george kaplan
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Apple is financing all the lending for the Apple Pay Later service
This is not the same think as Klarna, which imposes a fee on top of the price of the goods and any merchant fees.xbit said:
Klarna are in serious trouble, with widening losses. While short-term loans of this nature can be helpful in emergency situations, that's not what they're being used for by-and-large. For example, half of Klarna's customers who have defaulted on their payments have done so after purchasing fashion goods.8thman said:This is risky in the current financial environment.
Inflation is taking a toll on consumers and some will start defaulting on payments. Timing of this is not good.
It's a grim situation. This style of lending is morally objectionable and Apple should be ashamed for entering the market.Apple stated clearly there would be no interest or hidden fees. Price + tax, divided by 3 = the amount of the three payments the client makes every 2 weeks. It is pretty easy to figure out if one can cover this 3x payment over a 6-week period.There are folks with poor credit, or so much debt (like student debt) that they’re not going to qualify for a credit card. But if they can cover 3 payments over 6 weeks, Apple will front them the money.BTW, a hefty percentage of Klarna complaints are from those who bought foolishly (like some trendy clothes), then had a financial reversal and couldn’t cover all of their 4 payments. Some defaults may have been premeditated, since Klarna previously didn’t report to credit bureaus and just wrote off the loss, but now it does. That may slow the rate of intentional defaults.
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Apple is financing all the lending for the Apple Pay Later service
No, this is a move to snare a sector of the market which can’t/won’t get a credit card like the Apple Card to make the purchase of the next accessory or iPad. With transactions capped at $1K, Apple takes little risk on defaults, while building relationships with customers who may grow into Apple Card customers, expanding their creditworthiness into iPhone to MacBook Pro range.8thman said:This is risky in the current financial environment.
Inflation is taking a toll on consumers and some will start defaulting on payments. Timing of this is not good.
All of this builds transactions which don’t cost Apple 3% to 6% in processing fees from the credit card companies. While that may seem trivial, scale that up to tens of millions of dollars in transactions and the savings become significant. It also gives additional experience and data to Apple as it continues to build out a fintech division—one that might be responsible for car sales/leasing in a few years.
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Compared: Apple Maps versus Google Maps in 2022
The article was great, but the differentiator for me is the privacy aspect. I live in a major metro region, so either system features rich, detailed coverage. I realize that reality isn’t shared by those who live in different regions, but in my case both Apple Maps and Google Maps are generally excellent (each has its quirks as well). But Apple isn’t selling my travel history to ad brokers. I as well once got the travel history sent to me by Google, and that was enough to keep me from using their system.Despite other companies sometimes offering a “better” product, I defer to Apple software (and to search engines like Ecosia and DuckDuckGo) to handle my identity with care. Google gets an increasingly smaller part of my daily life. I have a legacy Gmail account (dating back to the invitation-only days) that I use for requests (like insurance quotes) where I know I will be spammed until the end of time from the people replying, and have used YouTubeTV as my streaming option. But otherwise, no searches, office suites, or anything else. Google is an advertising company and their “free” products cost me my privacy and identity. No thanks.
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Elon Musk says Apple's 30% commission rate is 'definitely not ok'
Karma will be served when a cadre of fed-up Tesla owners who ponied up as much as $10,000 (depending how long ago the purchase was made) for “full self-driving”—which includes slow-speed features like Autopark and Summon, as well as highway automations—sue when they become tired of being beta testers for software they paid full price to get.
In this case Musk is getting 100% of the fee for the software, not just 30%, and after all these years hasn’t come close to the promises made.
I give him credit for SpaceX, but otherwise Musk gets loosely credited with founding PayPal (he didn’t) or founding Tesla (he didn’t). He is a savvy promoter but altogether too comfortable taking credit for the work and vision of others.
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Fans slam Apple TV+ 'Friday Night Baseball' stream outages, commentary team
Terribly sorry you feel underrepresented and marginalized. Thoughts and prayers for you in this difficult time.Joe_K said:
Vin Scully is a white guy. Whoever did the hiring for Apple clearly doesn't want any of those. Out of 10 announcers, zero were white guys. No way that was an accident.george kaplan said:Apple would do well to pare the teams to a maximum of 3, or even 2. Vin Scully worked alone for decades and showed how it should be done, using the same approach on TV or radio. Apple can educate these teams that minimalism also works well for television audio, and not just electronics products.
