They make, sell, and support physical devices.
That's what's called "classic manufacturing."
I spent most of my career in the hardware business. It's really odd to see so many folks unable to understand business models that make money, besides "sell data."
It really seems as if folks can't grok that companies that make money, can do so without necessarily selling data.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/google-pays-apple-36percent-...
I wasn't defending Apple. I was merely pointing out that one of these, is not like the other.
Like I said, it seems that we have a hard time understanding business models other than "Harvest and sell data." Posts like the GP, seem to reinforce this appearance.
Upton Sinclair is known for a quote, referencing this kind of thing.
Hating on Apple is quite popular amongst tecchies. I understand. I've probably been more pissed off at Apple, than many folks, here.
But it does bother me, that people don't seem to understand the classic business model of making things, selling things, and supporting things. That's thousands of years old, and still very much relevant. Quite a few folks, here, do that. I spent most of my career, at companies that did it.
But they are nowhere near the scale of other companies.
I feel as if Silicon Valley has really forgotten its hardware roots, though, and that's sad.
Making things is really difficult, and extremely risky. Playing with data is really easy, and quite profitable.
I’m not sure who is right, Apple or these analysts, but either way: 2.5% or 7%, that revenue source isn’t large enough to be a corrupting incentive on Apple’s behavior.
Maximizing digital service revenue at the cost of user trust which drives their high margin hardware sales would be killing the golden goose.
> genuinely serious about preserving user privacy
Nope, not anymore. That ship has sailed and more revenue is to be made by harvesting user data
(Google and Facebook don't make money by "harvesting" or "selling" user data, they make webpages you spend a lot of time on then put ads on them.)
I don’t know if Apple has client-side ad scripts like those, but in decades of building websites I’ve never been asked to implement one.
(You need it for music to fulfill your contracts with the artists though.)
That does seem to call for supporting evidence. I write Apple apps, and they make it very difficult to access user data. I would need to know how they get it, and how they make money from it.
We started off talking about Apple isn't in the advertising business, and now we're at standard telemetry.
Upton Sinclair really knew what he was talking about.
Whether the advertising is ultimately successful does not matter to those people, what matters is if they can convince the person paying them (the manager paying their salary, the ad agency, etc) that they are effective.
Just because they're not Google's size doesn't mean they don't have people making product decisions that will eventually sacrifice privacy for profits.
[0] https://digiday.com/marketing/when-it-comes-to-ads-apple-isn...
The reality distortion field is strong, even with some HNers.
Making and selling hardware is difficult. Really difficult, but some companies have been doing it successfully, throughout recorded history.
It's really strange to see it being dismissed as "impossible," nowadays.
Apple makes tons (read: billions of dollars) from ads. Hence, Apple is in the business of ads, have sales people working with advertisers to make targeting, personalization work.
I take no side in "ads are bad" argument, but you have to accept that Apple is in the ads business, whether you like ads or not.
Apple isn't. Just sayin'. They are trying to do it, but they aren't really anywhere near the scale of Google and Facebook. They make money (lots of money) by selling high-margin hardware, and, to some extent, digital media, on that hardware.
Currently, Apple is genuinely serious about preserving user privacy. I realize that can change, in the future, but it's the way it is, now. I get the feeling that a lot of folks on HN are having difficulty understanding businesses that make a profit by doing stuff other than harvesting and selling PiD, but that's not what has made Apple a 4 trillion-dollar company. They make that money the old-fashioned way; but with a modern twist.
That said, this situation is unforgivable, and I hope that Apple leads by example, by preventing this all-too-common type of dumpster fire from happening in the future.