around the planet are interested in how the ecosystem operates.

So you're asking why a store wouldn't want to allow a product to lead them to another store where products are potentially more profitable for the seller? Have you ever seen TV at BestBuy advertise about buying the same TV at Walmart to save a couple bucks?

I think you’re looking at this wrong. You say Best Buy should not allow the tv to advertise about Walmart while the tv is in the store. Fair point. 

But you’re not talking about what the purchaser of the TV does with it AFTER they purchased it. Would you want Best Buy to have the power to tell Samsung or Sony (device manufacturer) that they’re restricted from allowing users to look at Walmart ads after they took the tv home? That would be ludicrous. 

But yet Apple has the power to tell Netflix (app manufacturer) what users can do with the App AFTER we purchase/download the app? Once the app is on our phones, that’s akin to taking the tv home in my example above. That’s where your analogy breaks down in my view. Netflix should have the right to tell its users about subscription details, etc. 

I live in a house. 

I own the house outright. 

But there are rules that state what I’m allowed to do to my house.
I cannot put up a fence around my front lawn (weird one). I cannot build a four storey extension in my back garden, even though I own the land. I cannot build a massive three hundred foot satellite dish in the roof. I cannot do anything that would make the house unsafe and then try and sell it. 

Why? Because even though I own the house and the land, the rules are their to stop me from doing dumb stuff that affects everything me. 

And you actually don’t own any piece of software. You only think you do. 

You can actually do all those things you listed, but there likely will be consequences, and those consequences will be your responsibility, not whoever sold you the materials. Just like there would be for third party app stores. You can make your house unsafe and then sell it as long as you inform the buyer, if you didn't then there would be consequences. If you were to replace a floor in your house, whilst in the process of replacement it may be unsafe, and it would be your responsibility to ensure no harm comes to yourself or anyone else. So as you're advocating the banning of third party app stores for the negative consequences, are you advocating the banning of knife sales, hardware stores, auto parts, etc too? Because all those things are potentially dangerous. We should ban hardware stores for the general public, in case they do buy tools and materials that would potentially make their house unsafe. And here we're talking about apps, the worst that can really happen is fraud; it's not potentially deadly like someone doing their own DIY. 

I could enable SSH, remove my password and open ports to the Internet, that would be my responsibility and my fault if I got hacked. No one goes running to Apple when someone gets Mac malware, so why is it apparently different with the phone? Apple wants control over the apps on the phone, obviously because they make a lot of money from the App Store. Anyone who thinks that's not the primary reason for the lock-in is just delusional. 

Xed said:

hackintoisier said:

When the iPhone ecosystem was small, Apple’s level of control wasn’t really on anyone’s radar, but as the iOS ecosystem has ballooned to billions of users and billions of dollars of trade, I can see why governments and courts around the planet are interested in how the ecosystem operates.

So you're asking why a store wouldn't want to allow a product to lead them to another store where products are potentially more profitable for the seller? Have you ever seen TV at BestBuy advertise about buying the same TV at Walmart to save a couple bucks? Not only have I never seen that it's a ridiculous idea to think that Sony could advertise cheaper prices at Walmart from within a Best Buy.

Do you know what I do when I want to save money on a purchase? I look for discounts instead of just expecting them to manifest, but maybe that's me and my lack of entitlement speaking.

That is not a good analogy, as Apple's control continues after the initial purchase has been made, whereas BestBuy has no control over products once sold. Better would be BestBuy controlling what channels someone could watch on their TV, removing or adding at their discretion post-purchase, and allowing adverts for things only available though BestBuy. Alternatively stipulating that someone who buys a DVD player at BestBuy can only play DVDs bought at BestBuy. Why should BestBuy choose what channels I watch? I could of course buy a DVD player from somewhere else, but then what about all those DVDs which only work with the BestBuy DVD player? See how it's not quite so favourable when put like that?

entropys said:

Yes the margins on the MBA and M1 MBP in particular must be among the best for a notebook in the industry.

but if people are prepared to pay....

Apparently everyone who’s prepared to pay is already in the Mac market, otherwise Mac sales wouldn’t be flat since 2012. Cook gloats that 50% of people buying Macs are new to the platform, which considering flat sales means 50% of existing Mac users are leaving the platform too. He leaves out that not so tasty little nugget. 

"Mac growth continues unabated" is pretty misleading. Revenue ≠ sales. I wonder how much of that extra revenue is down to the estimated $40-50 for the M1 vs the $200+ for the Intel CPUs. Also, since soldered RAM has been a thing since 2015 with no appreciable bump in revenue there must have been a drop in sales to keep revenue flat (or no one upgrades the RAM, unlikely). In fact, 2016's Mac revenue was down on 2015. Interesting that they don't report sales, companies stop doing that when numbers are no longer impressive. Wishy washy language like "The demand feels very strong right now" doesn't really say anything. Sales according to third parties have been largely flat since about 2012, which is corroborated by Mac's market share being stuck at 10% for a very long time. Mac sales are growing with the market, not outperforming as they should be. Sales of all computers are up significantly in the pandemic. Apple has essentially run out of people who will fork out for Macs, whose prices continue to rise. This is a real shame, as Mac growth had real momentum until ~2012. I wish Cook would give the Mac more attention, but it's obvious he doesn't care about it at all.

nht said:

elijahg said:

Your business is one data point, the business I worked at had about 200 Macs and we would buy the base config. I personally upgraded the RAM in each machine, saving around $150 on Apple's prices. It took about 5 minutes per Mac, and about $400 of my time to do so for all 200 Macs. 

Lol.  You updated 200 Macs in 16 hours.  Right.

And your billable rate is $25 an hour.  Mkay.

How is that so hard to believe? Remember Macs of yore didn't need to be completely disassembled to upgrade the RAM (I know, right?? how novel!). The RAM slot was under the chin, a single 2.5mm Allen key allowed access, out with the old RAM and in with the new. 5 minutes at most. The 27" iMacs are barely more difficult now. If you had a clue you'd know it's a 5 minute job.

Not a "billable rate", I was not a contractor.