Comment by tempnow987 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tempnow987 | Hacker News Reader

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What a weird take.

A lot of the changes the "accountants" have made recently are responsive to user request to my eye.

So so many more ports on the new products. I absolutely love this. I hated the pure design direction things were going under Ive.

Battery life once again going big. I love this. Usability again the key.

The trashcan Mac Pro? Too much design. Give folks a square box if you need to crank power up.

Self service repair program? Only one out there from what I can tell? I like it.

Iphone mini - yes I was one of the few folks who bought this. Sorry to see this go away, I like the small phones. But giving a range of options was great.

And this list goes on. My wife keeps her stuff (iphone / macbook) around FOREVER - software updates on phones going back 5+ years? Fantastic.

Their run rate is now something like $400B++ per year? With nuts gross margins (maybe getting close to $200B in gross margin?!!)

They've done this with almost no acquisitions (relatively speaking). And throwing off $150B in operating cash flow (6 months). I think stock buybacks are lame but what can they spend this on really? A moon launch and base?

This is the reward for being trusted (in my view) far FAR more than many other players in the market despite the complaints you see on HN.

I know they are considered a "ripoff" but if someone has a monitor / keyboard, dropping $700 for a mac mini, you can basically do all the programming / video editing / photo editing you could want.

Right... but the take presented in the article which is that Ive believed Apple should be innovating more in product categories and moving further and further into peoples lives through devices rather than milking their customers for subscription services.

I think it's a salient point that Apple has moved more into a phase (not permanent) where getting us to give them $$ per month is more important to them than creating the future.

I was relieved when things got a bit thicker, batteries got better, thermals got better, Apple Silicon came to the Mac etc etc but that's not independent of what the article states Jony was getting at.

The positive spin on the Services' focus is that Apple wisely decided to compete with the software companies on the phone (Netflix, Spotify, Google, Facebook, Twitter). The way they know how to compete, and how they believe the relationship should be, is that you give them money for a service. Even when the competitor is free, they charge us. This is an opinionated decision on their part NOT to offer free services subsided by intrusive ads.

I think my personal opinion is between what I just said and what you said.

I also like this.

I hate the "with ads" nature of a lot of services.

With Apple TV for example, you pretty much get... Apple TV.

I include the box and the subscription.

That much more expensive smart TV starts sticking ads all over the interface (ugh!). Same thing with Roku (those buttons etc). Yes - short term gain I'm sure for those folks, but long term loss of trust by users in my view.

Charge me, and do what I would want.

One problem with all of this - their service execution has been somewhat poor in my own view? Apple Card doesn't integrate with Quickbooks Online / Mint type products. I still find myself using Google Maps. iMessage is not cross platform (could I pay $1/month to get x-platform I message or something where others could message me).

I wonder how much of that shift to services was a necessity due to the pandemic. It’s very difficult to ideate new software products when everyone is wfh, I imagine that’s doubly difficult with hardware. Perhaps Apple’s drive to get people back in the office is because they’re worried the product pipeline has stalled.

> And throwing off $150B in operating cash flow (6 months). I think stock buybacks are lame but what can they spend this on really? A moon launch and base?

It would be great if they could spend a bit of that (dunno, 20B? 40B?) in fixing bugs and improving documentation.

It's not cool or fancy, but would surely help cement Apple as an even greater development environment, no?

NO question! Haha.. Even $2B more I think would go a long way :)

I'd also love to see attack surface brought down. For new messages from unknown contacts limit imessage payload to ascii. Yes. No emoji's no anything :) At least as an option. Etc etc. Re-write stacks on internet facing side if needed in safer languages? I'm kidding but...

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