I spend a fair amount of time on fitness and haven't found any tracking app that floats my boat -- Apple's being especially awful from a UX perspective in my opinion -- and I'd really like to think that if I come up with a better idea, I won't have to subsidize Tim Cook's latest vertical takeover with 30% of my indie revenue, or worse: my customers' indie revenue.
At the risk of veering off topic, I think Apple is making a huge mistake trying to capture as much app-related revenue as possible. Passionate developers are a big part of what enables their industry-leading margins on all that shiny hardware. 30% is fair, or at least "normal," for some things, but trying to get it from my personal trainer is beyond the pale.
Apple needs developers far less now than it did ten or fifteen years ago. They have been very successful at commoditising 3rd party software.
Well it’s a minimum baseline kind of thing: I use a specific app for skiing and biking but for my needs it’s just fine for hiking, running, IIT. Some others may want specialized apps for those — great! But my needs there are pretty trivial, and actually t acted as the “gateway drug” for me to buy the specialized apps I did.
Say I make a training platform that does some interaction (one-to-many as is quite typical of training) and also handles the payments as well as tracking etc.
As I understand the rules "I" will have to give 30% to Apple in that case, but if my business model is fine with say 5%, won't she (the trainer) effectively pay the rest?
YET ANOTHER feature that is linked to ONE SINGLE account. If apple decides to block your account, everything is gone. This happened some time ago to my microsoft account - everything gone. And why? Because I have uploaded (automatically) a nude picture of my gf to their cloud, it was detected by their algorithm and my account was locked.
I had to communicate with microsoft by a PAPER LETTER(!) to understand WHY my account was locked in the first place and that they would not care to unlock it.
This happened 3 years ago. Their policy might differ today regarding nude content. But for me it was a shock and a lesson.
Apple is known to start enforcing broad rules in new ways without notice. Unless they've made a positive statement confirming that such photos are allowed (I don't know, seems unlikely), I would assume that it's possible for Apple to turn on a nudity classification ML on everyone's photos tomorrow and ban anyone that matches just like Microsoft. I also think that Apple seems to respect user privacy / rights better than Microsoft (though not so much developers). So you might say it's unlikely, but my point is that it's possible; act accordingly. Is it your personal account and you have a backup and you don't think the risk is worth the hassle? Sure, do whatever you want. But is this Apple account even associated with the developer account of an app that makes your living? I would think twice.
For example, did you use the same album each time? Did you both uploaded to the album or only her or you? Did you keep the previous photos in the album? How'd you feel seeing yourself in the album?
Curious as I've never heard anyone shading albums ... Makes sense of course.
To the best of my knowledge the only thing Microsoft searches for and actions in user uploaded files is content that hits against PhotoDNA. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna
10-20 years ago it was pretty normal to keep and show off nude photos of your kids. I've seen plenty of nude photos of my friends from "a heatwave in the garden + paddling pool" when they were a toddler.
There's nothing sexual or nude about it unless you want to make it that way. For 99.x% percent of us, having one of two genders is as universal as it comes...
The practice finding its way into the modern cloud is completely unsurprising.
let me point out that PhotoDNA can't check a woman's drivers license, and getting shut out of your account because you love an A cup is pretty dismal stuff.
Two words: Pear Shaped
(Young/foreign moderators won’t get it and downvote..it’s like a double entendre do love this site.)
Hey at least they’re physically fit!
even though i like and almost exclusively use apple computing devices, i feel apple has jumped the shark as a lifestyle brand. the whole thing feels so fake and overproduced (reiterating this, as it's not the first time feeling this way). the tech and products are still interesting; the marketing and the branding are increasingly not.
fitness+ was a definite turn-off for me.
And, more interestingly, what would that ad look like?
"Ugh, appealing broadly to most Americans is so lame, we should inject some 'inclusive' racial/class flavor!" sounds like the utterance that birthed every cringey ad of the last 10 years.
the dissonance comes from a company who's strategy has clearly shifted downmarket and into lower-price services since the peaking of iphone sales in 2015 but is composed of an overwhelming majority of decision makers and marketers too far removed from anything less than an upper(-middle) class existence. they're trying to sell a lifestyle they firmly believe is desirably luxurious to a broad group largely composed of people with starkly different lives and challenges (in a year that's clearly made those differences more readily apparent to all). they slap on a layer of feel-good, socially-conscious color over a monotonous, lululemoned lifestyle to push a decidedly limited-appeal product, and they can't even see the mismatch or disingenuousness of it.
you see the same blindered strategic mistake with news+, icloud, and even tv+, whereas apple music (which, along with ipod, saved apple from irrelevance) actually cut across class and race and appealed to a broad and diverse customer base, and without trying so hard to sell us on it.
besides the interesting socioeconomic angle, fitness+ is a clear indication that apple is losing touch with customers, a dangerous sign for their future.
Their incredible success has been in convincing non-rich folks their product is worth stretching their finances to get a new one as often as they can.
Every product line is marketed as a luxury product. It’s not surprising that their services are also marketed in the same way.
If you're talking about Angela Ahrendts, she left last year.
Are Nike basketball sponsorship deals targeted at black people or are they targeted at the most successful and famous basketball players regardless of their skin pigmentation?
It was an upsetting, almost cartoonish detail in the story, but it might be helpful to you here. On a rational level she should not be afraid of sausage. But years of abuse meant that she was. It's sad, but understandable. It's just how trauma and conditioning work.
One doesn't need to be a victim of racism to empathise with the fact that it has a profound and traumatising impact on people. Maybe you know something about OP that I don't, but if you are right, and there's no reason for them to be talking about race in this instance, it's unlikely you'll persuade them with incredulity that they hold the point of view they do.
OP didn't point out that anyone was white, they pointed out that although Apple included a variety of races in the video, they believe that this is a service which will appeal to upper and upper middle class Americans, which means predominantly white Americans.
They are talking about class, and noting as an aside that they believe this service caters to a predominantly white audience as a consequence of catering to the upper and middle classes.
The point is inane because ultimately Apple sells luxury consumer goods which are affordable only to the upper and middle classes, and as you point out Apple rightly has no interest in fighting for equality through its new fitness service.
I agree with your point, I'm just saying that OP's point, whilst unintentionally clumsy, did not bring race into it in a meaningful way.
This is so not true.
As someone who works with students from families that are low-income, they have lots of Apple products.
If Apple is a luxury brand—which I disagree with—then it’s the most accessible luxury brand out there.
It certainly is a quality brand. There’s way too much focus on $1000+ flagship phones instead of items like the iPhone SE, which even low-income people can afford at $199 on contract.
The Apple Watch 3 is also $199. These devices are less expensive than a shirt or scarf in a Neman Marcus…
I disagree, but I understand this line of thinking, as it supports the false narrative that the iPhone is a luxury item like a Louis Vuitton bag and thus equally unattainable compared to the alternative.
You have it backwards.
A designer handbag is not a necessity; it's a nice to have. It's optional, especially a new one that costs $3,750.00 [1]. Owning such a bag shows you can blow nearly $4000 on a decorative item and not be concerned about how you're going to pay rent, buy groceries and all the rest. Many people aspire to be able to spend $4000 in a carefree manner.
Certainly we can agree that it's a luxury item.
A new iPhone SE is $399 ($16.66/month), well within the reach of many more people—that's before we get to a carrier discount, etc. A cell phone isn't a nice to have; it's pretty close to being a necessity for the majority of Americans. Interestingly enough, it would easily run circles around Android devices that cost twice as much.
Almost by definition, a luxury item is expensive for what it is. A luxury item is exclusive—you can't just get it anywhere or at anytime. You kinda have to know where to go to get such an item.
Apple has sold more than 1 billion iPhones and you can buy one at Walmart, Target, Best Buy and dozens of other retailers. You don't need to be part of an exclusive club to get one. Apple has 40-45% of the US smartphone market, making it pretty common.
Real luxury items have a tiny marketshare, usually in the single digits. Part of the allure is these items are not common.
High school kids from poor families bagging groceries after school have their own iPhones these days.
[1]: https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/products/twist-mini-epi-n...
It seems like I might not have been very clear, so I'll summarise my points again briefly:
1. Apple products are in general only affordable to the middle and upper classes. 2. That does not mean that they are only attainable to the middle and upper classes: I specifically said affordable because a poor person owning an Apple device does not mean that it is "for" them in the same way as a middle class person owning a Ferrari does not mean that Ferraris are "for" the middle classes. 3. Your refutation of my point is that you know low income folks who have iPhone. But that isn't what makes something a luxury product or not, and if we draw the line in this way (Apple can't be luxury because poor people own it), then LV is not a luxury product because plenty of poor folks have LV goods too.
Hopefully that makes sense. From your most recent reply:
> a designer handbag is not a necessity
No doubt.
> A cell phone isn't a nice to have; it's pretty close to being a necessity
Agreed, but you're (presumably accidentally) creating a false equivalence by implicitly comparing the necessity of a designer handbag and any cell phone. The more illustrative comparisons would be any handbag to any cell phone, and an LV handbag specifically to an iPhone specifically. (I would expect you agree that "handbag adoption" amongst women is likely to be as high as cell phone adoption, right?)
The things which make a cell phone a necessity -- a fixed phone # to be contacted on, messaging, and web browsing -- are accessible at far lower price points than any iPhone, including the SE. You can get all of them in a $30 Alcatel handset. iPhone does the same stuff, but nicer (and more expensive).
Clearly wanting a slightly nicer thing than the very cheapest one available does not mean that you are buying a luxury good. The economic underpinning of a luxury good is that as income drops, propensity to spend on it reduces disproportionately (and the inverse is also true). The idea being that folks use their capital to take care of necessities, and increases in income yield the purchase of things which are not necessities. When times get tough, the first things which people stop buying -- and they stop buying them disproportionately to the drop in wealth -- are luxury items.
The iPhone SE is almost certainly the product of Apple's struggle with this very issue. iPhone ASP prior to the SE was c. $900, and I would bet good money that a lot of Apple's customers switch away from iPhone to cheaper handsets when they fall on tough times.
It's fairly uncharted territory, because for the first time the very best product in the market is one which is reasonably attainable, but that does not mean that Apple is a mass market brand. Andy Warhol wrote this about Coca-Cola, which I think helps to drive at the challenge in categorising Apple:
> You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.
For two decades, this sort of calculus was not possible in the handset industry, but now there is nearly zero subjectivity. You don't need a $25,000 Vertu phone to know you have the best phone in the market, you can just go and buy a $1200 iPhone 11 Pro.
But the fact that cell phones are now a necessity shouldn't confuse us into thinking that Apple is not a luxury brand.
1. The ASP for iPhone is $900, and they report c. 70% of their mix being the Pro models. 2. ASPs for the remainder of the handset market are lower, and Apple is outsold about 4:1 globally by other manufacturers. They attract about 20% of buyers globally, and from the ASP we can be fairly sure that they are people spending the most money in the market. 3. From a utilitarian perspective we know that iPhone does not do anything which other handsets do not in the same way as a Ferrari does not do anything which a Prius does not. So if you are paying for iPhone you are paying a premium for "nice". 4. The people I am saying are excluded by Apple's strategy (lower income households) account for about 30% of the US. This is a really important point: your view of what is luxury can be distorted quite easily. (See also prevalence of LV bags in China.)
I don't see what the problem is, honestly.
Given Apple's own iCloud security detail [1] stating explicitly:
> For certain sensitive information, Apple uses end-to-end encryption. This means that only you can access your information, and only on devices where you’re signed into iCloud. No one else, not even Apple, can access end-to-end encrypted information.
> In some cases, your iCloud data may be stored using third-party partners’ servers—such as Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud Platform—but these partners don’t have the keys to decrypt your data stored on their servers.
Can't you see where they're going with this?
Can you see the slippery slope you're invoking? Apple owns the operating system you use. That is where it stops in your example. They don't force ownership of software, the network stack, the gym you visit (lol), where you work, etc. Where's your head at, other than "ApPlE BaD"?
If another major fitness brand wants to do the same the probably cannot because: - The tight integration is not possible, only Apple can build these kind of Apple Watch experiences. - They would need to pay Apple 30%, maybe making this not profitable especially against Apple's own offering that can have internal pricing where the 30% never comes into play.
They do not.
> It has its own tv.
The do not
> your fingerprints
Fingerprints never leave the device or stored in iCloud
Apple NAS: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Apple-AirPort-Time-Capsule-2TB-St...
Apple 802.11ac wireless AP: https://www.priceblaze.com/me918ll-a-Apple-Network-Routers?r...
Apple TV: https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-4k/
I was wrong about printers though. They just have their own proprietary printer protocol in air print
And how do you know those biometrics stay on device? How do you know they will continue to stay on the device? It's not your kernel. It's THEIR kernel. They can do whatever they want.
And the Apple TV isn't actually a TV :/
I use an AppleTV every single day and their streaming offering is nothing more than an app that I have hidden at the bottom of the screen. At the top I have a dozen streaming apps e.g. Netflix, Youtube, Amazon Prime.
I can’t tell if you’re trolling? You also haven’t said what it means to “own” fingerprints.
Then we’d have had a good alternative.
If you remove everything Google from Android 19, you'll be surprised how little it can do.
One nice user on Reddit made a list [2] of AOSP apps replaced by Google:
Google Services Framework removed in 1.1, replaced by Google Play Services
Search removed in 1.5, replaced by Google
Music removed in 2.3, replaced by Play Music
Browser removed in 4.2, replaced by Chrome.
Calendar removed in 4.4, replaced by Calendar (G)
PinyinIME removed in 4.4, replaced by Google Pinyin IME
Gallery removed in 5.0, replaced by Photos (G)
Messaging removed in 6.0, replaced by Messages (G)
Camera removed in 6.0, replaced by Camera (G)
LatinIME removed in 6.0, replaced by GBoard.
Contacts removed in 7.0, replaced by Contacts (G)
Phone removed in 7.1, replaced by Dialer (G)
Clock removed in 8.1, replaced by Clock (G)
Calculator removed in 9.0, replaced by Calculator (G).
This extends to APIs too. For example, Android Location API [3] has a very nice warning on the documentation page:
> This API is not the recommended method for accessing Android location. The Google Location Services API, part of Google Play services, is the preferred way to add location-awareness to your app. It offers a simpler API, higher accuracy, low-power geofencing, and more. If you are currently using the android.location API, you are strongly encouraged to switch to the Google Location Services API as soon as possible.
To learn more about the Google Location Services API, see the Location API overview.
Hope I removed some vagueness left by my previous comment.
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...
[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/fossdroid/comments/c332yr/what_impe...
[3]: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/pac...
As you can see they also provide examples of alternative apps that can be used that do not rely on Google, or you can install F-Droid and use apps from the open source marketplace that are open source as well.
This is much more than Apple, who won't even let you install apps outside their app store. While it would be nice for Google to open source their apps as well, they aren't necessary and there are plenty of alternatives and phone manufacturers who have built their entire reputation on providing an alternative to the Google experience while using Android.
And this can be applied to nearly every 'improvement' in all Android releases. Can you name any improvements to AOSP in the past five years? All I see on every their presentation is more and more Google Services, FCM, Assistant, etc.
Android as most people understand it is not open source.
Google promised an open alternative and have simply reneged on that promise.
There is not a multitude of phone manufacturers using an open source operating system.
The Android that phone manufacturers use is largely closed source, and only part of it is open source.
This has been irrefutably documented elsewhere in this thread.
This thread is about phones.
The fact that you can use the open source components of Android to build a home security system, but not a phone, just proves the point, that Android as a phone operating system, as most people consider it to be, is not open source.
You only have to look elsewhere in this thread to see all of the features which have been moved out of AOSP into Google Play Services to see this proved.
Whether it boots or not is irrelevant if it doesn’t do what people expect a smartphone OS to do.
Yes, there is AOSP, but that’s only a small part of what constitutes an OS these days.
Here’s a link to a post showing how dismal things are: https://bitcannon.net/post/finding-an-alternative-to-ios/
Indeed the fact that you have to install a different operating system that isn’t even called “Android” proves that Android as people know it is not open source.
At the same time, I also see a lot of value in the Apple products and services that I use, especially when combined with its stance on privacy (which is far ahead of any other large tech company). I’m just hoping, perhaps naively, that Apple doesn’t become like Google or Facebook or Amazon.
This is what bothers me. I think there is a lot of evidence Apple's claims that they keep as much of this data on-device as possible. Even so, Apple's increasing dominance in certain aspects of my life bothers me.
After watching Google progress from being a company I loved and respected into a gross corporation, I'm concerned will eventually follow suit. Even if you assume Apple's current management are a bunch of great guys, in 10 years Cook might get replaced by a corrupt douchebag.
It's concerning. But at the same time I appreciate the previous posters view as well, I'd rather not have my information painted across dozens of small companies who are easily acquired.
They were profitable enough under that model to buy You Tube, Android, and many of the other services now under the Google umbrella. I would assume their business model would continue to be selling advertising based on relevant search terms.
So, no. I don’t like that. Do you think Apple is going to start buying churches? Why?
No need to create yet another online account on a service that may share (or sell or probably lose) my workout and health information. The workout recommendations are computed on-device, and the data stays on the devices (health data is encrypted before storing on iCloud or in iTunes/Finder backups on the Mac). This is how private I prefer it to be.
The casual fitness market (for lack of a better term) is really huge. With Apple Watch SE and the standalone yearly price (covering family members) which seems like a great deal, this is just the beginning of another growth area for Apple. If Apple combines fitness with fun, like Wii Fit or Ring Fit Adventure, that’ll be the biggest worldwide fitness service ever.
I can’t wait to try this out.