How much should streaming games and entertainment cost?
More importantly, WHY?
Who should enforce it - your senator?
Foolish comment from a naive person.
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What We Learned About Apple During Today's First Quarter Earnings Call
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More importantly, WHY?
Who should enforce it - your senator?
Foolish comment from a naive person.
****...there are coming new phones this year, much better than last year. but wait. next year there will come much better phones....yikes...Apple thinks his costumers are stupid.....I like Apple but not this new, new, tiny better, but expensive phones. yeah if you have the money, you buy Apple. I won't do this anymore.
Cook: I think people are willing to really stretch to get the best they can afford in that category.
Me: Nah!
Me: Nah!
It's going to be pretty interesting to witness. I think there is going to be some sort of collective denial for some time. Anyone under the age of 40 has spent at least 90% of their adult life in an economic golden age that has enabled so much of our modern culture and the advancement as well as accessibility of technology.
We've been riding the wave that started with the first iPhone/Android smartphones in 2007/2008. So much of what has happened in our world culturally and economically is built directly on top of that engineering leap forward. Just about every new "thing" since has just been a natural evolution of the things that made Smartphones possible. Social Media, Drones, Blockchain... you can trace a direct path for so much of the past 15 years.
The conditions that kept the wave going for so long have deteriorated though. Innovation using the current set of tools has stagnated. Social-economic and geo-political tensions are reaching a breaking point around the world. A once in a hundred years pandemic brought the world to a screeching halt in some areas while somehow advancing us ahead 10 years at the same time in others. The only thing more certain than mass denial of an era ending is that Apple and other tech companies will keep trying to ride the dead horse until every last bone is dust.
Well, that remains to be seen, doesn’t it.
Apple has hidden it’s shipping volumes for some time now, reporting only revenue. So pushing the ASP up hides the decline in volume. That the revenue still drops despite increased ASP indicates that volumes have dropped a lot. The upcoming quarters will be interesting.
Exactly. Most Mac news sites have totally ignored this fact, since in the US the prices remained the same. I've owned every single iPhone to date. 2022 was the first year I didn't upgrade and it was all due to pricing:
iPhone 14 Pro starts at 1.349€
iPhone 14 Pro Max at 1.479€.
What's worse is that the regular iPhone 14 is now 4 digits at 1.039€ and the iPhone 14 Plus is 1.189€ (10€ more than what the 13 Pro started at) which is just ridiculous. Also the regular 13 is at the same price it was released: 929€.
There are 731 MILLION people in Europe, and at these prices Apple is in for a surprise in 2023. Specially if the rumours that the 15 Pro and Pro Max will increase in price.
It's all just ridiculous at this point. I was the most loyal Apple fan for decades. I've now sold my HomePods, didn't upgrade my iPhone and I haven't had an iPad for 2 years. Yesterday I received my Mac mini (M2 Pro) and it came full of WiFi connection issues... I just don't know what happened to the company I loved so much for all these years but they're slowing losing me.
only going to be telling if supply chain woes end. Otherwise you are comparing apples to oranges.
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That’s inflation for you, think yourself lucky that you aren’t in the UK. As much as Apple makes cool stuff they rinse their customers and always have. 30-40% margin across the board and they have always had product issues. Upgrade prices are manufactured to create a pricing ladder leading you to buy more expensive models as they look better value €400 for a ram upgrade!!! Apple always take the piss but it’s the price you pay to not be on Windows and Android. What you have to decide is can you afford it? Do you want to pay that much? Can you use older devices? Do you want to dump it all and change to other platforms?
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It's directly related to the Euro and Dollar becoming 1=1
I don't want to pay that much
I will use older devices (like my 13 Pro which will get battery upgrades for a few years... yes because after 1 year the battery health is at 85%)
I could dump it all, switch FCP for DaVinci Resolve on the Mac (since FCP crashed 20x in 1h on my brand new Mac mini M2 Pro)
I will seriously consider dumping it all if the product innovations keep being minimal yearly upgrades touted as "OUR BEST PRODUCT EVER"
Apple missed the cloud and Apple is just about missing the AI.
- First move, Apple wins over MS with its mobile OS/the iPhone.
- Second move, MS strikes back with the cloud and nowadays Azure and DevOps is what people are talking about.
- Just right now, everyone talks about ChatGPT and guess who invested 10 billion dollars in OpenAI? MS did, not Apple.
Apple fights its customers with bugs, outdated connectors and it uses the AppStore to lock competition out and users in. Meanwhile, tech evolves:
Me: "Hey ChatGPT, can you write a python script that calculates a fibonacci number?"
ChatGPT: Sure, here it is ….
Siri: Look, here is what I found in the internet: (Presenting some links)
Me: "can you modify this code without recursion?" (please note that this question relates to the last question. it is context sebsitive)
ChatGPT: Sure, no problem. Here is a script to calculate the Fibonacci number of a given number:
Siri: Flatline .....
- First move, Apple wins over MS with its mobile OS/the iPhone.
- Second move, MS strikes back with the cloud and nowadays Azure and DevOps is what people are talking about.
- Just right now, everyone talks about ChatGPT and guess who invested 10 billion dollars in OpenAI? MS did, not Apple.
Apple fights its customers with bugs, outdated connectors and it uses the AppStore to lock competition out and users in. Meanwhile, tech evolves:
Me: "Hey ChatGPT, can you write a python script that calculates a fibonacci number?"
ChatGPT: Sure, here it is ….
Siri: Look, here is what I found in the internet: (Presenting some links)
Me: "can you modify this code without recursion?" (please note that this question relates to the last question. it is context sebsitive)
ChatGPT: Sure, no problem. Here is a script to calculate the Fibonacci number of a given number:
Siri: Flatline .....
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People can use AI to generate toy program. For serious program, no one will use AI. Will you use AI to generate program for nuclear plant? A small bug in nuclear plant will have catastrophe results. Human will still be used to write these programs. For toy program, for school exam, for newspaper, AI can do it. Nothing will happen if it is wrong. For something serious, AI will not do it. Human will do it.
It's actually that growing reliance on subscription-based services that concerns me. It's a great revenue stream when the sun shines, but once things get tight for people, subscriptions normally top the list for things that can be cut to save money. I've certainly reviewed mine (not just Apple) over the last 6 months and cancelled a couple. I'm also thinking about how much I (don't) use the 'extras' that Apple Plus gives me and thinking I'd be better off going back to individual subscriptions to the Apple services that I actually need.
There's a lot of errors that occur in programming that are a result solely of human failings, something that AI doesn't (directly) suffer from. Whilst I'm not going to claim that AI will provide flawless code, there's no theoretical reason why it couldn't do a better job than a team of developers fed on pizza and Red Bull working an 80 hour week.
First of all, that is not the point. The point is that Apple is falling behind - again- It tries to make profit by increasing prices and not through innovation.
The second point, what you are referring to. I'm using it - not to generate full blown software, but it is very useful to replace some google/stackoverflow searches - which in turn leads to an incredible speed up from time to time.
For sure AI is not intelligent and it generates errors - there are several pitfalls. But if you use it wisely, it can make a difference.
The third point is Siri. Siri is damn bad these days. It was very cool when it was first released with the iP4s, but thats it. I do not believe in Apples AR/VR glasses startegy and other companies turned their investment into the direction of AI. Apple fails - again.
In Scandinavia it's common that you purchase through your operator. In this way total cost of mobile will be less than purchasing from an electronic shop and without any extra cost like interest etc.
As I am purchasing through my firm, I don't need to bother about taxes. But the price difference between my 12PM 256gb and 14PM 256gb is around 43% if I am purchasing today. That's why I still keep my 12PM. And now Samsung offers 23 ultra 512gb for less than the price of iphone 12PM 128gb. The price difference between Apple and Samsung was never this big.
It write better code than quite a lo of programmers and it will do those stupid CRUD webservices thounds of "programmers" doing right now. But - for gods sake - it won't replace the need for intelligence and creativity. For the cool guys this is another tool to support em.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if Apple considers Plus subscribers as 1, but individual subscribers per subscription, so the same person subbing to Apple TV+ and Apple Music is counted as 2 subscriptions.
Absolutely, like yourself I've weeded out quite a few. Particularly for Apple, I think the added risk is that their existence as a service company -- at least for the moment -- is intrinsically linked to their hardware business. If I moved to an Android phone or a Windows PC, or both, I can't think of a single Apple service I'd likely keep.
They're all fine, they just barely deliver an advantage when they're integrated deeply into the OS, but not so much once they have to compete on a more level playing field. I wouldn't use iCloud as my cloud platform in a million years if it wasn't also required for my device backups and photos. Apple Music is fine, but Spotify's algorithm to discover music is still miles ahead. etc etc etc
It's a small risk at the moment because even if the iPhone business started to falter, it would more likely stagnate rather than crash and burn. But Apple really isn't a service company in the same way as Google is or Microsoft is becoming.
Our economy of greed....
I am still stuck somehow in the Apple eco system. But since a while I am thinking about switching to other solutions after more than 30 years of being an Apple customer. Their stuff is just not worth the money anymore, with these prizes. €5,000 for a decent computer or €2,000 for a telephone with some extra features? No, thanks...
Services are a higher margin business with lower risk of stranded assets and sunk capital.
If people suddenly streamed less, your infrastructure costs goes down, and your entertainment licenses still have value.
If people suddenly bought hardware less, thats a lot of ipad inventory thats going to have to be marked down…
Heheh. Even TC admits that it's stretching prices, milking customers. The prose reach to a point that he no longer denies how tied up are his customer across multiple layers of anti competitive lock ins. Yes, you can leave, "but will cost you or you can stay and pay just a tad more".
Yep, that’s one of the highlights of the Apple model. As a capitalist and stockholder, not to mention a long time slave to the Apple ecosystem, I have no problem with it. The market has been deciding for a long time. Apple is not a monopoly. Not everyone deserves a trophy.
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