I have 15,000 songs in my iTunes library, the vast majority of which are not on Spotify. My 16GB iPhone would normally only hold a fraction of my music but with an iTunes Match subscription I have access to it all.
Also, it gives an off-site back up of every matched song. So tell me, how is iTunes Match similar to Spotify?
My bet is that upcoming Apple products will continue to break previous records; the supposed acquisition of Color notwithstanding. Would you seriously bet against the next Apple product selling like hot cakes, based on this?
Apple will continue to print money in the immediate future, just as Microsoft did in the 00's, but buying a startup which never had a viable product, business plan or assets for an inflated valuation like this is a good sign that Apple has lost direction and focus. Social is not their core competence, and should not be, and even if it was color is the last company they should buy. If color is failing, they could easily poach the best staff after it implodes, rather than buying the shell.
You took jumped the shark to mean peaked in profits, I suspect the OP didn't mean it that way as it's normally used to refer to a decline in quality, that's all we disagree on.
Update: Just to be clear, I don't mind hellbanning spammers or obvious trolls, but looking at bonch's comment history he/she doesn't seem to be either.
1. Log off your HN account.
2. Browse, look for your own posts.
The only reason a hellbanned person can't tell he's been hellbanned is because he's logged on as himself. The reason others can tell is because they aren't logged on as him. The solution is obvious -- log off and visit HN anonymously.
It's quite a brilliant thing. The problem is mods are really abusing it here on HN (you should hallban seasoned trolls. Not someone that trolls once or twice in a year, or worse, someone who isn't even trolling but just said something stupid or out-of-place).
I read with showdead, and have noticed we seem to often tell auto dead users about it, which seems to defeat the point. Perhaps I've misunderstood the whole idea.
Bad comments get voted down anyway, so there's already a mechanism for that, IMHO hellbanning should really only be used on people trying to post spam repeatedly or repetitively troll comment threads.
The correct thing to do is to start paying out dividends, and Apple has done that. Making a relatively small wild-ass investment vaguely related to their core business is at least a better thing to do with the other surplus money than going into finance or real estate.
I would think that this is an exceptional acquisition that apple could make: no more color; a battle on instagram, facetime emulation and build upon the social image cloud idea that color started with...
and they wont be bogged down with colors staff - they will own all that color was, not what egos color is.
And if he really doesn't want to work for Apple, trying to 'force' him by buying his company doesn't seem like a good long term strategy
This is 'feeding the startup trolls'. Where's the value in Color? Nothing
Maybe that's what Apple can't do properly: acquisitions.
Bill Nguyen is massively talented at making things work for Bill Nguyen - his prior business bought by Apple for ~$80m, Lala.com, was lackluster at best.
Under Jobs you could kind of, sort of get your head around $80m for essentially a talent acquisition in streaming / digital music which is/was an important revenue stream for AAPL.
But even under Jobs the supposed golden boy, Nguyen, bailed. Taking his vision and some of his best people with him.
So I see this as "Apple makes the same mistake twice" - and if Apple is going to jump into the "social around you, bullshit, blah blah blah" game through this acquisition I am truly sad.