Apple Just Wrecked 15 Startups in Less Than 1 Hour | Hacker News Reader

Apple Just Wrecked 15 Startups in Less Than 1 Hour

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34 pointssandebert21 comments

> You know that feeling when you see something stunning, but you just can’t afford to pay fully right now and you’d really hate to load it onto the credit card? > It’s awful.

“Awful”. Really? Please, let’s not mince words, let’s even call it the greatest tragedy in history…

Come on, all it takes is a little self control. If you see something that “costs 499 but you only have 323$ In your account”, then you really shouldn’t be buying it at all. It’a not “awful”. It’s consumerism and poor money management.

Most of these are not completely "wrecked" because, of course, Apple operates in their own ecosystem. But it's a significant warning about developing a product, not a feature.

I don't understand what's the novelty of the first example (payments split into regular intervals).

Where I'm at (India) this has been a thing forever. They call it EMI (I think it stands for Equated Monthly Installments).

For example, I linked the Amazon India listing for iPhone 13 Pro down below [1]. It costs ₹119900. If you don't want to spend that amount in one go, you can split it into multiple installments spanning several months. Click the 'EMI Options' link and you can see plans. Some of them are interest free.

So it's possible to buy that phone and pay for it over several months.

It's not just Amazon India. There's many providers across different segments offering such schemes for different products.

Whether this is good economics is a different matter altogether. I personally have never bought anything on EMI. But keep in mind that what works in America may not work in India, and vice-versa due to different mindsets and economic situations.

[1] https://www.amazon.in/Apple-iPhone-13-Pro-128GB/dp/B09G99YPQ...

Extremely common here in Romania too. We call it 'plată în rate', or installment payments in English.

Lol, no they didn't. All of those businesses are still viable because not everyone has an iDevice.

Apple is disruptive with these products, but won't ever dominate with their offerings, simply because they will lock things to an apple ecosystem and they generally have a history of loosing focus.

Freeform isn't really a competitor to Miro. Miro is able to do higher order stuff (it was used as a Visio replacement in my previous org). Microsoft has a similar product to Freeform called "Whiteboard". Its no where near as slick, but its free with Office 365. If Miro can survive that they can survive Apple's version. Especially since Apple's version isn't going to work on anyone with a PC.

1Password has made a business out of adding what apple doesn't provide and integrating what they do. They will likely retain a niche providing the "Legacy" password support, cross platform, and other areas Apple don't care about.

For the finance tools, basically apple will always be niche if they don't expand to PC / Android. They are currently operating as a middle man, leaving the true banking up to other financial institutions. I wonder how much they are going to be able to make out of this before they are either forced out, or have to take on more of the actual financial operations and how the current company could handle becoming that company if they needed to.

Passkeys make PW managers obsolete? Only if the Platforms lock down their syncing. I‘d love to sync my Passkeys to BitWarden and share them through their Vaults with family, etc. The sync part is already there, on iOS you will be able to sync it through iCloud keychain and share it with AirDrop, there is no reason why this can‘t be opened up.

Same here. If they open up to third party password managers, I'll definitely use bitwarden to manage it.

Passkeys has a huge risk hole; all of these services are offered under terms that say they can fire you as a customer at any time; if all my logins are through Google or Apple, and they close my account for any or no reason, I have lost access to all sites that used Passkey or whatever. No thank you, I will keep the blast radius lower than that. At least with LastPass or 1Password, I have a offline break-glass backup.

Surely you have a hard copy. If you do not, are you not still in a huge risk hole? Ink and paper can last centuries. Flash ram, cloud storage, spinning discs, all susceptible to bit rot.

> share it with AirDrop

Can you SEE wifi password on iOS yet?

Imagine the convenience of having all of your life inside these integrated apps. Then imagine the horror when one day you go to turn on your MacBook and your Apple account has been deleted because you did something that you were unaware of.

All your websites, login passwords, emails, photos, videos and a whole lot more inaccessible even if you buy a new MacBook or a PC for one thing you did that impacted one Apple service, or that Apple just decided they didn't want your custom any more.

Putting all of your eggs in one basket for sure.

"Buy now, pay later" This is something that's really widespread where I live. You can buy stuff with your credit card and it pay over 12x months "without interest" (we know everyone is sharing interest costs instead). And many people do this. Instead of saving, they just buy the thing they want and pay it over the year with their monthly income.

I think there have been better examples of Apple wrecking startups over the years.

Specifically it’s an issue with startups that only target Apple’s ecosystem.

None of the businesses in these examples depend on Apple solely. And this is just as likely to validate their use cases and increase interest in their products as it is to hurt them.

Am I the only person who has never even heard of half these products, let alone used them? If Apple can do something better than they can or their products weren't compelling enough for Apple (or similar) to buy them up, well... that's how the world spins.

It makes sense that when a giant makes some movements or shifts it’s posture, that it can seriously damage or squash the little guys all around. Especially when that ecosystem of little guys is something the giant knowingly created around itself.

I guess they hadn't heard about Apple's tradition of Sherlocking.

Damn, it seems author does believe everybody is tightly integrated into Apple ecosystem and everybody is an American!

https://archive.ph/blHSF

An 800 pound rent seeking gorilla is disrupting my rent seeking. Cry me a river.

Paywall / Annoyances: https://scribe.rip/swlh/apple-just-wrecked-15-startups-in-le...

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