Comment by leorocky | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leorocky | Hacker News Reader

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Apple has a simple and transparent strategy that is good for its customers: pay a premium and get a premium product. They don't violate your privacy, they don't usually show you ads (although they do have an ad network, limited to mobile apps, iTunes and the Mac app store I'd think).

They have a limited number of SKUs. Apple makes a few good products, each one representing the Apple brand in all its glory. The vertical integration from hardware, to software and cloud is something nobody else can do except maybe if Microsoft if it gets serious about the Surface (despite the poor sales).

It might be true that we see less of the innovation that the Steve Jobs era was known for, but they haven't changed at the heart. They're keeping their design quality, their finish, and the vertical integration. Apple isn't making any junk and exploiting its brand and deceiving its customers with shitty products.

Having said that, it doesn't mean that Apple's products are for everyone. I don't like iCloud and I don't particular like iOS, but even so I can see the value in what they're doing.

"Don't violate your privacy" --- what?

As compared to...who, exactly? They have an ad network, and they have a cloud product - by definition they're holding onto as much of your data as any other company in those businesses.

As compare to Google, presumably.

The privacy implications of their respective offerings are quite different. Gmail actively scans your email looking for keywords, while iCloud is not ad-supported and does not read your email. AdWords makes your web searches follow you on the sites that you visit; iAd does not allow your Internet activities to affect the ads that are displayed. Google's servers log what I searched for, and Apple's do not. Etc.

They have an ad network but it doesn't necessarily mean they are good at the ad business

http://www.macrumors.com/2014/02/18/apple-iad-stingy/

"Apple's unwillingness to share large amounts of consumer data is hurting its iAd business, according to Madison Avenue media buyers that spoke with AdAge. The company is said to be "downright stingy" with the information it shares, too slow at developing ad products, and "too reticent to foster relationships." "

You seem to be using a strange definition of the word "good". Are the ads you see on the internet (based on datamining your personal information) better than the ads you see in magazines and TV (which are based only on very coarse aggregate statistics)? Are today's TV ads significantly better than those of the 1980, when demographic information was far coarser still?

For all the promises of "only seeing ads for things you're interested in", data-mining based advertising has been a colossal flop from my perspective as a consumer. We've surrendered a tremendous amount of personal information and gotten hamfisted targeting attempts and obnoxious "viral" campaigns in exchange. It makes me nostalgic for the stupid but well executed beer commercials of the 1980s. Not giving away all your personal information is not the same as not being good at advertising.

This is absolutely false.

Because almost all of Google's products are server based, they gather far more information about your behavior than Apple. Where is Apple's equivalent of Google Analytics, Adsense, and Search History, tracking you all over the web?

Also, when it comes to personal data such as email, Google openly reads your data to support selling your attention to the Advertisers who pay the most to influence you.

Apple doesn't examine your data to support the interests of third parties.

Apple makes money from you buying their products, not from selling ads. They therefore want to respect your privacy, compared to, say, Google.

Apple made $125 million from their ad network iAd in 2012.

Apple made $41.66 billion from all products in FY2012. The amount from iAd appears to be negligible.

The parent said: "Apple makes money from you buying their products, not from selling ads." This is factually incorrect. Apple does make money from selling ads. Likely somewhere between $250m and $500m a year now as mobile ad revenue has increased quite a bit the last couple years.

While this would represent just a fraction of Apple's overall profits, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I like how you have been incessantly downvoted despite being completely accurate.

The Apple fan club on HN is strong and tolerates no dissent.

Sure, he is technically correct, which is the best kind of correct, if you get off on pedantry.

This is also technically correct: let’s assume Apple made $500M in iAd revenue in 2013 (his upper bound); they made about $150B in revenue in the same year, which makes iAd 0.3% of the revenue. That is clearly what’s driving the business.

The comment

> Apple makes money from you buying their products, not from selling ads. They therefore want to respect your privacy, compared to, say, Google.

was poorly worded. More precisely, TazeTSchnitzel used “makes money from” instead of “exists thanks to” or some more appropriate phrase. The response

> Apple made $125 million from their ad network iAd in 2012.

replies to that wording error, ignoring the bigger argument. This could've been an honest mistake—the parent did use figure of speech instead of precise term, after all—or an intentional use of fallacy.

Then the thread spirals into discussing whether TazeTSchnitzel or JohnTHaller is correct (both are and both aren't), and now ends up with HN meta-discussion.

> Sure, he is technically correct, which is the best kind of correct, if you get off on pedantry.

He isn't technically correct. The GP provided a factually correct statement.

> That is clearly what’s driving the business.

By no interpretation is that statement even technically correct.

It's a pretty common thing to happen on HN. You get it with Google Chrome, too, anytime you point out the fact that every character you type of every URL is sent to Google which doesn't happen in browsers like Firefox (it's the whole reason the search box is purposely kept separate, so only what you enter in the search box is sent to the search provider for auto-complete).

I think it's more likely that people disagree with your literal reading of the original statement. The money that Apple makes from iAds doesn't matter – there's certainly no indication that it drives policy, which was the subject under discussion. Responding that it's not exactly zero doesn't add much to the discussion.

I tend to think that a (likely now) quarter of a billion dollars or more a year does matter. It matters less than iPhone/iPad revenue, of course... proportional to the money if not less-so (as in mattering less per dollar than iOS). But saying a quarter of a billion dollars a year in revenue doesn't matter and doesn't drive certain decision-making within any company is a bit naive.

Sure, but it isn't in their interest to share that information, whereas with other companies that is their main business, to use your personal information to make money from you with advertisement. If you care about this sort of thing I'm not sure you have a better option than Apple except maybe to use linux and I don't know what you would do for a smartphone, maybe a Mozilla phone.

>> except maybe to use linux

Huh? Who are you comparing Apple against? It sounds like Google/Facebook/Twitter but they are advertising honey-pots rather than product companies.

The more accurate competitor category includes Microsoft, Samsung, Dell, Sony, HTC etc. Like Apple, their first business is to sell product... but they will sell adverts too if they can.

The privacy "factor" is one of the main thing that binds me to Apple wrt other cloud providers. They seem to really care about it. And I confess I am a little worried about iAd and its possible future implicancies...

They care about it because they own you. They want to ensure they continue to own you.

If you genuinely think they give a tiny shit about your privacy you're incredibly gullible.

No, they're not. If you want to, you can buy an iPhone, sync it with iTunes, and apart from downloading apps and OS upgrades, that iPhone doesn't have to speak to the Apple cloud at all.

>As compared to...who, exactly?

Literally every other company selling you hardware?

>by definition they're holding onto as much of your data as any other company in those businesses.

Retaining information and letting others see that information (privacy) are not mutually exclusive. Swiss banks store all sorts of private information, but are known for protecting their customer's information and privacy. Implying that Apple storing that information is the same as them letting someone who isn't you see it is dishonest and wrong.

Very true, they are good for consumers who are able to pay more to get online. Back in the early days of android, you definitely wanted to pay more for iphones as the quality difference was so large. Now that quality is more or less equal I guess the selling point is "privacy"? I'm not so sure what the quantifiable price is for that. It depends on how much giving my information out harms me, and I'm not quite seeing the harm. If I do a search from my desktop for a location then the driving directions appear on my phone, then that "privacy violation", or sharing of information between machines, is actually helpful. In fact, both companies want to give consumers what they want, in one case so they buy their phones, in another case, so they click on relevant ads. So what I see is that Apple is simply behind the times on information sharing and is catching up (new mapping service which collects data for example). But once Apple starts sharing information well to provide a good experience like what google provides, then I'm not sure what the selling point will be for paying more.

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