If they just built their own search engine and used it as default, and it provided high quality un-manipulated results, I think even more would flock to Apple. Yes they'd take a (big) hit up front by losing out on all of that free Google money (estimated to be ~$12B in 2019), but then they could actually say with a straight face they were truly privacy advocates and won't sell their users data to Google via the Google Search Engine.
Saying how privacy conscious a company is, while literally making billions of dollars by indirectly selling a lot of their customers data, really rings hollow with me. Build a search engine. It's not as hard as building Apple Maps, and will do more good in many ways. Hell, even non-Apple people might use Apple search and fall in love with the results, bringing them into the Apple fold.
Based on the series of frustrating searches I did in iTunes last night, Apple either isn't working on this at all, or isn't using iTunes as a testbed.
Apple to some extent launders responsibility for extremely useful services that require or use personal data by outsourcing it to others.
Why not actually turn iMessage into a privacy preserving social network?
For the same reason, as with search, I think the difficulty is underestimated.
Apple is not a small startup anymore, it can not even replicate DDG
But why? It greatly puzzles me how many "consumers" now think in terms of "brands" and dream up and discuss strategies on behalf of them. Companies should concentrate on fleecing customers, and customers should concentrate on not getting fleeced.
Most of us spend our day fleecing and then go home to be on the receiving end. If thats the terminology you want to use for the production/consumption cycle.
There's nothing that says one has to be wearing their consumer hat when using hacker news. In fact given the context of both the forum and article, it makes far more sense to me that people would be commenting as fellow fleecers not the fleeced.
Hacker news in general has more content relevant to fleecing rather than being fleeced. This article being a prime example.
As a consumer its of zero interest to me. What do I care of iPhones growth or lack of it? Reading about Apples market position and growth options only appeals to me as a producer.
Yet another poster berated me for considering it anything but rare... what gives?
At any rate, fleecing, exploitation and deception of all kinds are externalizations of costs that will always bite the groups and individuals who do it in some form, and the ecosystems that choke on it.
> here's nothing that says one has to be wearing their consumer hat when using hacker news.
Is there something that says you aren't allowed to wear it? I mean, the comment I was responded too sure is be written from that perspective. And as you say, everybody is also a customer. So why not always be in mind of that, why not refrain from fleecing people simply because you don't want to be fleeced? These hats aren't actual hats, they don't actually make you different persons.
A matter of perspective on how you see the modern economy I guess. Fleecing generally means some kind of fraud or poor trade. When you used it to describe Apple just hypothetically moving in to a new market (without any fraud being mentioned) and then backed it up with a statement about how that's just the natural way of things, I took it as a criticism of the market as a whole. That the provision of new products and services is an overall fleece as it doesn't really improve the human condition. Just a general comment on consumerism.
So because I see just economic activity as a whole as one big fleecing, I consider fleecing to just be what we all do for our 9-5. I call people up and tell them about software they don't have. You make software it is you do and then people find it some other way or whatever else it is you do. Apple is charging more for phones than they did last year making them less attainable or whatever it is they do. It's all part of the same game. Making people feel bad about their current situation by either showing or creating a better one.
Other guy almost certainly doesn't agree with that. I don't know where you stand. I mean, as far as things go Apple moving in to billing/banking doesn't seem particularly evil. It's a "problem" a great many people face that could do with some "it just works" design. At least in the US by the sounds of it. So if you're against that it makes me think you align somewhat with me. However if you think it's possible to exist in society and not fleece then probably not!
>will always bite the groups and individuals who do it in some form, and the ecosystems that choke on it
Absolutely! My opinion of society as it is now or its future are not high! We're creating new needs and standards for others to live up to in order to meet the new needs and standards created by others. A circular flow of hustle where the steps we take power the very machine we're on! That's a huge negative externality.
>Is there something that says you aren't allowed to wear it?
No, I just took your question as a challenge to that way of action as much as a genuine question, just because of the context of it. The comments section of an article discussing business strategy, on a forum filled with business owners and aspiring business owners, ran by an investment firm. It's fleecer central.
>So why not be in mind of that why not refrain from fleecing people simply because you don't want to be fleeced?
Because there are core things I want, that if not biological which I suspect they are, are so deeply ingrained from whatever other source that they might as well be biological anyway. I can't attain those thing by not playing the game. I can't be a forest hermit and also be a well respected big deal with plenty of access to pretty women. I need to produce great economic gains and capture tons for myself, because that's what everyone else is doing. That's the standard to meet. Awareness that you're playing a prisoner's dilemma game doesn't do anything to change the outcome if you can't organise with and trust the other players to agree to outcomes. It can be hard to pull off with only two people,. It's certainly not going to happen with 7.53 billion.
Me abstaining wont change the world to any noticeable degree while condemning myself to a less content life than I already am.
[..]
> So because I see just economic activity as a whole as one big fleecing, I consider fleecing to just be what we all do for our 9-5
Wait, clearly moving into a new market is economic activity, all economic activity is fleecing in your outlook, yet there is a problem with me being "critical" because there is no fraud being mentioned? Yet you say it's all fraud, so according to you it's clearly implied.
I mostly took it as implied greed, the inability to "leave money on the table". That's not what most people do, that's not what all economic activity is, if that were true, we wouldn't even have built the civilizations capitalism now gobbles up.
> I can't attain those thing by not playing the game.
Start with not referring to abstractions like "the game". People say "hate the game, not the players", but that's like saying "hate the group, not the individuals that form the group". It's your game, not "the" game.
I know for a fact, from my life and the people I read, that you're wrong. If what you said was universal there wouldn't be so many exceptions. It's just that the people who somehow started to chase external validation only hang out with people who do the same.
As for being a "big deal with access to pretty women" -- be attractive, or let pretty women be, period. The second they fuck anyone for any reason other than finding them genuinely hot, they cease to be pretty, and only the ghouls collecting them as trophy don't see that. There is no "problem" here that isn't better solved with a cold shower and people growing up.
> Awareness that you're playing a prisoner's dilemma game doesn't do anything to change the outcome if you can't organise with and trust the other players to agree to outcomes.
Maybe you personally can't. Maybe you should learn from those who are doing it, instead of making excuses and pretend "everybody can't do what I think I can't do".
> Me abstaining wont change the world
Look at the wall of text you just wrote to keep it as it is. Even not writing it would have been doing more.
> Of course it's extremely easy to say, the heck with it. I'm just going to adapt myself to the structures of power and authority and do the best I can within them. Sure, you can do that. But that's not acting like a decent person. You can walk down the street and be hungry. You see a kid eating an ice cream cone and you notice there's no cop around and you can take the ice cream cone from him because you're bigger and walk away. You can do that. Probably there are people who do. We call them "pathological". On the other hand, if they do it within existing social structures we call them "normal". But it's just as pathological. It's just the pathology of the general society.
-- Noam Chomsky
You can't have your rationalizations and also be a still in the company of people, intelligent or not, who never ever gave in, never gave up, never became accomplices. Can't serve two masters, made a bad choice, and if you can say "tough shit" in the context of exploitation and deception, I'll say "tough shit" in the context of that.
but in most cases, these musings are forms of armchair quarterbacking, not some brainwashed adoration of a brand.
This mentality is a problem. Companies have many valid motivations, and certainly profit is one, but long-term success is rarely predicated on gouging customers.
How is that a "mentality"? How is it a problem?
> but long-term success is rarely predicated on gouging customers
It being predicated by gouging is not a claim of mine, success being accompanied by gouging it is enough. Would you say fleecing customers is "rare"?
Razor blades, Inkjet cartridges, sunglasses, broadband internet/telecom, most luxury goods, payday loans, the entire diamond industry
Are you saying that the current system of having a checking/saving account, and setting up autopay/direct payments for your various bills (mortgage, utilities, gym, etc.) is cumbersome?
And proposing that instead, Apple should add up all your bills and provide you with a $amount to pay each month, and you just pay that amount into your Apple checking account?
The example you gave above, overpaying for a music subscription because it didn't auto cancel, wouldn't be solved by this system, Apple would just add it into the bill and if anything, reduce your visibility into what you're paying for and why. I'm not sure how they would know to "protect" you from a music streaming service you signed up for.
The method that works best for me is to use an app like Personal Capital/Mint to centralize financial info and get notifications on what I'm paying for, and when. It also summarizes what buckets you are spending into, so if any look odd you can dig down and investigate further.