Fitness+ is okay-ish but it’s not getting any attention and I don’t think it deserves its $10/month price. Non-Apple fitness subscriptions at the same price are far better.

Just for starters, what if you have two people in the house who want to do a Fitness+ workout together? Too bad: even if they both pay for it, one gets the nice tracking and HUD and the other gets squat. This is an obvious and trivial feature, and it’s nowhere to be found. I could maybe see it getting cut for the launch checklist if people were behind schedule, but Fitness+ plus is more than five years old now, there is no excuse.

It’s total abandonware from a company trying to do the absolute minimum to get your recurring subscription.

Again, another great move sponsored by bean counter boy Tim.

Commercials in TV+ are as bad as ads in News+, e.g. it seems I cannot open the app without getting blasted at with a Peacock commercial.

Which makes it even more tragic that the few good streaming shows produced recently are all on a network no one watches.

I am glad that they bought the rights to Brandon Sanderson's books, because I know Netflix wouldn't do them justice and Amazon prime would be far worse than that, but it also means that it will have a tenth of the available audience that a Netflix contract would have brought.

TV productions are a product, not a service. Apple TV is the service.

> "It's also not a coincidence, IMO, that drug addicts are also called "users" since "user" implies a one way dependent relationship and that's what all the tech companies have been trying to create."

You're drawing a connection that's not there. It's indeed not a coincidence, but just because both situations fit the definition of the word "user" (and "to use").

People use drugs, whether they're addicted or whether they're taking a one-off dose given to them by a doctor. They are a customer in that situation if they're buying the drug from somebody (illegal dealer, pharmacy), but they're a user whether they paid or not.

Likewise, someone is a customer if Apple's if they paid for, or are expected to pay in the future, a device or service. But they're a user regardless of whether they're using a phone they bought, or a service that's being provided for free.

People can use services provided by charities, they can use skis on a mountain... there's absolutely no negative connotation to its general definition, it just happens that some things people use are bad and some are good.

I agree that “customer” is a better term. I’m not sure I agree with the rest of the rationale.

In my mind, “user” stated to take over when we started having web based services that were used by people, but they were the ones paying. For example, Google and Facebook. Both got paid through ads, so they advertisers were the customers. The “users” were just the eyeballs the advertisers wanted to reach. So, you had to make your service compelling enough for someone to use for long enough that they’d see enough ads to make it profitable to provide the service.

It’s more akin to talking about “viewers” or “viewership” when talking about more traditional media.

For Apple, they are generally looking to get paid by the ultimate consumer of the product. So to them, we are the customers.

"user" feels quite descriptive and neutral to me. It's a person that uses the device they own or are given access to. That's it.

I'm the (super-)user of my Linux PC. I have total ownership and control over it.

Arguably "customer" makes the business relation to the provider of a service/device clearer.

The term I hate with a burning passion is "consumer".

I agree that Arcade is poor.

However, I’ve been subscribed to it since its inception because it is the best way to have games that my kid can play without shady ads or engagement practices.

I know that is not going to last, as my kid is now a pre-teen and likes other types of games (like Hollow Knight) that are not available on Apple Arcade.

But the current state of the gaming industry is terrible, especially on mobile. Indy companies producing games like Dead Cells, Hollow Knight, and Stray are good, and there is the extremely rare case of Larian. But other than that, the market is full of dark-UX patterns to promote app purchases. Mobile apps are a minefield of gacha games that should be forbidden for kids.

I thought the same until my kids started playing iPad games. Apple Arcade is way better than the baseline of aggressive ads and micro transactions.

Arcade is amazing for my kids, it’s the one thing that pushes the value of Apple One bundle high enough for me to pay it. I assume all games not in Arcade have gambling mechanics.

'User' has been a term in computing for decades before the current Cloud Services fad ( hence uid ).

One uses a hammer, one uses a microwave, one uses a computer, one uses a word processor. Nothing negative towards the user, they're being productive with the product.

If anything it's derogatory in the other direction, towards the manufacturer, reducing the fruits of their labour to that of a simple tool.

> aren’t stuffed full of gambling mechanics and advertisements. Where can you get that from the Play Store?

The Play Store Pass? Which not only has games but utilities https://play.google.com/store/pass/getstarted

Can you support this unfalsifiable reasoning beyond blaming a convenient political scapegoat? Which paragraph of which article of which regulation requires them to deliver low-resolution PDFs in Apple News, for example? What about all the other issues?

Your argument essentially boils down to: If Apple doesn't get to do whatever they want without compromise, their execs get too discouraged and depressed to innovate. The obvious conclusion is that the only way we can enjoy the unrivaled genius of Apple is to give them a blank check to do whatever they want.

Every act of consumer protection and every form of pro-competitive regulation is twisted and exaggerated, no matter how insignificant it is to their bottom line or product functionality. The world is ending any time they don't get their way and when the world doesn't end, this decision becomes the scapegoat for all of their future faults, missteps, and bad performance. They can never do anything wrong and nothing is ever their fault, it's so so incredibly tiring to listen to this.

Which regulation made Apple News have low res PDFs? Which regulation made the search boxes in Liquid Glass transparent and show text from the window behind?

The company as a whole has changed across the board.

The beginning of Apple’s backslide far predates any (thus far fairly limp-wristed) attempts by regulators to pry open their iOS walled garden.

At least in North America - their biggest market I think? - the iPhone is still utterly locked down. Far more locked down than, say, their Macs were when OS X was at its best. Meanwhile macOS continues to get more locked down and yet still worse. Your theory just doesn’t match reality.