There are all sorts of agreements between all sorts of companies. Some pay a royalty to a distribution platform, some only pay a licensing fee, etc. You said, “don't have the bulk of your business model rely on another company for long term success” so you’re saying DropBox shouldn’t rely on AWS? Blizzard shouldn’t rely on Windows? Without AWS or Windows, DropBox and Blizzard loses a critical piece of what makes them money. There are successful businesses relying on other companies all over. Even MacRumors depends on both their ad networks and hosting providers. I guess I don’t get what point you’re trying to make.
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Tile CEO: 'We Welcome Competition From Apple, But We Think It Needs to Be Fair'
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As is your right. You get the benefit of a cross platform product that does nothing to maintain your privacy and lets them optionally sell your data without notice.
Apple has done what it does best: take an emerging product category with a frustrating user experience and deliver a polished product made possible by its control over both the hardware and software.
Tile as a product concept was always doomed to fail, not least because it just worked with itself and nothing else. No sense stopping a superior product offering from existing because of it.
And, in fact Apple couldn’t find ANY large cell carrier to pick them up. They went with Cingular because Cingular was the ONLY company to say yes. To say that they had the deck stacked against them is an understatement.
First and foremost- I would sooner Apple offered stuff like that built in. It’s not anti consumer, it’s the opposite. And it’s useful.
Secondly, for example- Apple has a free in built, syncing notes app. Yet the notes app market in the App Store is vibrant and people will pay for alternatives - and even subscribe. This is not anti competitive- it’s the opposite.
The point being is that if someone offer something worth while and with better features or whatever, than Apple offer, then they can compete. End of story. If they can’t that’s no ones fault but their own.
Here’s a good one. Does anyone see Luna Display whinging like idiots because Apple released side car? Nope. They just made it better. And that is niche upon niche even compared with the niche ness of trackable tags.
Make a better product and you will win, surely that’s always been the rules, regardless?
Let’s just say that you are a brilliant creator of apps and, with your first outing, in your first year, you clear $1,000,000. Are you attempting to say that your average person of decent business wisdom and acumen CANNOT make a profit off of $750,000 a year? I know folks running successful businesses for far less than that, and they have to deal with inventory, real estate, shipping, store placement and myriad OTHER things that cut into their revenue.
I mean, this is what it comes down to. Specifically regarding the 30% you keep mentioning (ignoring the 15% for everything lower than $1,000,000), you’re saying that it’s not possible to run a company such that $750,000 of revenue would yield a profit capable of keeping the business running. We’ll just have to disagree on that.
Is the spade here that consumers win? Isn’t this what Costco does? Use their giant network to purchase at prices others cannot match and then sell them cheaper?
Depending on the case you don't necessarily need a lawyer: a private individual has likely the option of bringing the case in a small claims court with very little expense without the involvement of a lawyer and yes, contractual clauses have been successfully challenged in such fashion. For more complex cases it's more likely to see the involvement of other companies or consumer rights' organizations.
As stated, mileage may vary a lot depending on the specific country's legislation and this includes how challenging and expensive a litigation would end up to be.
do you know how it all works? It's amazing that you are making a statement without know how something works, you will never be identified. you will never know when you are near an airtag so your privacy is safe.
Your post just made me think… There probably ARE people in the world today that simply can’t believe that there are people that don’t like a thing but would NOT loudly proclaim it in all caps on Instragrames, Fracebook, Scrapchat, Twitbers, or any one of a number of similarly named social media sites.
100% agreed. Make a good product, or a product that differentiates itself, and you should do fine.
It's funny though... Tile was basically the only game in town for Bluetooth trackers. If you wanted one... it would be a Tile.
But after reading all the negative comments about Tile in just this thread... it sounds like they didn't have a good product.
Having another player (especially a large one like Apple!) will now expose all the flaws Tile has.
Maybe that's why they're so bitter...
every business has it's own set of costs to implement and startup so this question is basically un-answerable.
for many, especially large scale nation wide roll-outs, they often are in the red for years in order to pay back the costs in order to startup.
so yeah, it's really not that simple. and 30% is a lot of potential revenue to leave on the table.
My point is that windows creates software. Only. AWS creates servers. Only.
Apple creates software and hardware that work very well together. Tile took the gamble that Apple would never create their own tracker tags and hitched their wagon to Apple... and lost the wager. That's business.
Tile should move on and focus on making their product better and giving a more enticing option to customers and give them a reason to choose Tile over Apple Tag, instead of crying "no fair!".
Tile can go make a better tag than Apple and give customers a reason to choose them, as your earlier post suggested.
Cupcakes2000 makes an excellent post above.
This is another area where I think Tile just did not try. There was a Tile program awhile back where you could buy a HD with Tile tracking hardware inside. Seems useful, yeah? You forget your HD and you don’t know if it’s in the terminal or your hotel room. A quick check shows that it’s safely in your room and you can stop freaking out. I remember there being a couple products like this that were released (or planned to be released). Why did Tile not take advantage of that so that THEY are the ones in the Vanmoof bike? Or Tile are the ones that’s the well known and established standard for tracking?
Just from what I’m reading here, if Tile was requiring a subscription for useful tracking, I can see why.
Netscape was giving Navigator away at the time as well, then later decided to charge $49. Also, Apple does not have 90% of the mobile OS space, but more like 25% world wide and under 50% in the U.S.
I doubt that. It's probably in the text that everyone blindly clicks "agree" to when they first set up their iOS device.
I’m questioning your loyalty. Apple should let them use both networks but if they did I would expect tile to offer their network.
Contractual clauses, yes, and when I researched this previously they were egregious clauses, the company knew it and was just hoping no one called them on it. I have not heard of any successful challenge to Apple’s clauses. Certainly not one that raises the question of “my phone is my phone”
I find that a bit of a gross comparison: I haven't heard of Apple execs stringing bodies up on overpasses, dumping undocumented immigrants into mass graves, or kidnapping busses full of people headed to border towns to then execute those people later.
It doesn’t even use your information what would the say? Do you give Apple permission to not use your information to help others. It doesn’t cost anyone anything