| ▲ | Towaway69 4 hours ago |
| Undercut the competition until there is no competition, then raise prices or have I missed something? Ah, yes - cross finance your loses by selling compute in your own data centres / hosting service because you can. |
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| ▲ | thecupisblue 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I would assume it's because younger generations of creatives are using their software less and less, increasing the risk of losing the market completely on the software side. At this pricing, more of them will turn to paying Apple rather than paying for multiple services, keeping them tied into the ecosystem. Also so many people are paying for Canva, Capcut etc that taking a piece of that cake is quite a low hanging fruit if you have a distribution platform. |
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| ▲ | no_wizard 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | The acquisition of the Affinity software by Canva I imagine motivated this. It’s even a similar pricing model, though technically with Pages / Numbers / Keynote covers a little more ground but I think the main intent is to get creatives using Apple’s creative software again Pixelmator being the only 3rd party software because Apple never made a competitor to Photoshop Though since Canva went full on toward more robust tools I imagine they have started capturing the entire editing chain more than they did 2-3 years ago, hence the Affinity acquisition | | |
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| ▲ | exitb 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Apple doesn't ever need to make much money on this software, when they make money on hardware needed to use it. |
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| ▲ | sofixa 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Apple hardware has "only" a 36% margin, while their software and services have a 75% margin. They definitely want to make more money on software with absurd margins. | | |
| ▲ | bombcar 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | A huge portion of that margin is from the 33% App Store cut which is infinite margin for them, effectively. "software and services" really should be broken out from the App Store cut. | | |
| ▲ | bee_rider 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Is margin profit/revenue or profit/costs? I think it is the former, so it should be “effectively 100%” right? Anyway, this isn’t really a meaningful quibble argument-wise, it is obvious what you mean! |
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| ▲ | crazygringo 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Somehow I don't think Apple is going to put Adobe out of business. |
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| ▲ | echelon 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | They don't need to. They want marketshare to enhance their other market positions and give them optionality for future strategy. They'd love the whole market, but they don't need it and they won't employ too many resources chasing that. They're a powerful giant with hands in so many places. Each enforcing other endeavors. This encourages people to stay in the Apple hardware ecosystem, for instance. It dog foods their silicon. It keeps people thinking of Apple as the creative brand and operating system. More creatives buying Apple -> more being produced and consumed for and on Apple. Also the strategy of getting kids young has always been genius. They started that in the eighties, I think. | | |
| ▲ | twoodfin 14 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Well put. Best framing I’ve seen of the answer to, “Why is Apple in the streaming service business?” |
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| ▲ | nozzlegear 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What data centers? Does Apple even have data centers? Can people purchase compute on Apple's data centers? |
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| ▲ | darrenf 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > What data centers? Does Apple even have data centers? Apple absolutely has data centres. Where do you think Apple TV, Apple Music, iCloud, Maps, etc compute happens? Here's a press release straight from the horse's mouth about one in Denmark, in late 2020: https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2020/09/apple-expands-rene... > Can people purchase compute on Apple's data centers? Not to my knowledge, but that's not saying much. | | |
| ▲ | nozzlegear 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Not to my knowledge, but that's not saying much. But that's the entire crux of their comment: undercut the competition, and make them pay for compute on Apple's data centers. |
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| ▲ | beernet 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Not an Apple fan at all, but damn, in the views of some of the HN community, one can only do wrong. Pathetic. |
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| ▲ | embedding-shape 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Pretty spot on. I think what's new is that Apple is employing this tactic, before they always went with "Our stuff is more expensive because it's better", but as they seem to slightly pivot into other directions now, this choice also seems to align with the new direction. |
