Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

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Instead they showed a credit card, that look's nice, but I fail to see how Ben think's that reduces churn (credit cards aren't sticky, incentives are - no one will buy a new phone because they're middle of the road rewards are there)

You just contradicted yourself. “Stickiness” by definition is not about people getting “new” phones it’s about people staying in the ecosystem and spending more. The whole idea behind services is to get people spending more money in the ecosystem since they aren’t buying new phones as frequently.

The credit card is basically useless without the phone. If you track your spending with the phone, you’re less likely to leave and you get simple cash back with it that goes into your Apple Pay account.

Subscriptions for games are really a big deal. The whole ecosystem for games is slimy with ads and in app purchases of gems and loot boxes. Games that are bundle with the subscription are curated. If you have kids, signing up for a games subscription and handing them a new $329 iPad or hand me down iPhone is a no brainer. AppleTV+ won’t be a big deal, but get a subscription to Disney+ when it comes out and you have the perfect item to keep them busy.

I would get Apple News just for one of two magazines that I care about.

The subscription based services (News, Games) are an important step forward but don't do enough to change things meaningfully for game developers and news publishers. On the plus side Apple relieves the burden of managing an ad ecosystem and the slimy feeling of selling out customers' attention to the highest bidder.

On the minus side the publishers and developers are still compensated by the amount of time users spend in their articles/games so the incentive is still to develop addictive and time hogging services or click bait. To be fair this is a difficult problem as there's not an objective measure for quality that compensation could be based on. Perhaps more thought could have gone into this though.

We don’t know how the game publishers are compensated. We do know that Apple is paying some game developers up front and funding games. That reduces the risk of an indy developer a lot.

Even if the game is addictive, at least it isn’t tracking you or trying to take advantage of you financially.

Do we know that? That seems astounding to me. This is a difficult industry with high risk where they’re primarily just competing with their own free apps for what will probably be cannibalizing user time.

There is a reason none of the big companies are on board. It takes a lot for an indy developer to break through the noise.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/03/25/apple-will-fund-exclusive...

I’m not sure how I feel with an entire generation of kids mindlessly glued to their devices. When I go to restaurants, I genuinely praise every parent that doesn’t have their kids glued to their ipads/phones (which is rare)

You mean like generations past who had iPods, Walkmen, Gameboys and portable DVD players?

People have been complaining about kids and their electronics since the Atari 2600.

Did time begin in 1980?

Previously our parents debated if it was ok for kids to read books at the table.

I bet Aristotle complained about kid’s focus of attention these days.

Society is always panicking about something. Before that it was rock n roll and birth control.

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