adamc

ScottNY71 said:

Doesn’t anyone else see what’s really happening here? Apple isn’t worried about a free trial cost, nor are they worried about what analysts will think of the free trial cost. That’s brilliant marketing and tying together of a product that needs as much attention as it can get to be successful In an ever growing but already crowded market.

What they’re worried about is how they plan on accounting for that on their quarterly financials. They think it’ll be confusing and that most of the analysts and media will get it wrong or will misunderstand it and that it’ll look bad on their hardware numbers to the people who don’t get it. It’s similar to what they did with the original iPhone, recognizing revenues over a 2 year period because of the value of (and probably internal cost of) ongoing free software updates. Analysts didn’t get it and it was only when Apple changed it mostly back to normal years later that people saw the true value of the iPhone to the company. So there’s a precedent.

So what did they do today? They had their Apple Card partner make a powerful statement about this and get a lot of attention, even having the analyst focus on the very specific details and providing an extremely specific example, and then Apple publicly acknowledged and refuted that statement, something they only very rarely do.

They bought themselves free pre-publicity about this to soften the potential blow when they announce their next earnings in about 6 weeks. This gets people thinking about this now, with the analysts and media seeing the accounting method in action via a detailed explanation and example from another analyst who not just gets it, but gets it so much that he can cite the ins and outs at that level of detail. And then Apple says it won’t have any material effect. So there will be some kind of impact at some level, just not one that matters or will change anything. Unless someone misunderstands what it means, of course. Someone who publicly tells other people what to think of it. 

Then look at what they wrote: "we do not expect the introduction of Apple TV+, including the accounting treatment for the service, to have a material impact on our financial results."

That callout could be taken as an admission that the accounting treatment will be something that’s not exactly normal, giving credence to and making analysts pay more attention to what the Goldman analyst said, which will make them understand it more before they’re forced to digest it and come out with an opinion on it within a day or two when Apple announces. And the media have even less time because they have to report on it immediately.

What Goldman did, which I think was in partnership with Apple, was a brilliant PR maneuver.

arthurba said:

Ok - I’ve long had a gripe with this behaviour from Apple - it’s their Achilles Heel. 

I first encountered it years ago with iTunes. Apple would release the latest iTunes and it would run on/support 7 year old Windows XP, but only run on the last 2 or 3 Mac OS X releases. 

iTunes today is worse - the latest release will run only on Mojave, but it runs on Windows 8 (an 8 year old OS) just fine. 

Now they block lock access to apple.com for 5 year old MacOS releases, but not 8 year old Windows releases. 

Apple make their money from hardware - so they do everything in their power to get you to upgrade your hardware.  I get that - and I prefer it than buying from an advertising company who do everything in their power to get you to give up personal information and watch adverts.  But it’s the choice between two evils,  not the choice between good and bad. 

If apple would just update the SSL libraries on those old MacOS releases then they would be secure for web browsing.