macarena

Apple won't touch Sony. Makes zero sense.

Could have bought Yahoo - but it got to a point where Apple's capability in cloud was better than Yahoo.

It's rapidly becoming obvious Apple will only buy companies that are in core research, as well as companies that have made huge progress in capturing market share in priority markets.

NetFlix seems like a natural fit for Apple TV

This is just one more example of the reason people have a love/hate relationship with Apple. Apple is probably the most loved and most hated company at the same time, because of these unnecessary cheap tactics. This was the problem with Steve Jobs, and unfortunately, Tim Cook has also continued this aspect of Apple.

I really wonder, of the money that Apple makes, does Apple really make so much money from all these customer unfriendly policies?

Like selling Lightning Cables for $19.99, when the quality of the cable sucks, and it gets frayed in months? Like the ridiculous extra they charge for higher flash memory? Like the 30% cut from all these digital sales? Like going out of their way to solder RAM into a device to force people to pay a premium upfront for extra memory? I mean, why cant they take the bigger picture view here?

Every time I hear this sort of thing from Apple, I just feel one thing. Someday Apple will sell 10's of millions of devices on launch day, and then face a massive recall of all those devices and probably have a huge loss because of this. And all the Apple haters would celebrate. All the fanboys who support Apple blindly simply because they own Apple shares will all take huge losses.

This company accumulates bad karma in a way that's unbelievably unnecessary. This will all come back to hurt it. And best part is that they are already getting hurt by it. Apple shares are way below where they should be simply because a lot of people hate the company. A lot of people want this company to fail. And it is behaviour like this that makes people feel that way.

For a moment, forget Spotify here. This is not a spotify issue. When you bring Spotify into the picture, it only confuses things - about Apple Music, anti-competitive, etc.

Instead look at the substance of the complaint. The substance is very simple - Company X says we don't want to pay a 30% (or 15%) cut to Apple. Because, Apple isnt offering anything of value to us, except listing our App. Charging a 30%/15% cut of all sales is simply blatant theft.

Just take the Amazon shopping app - You can download the app for free, pay Amazon directly, and Apple is not involved in the picture at all. Why should it not be the same for Spotify? Spotify is using the App Store exactly in the same way that the Amazon shopping app is using it. They arent hosting their music on Apple Servers, nor are they streaming from Apple.

If Apple believes that it owns the ecosystem, and that people should pay it 30% for the privilege of using that ecosystem, why cant it charge Amazon as well?

The point here is, Apple is being greedy.

This is textbook case of anti-competitive and restrictive behaviour - its like the bully in the park who says this is my bat, my ball, we play by my rules. Apple is being that bully here. It has got away with this for a long time, now this matter is going to stink up Apple.

And one of these days, they will lose a massive lawsuit and be forced to payback all the money they have made using this approach back to the people they stole it from.

spheric said:

macarena said:

Check out Wikipedia article about this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply

Explicitly mentions Micro-USB-B as the standard for the Cables. But if the manufacturer provides an adapter or cable from Micro-USB-B to any proprietary format, that is also acceptable.

To my knowledge, Apple doesn't provide such an adapter.

Of course they do. I keep one in my bag.

it was linked to just above your post, too.

Looks like Apple covered themselves on that one - and got yet another chance to rip off people on $19! Amazing why this company would resort to such cheap things and create hatred even amongst people who otherwise like the company! They are making tons of money as it is, why try to make money off this sort of cheap behaviour?!

Apple has reached a point where it is better to make $100 per phone for 400 million phones than to make $200 per phone on 200 million phones.

Because today, the contribution from services is kicking up dramatically. Selling more phones will ensure greater strength in the services space.

iTunes Music, Books, Movies, Apps, Apple Music Subscriptions, Apple TV subscriptions, Apple Pay transactions, all of these will be higher with greater sales of phones. And obviously there will be more such initiatives - like Search, Maps, Advertising, and many more things.

Apple can easily do a better job of the exact same things Google is doing, because they don't need to violate privacy or exploit user data or things like that. They are making money on the devices and the services revenue is simply the icing on the cake.