News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Apple’s $1T Milestone Reflects Rise of Powerful Megacompanies. Parent comment

Re:Apple’s $1T Milestone Reflects Rise of Powerful Megacompa... by jrockway on Friday August 03, 2018 @01:05PM (#17681532)
Not really. They do make stuff that people buy, but often they take out loans to buy those things ("free with 2 year contract") which changes the economics a bit. They sit in the middle of every transaction on those devices you bought, telling you which applications you can and cannot use. They sit in the middle of any content you purchase; instead of your New York Times subscription supporting journalism, 30% of that goes to Apple instead for the privilege of owning "your" device. They intercept your text messages to provide iMessage. Who knows what happens to things I've stored on iCloud after I delete them.

I don't have a problem with any of this stuff, but Apple is hardly a just a scaled up lemonade stand. They are just Google and Facebook but better at brand image.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple’s $1T Milestone Reflects Rise of Powerful Megacompa... by scarface74 on Friday August 03, 2018 @01:17PM (#17681628)
They sit in the middle of any content you purchase; instead of your New York Times subscription supporting journalism, 30% of that goes to Apple instead for the privilege of owning "your" device. They intercept your text messages to provide iMessage. Who knows what happens to things I've stored on iCloud after I delete them.

The content producers have choices.

- they can force you to pay for content outside of the App Store (Spotify, Amazon)

- they can allow you to pay for content either in the App Store at a higher price or outside of the App Store at s lower price (CBS All Access)

- they can allow you to buy content in or out of the App Store for the same price (Udemy, Hulu, Netflix).

As far as “intercepting your text messages”, they are end to end encrypted where neither Apple nor your carriers can see the messages. Unlike Google’s latest text messaging app.

But as a user, I know my transaction cost - the price I pay to Apple. With Google and Facebook, the price is tracking, embedded ads, crapware (in the case of Android phones), etc.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple’s $1T Milestone Reflects Rise of Powerful Megacompa... by ryanmonroe on Friday August 03, 2018 @02:39PM (#17682407)
The App Store makes up about 5% of Apple's total revenue. The vast majority of their revenue comes from selling products to consumers. Their business model is not comparable to Google's, because Google gets most of its revenue from advertising.
[ Parent | on HN ]