I was really impressed with Apple offering reasonably priced hardware of late, like the Neo. Now I see why. They're transitionaing away from the making money off of hardware phase, and into the making money off of you phase.

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xdertz 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Every company realising it is more profitable to milk their customers every day instead of just once.

	▲	microtonal 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think for a long time Apple could grow by introducing new hardware categories, growing the average spend on hardware (by e.g. moving from upgradable to soldered memory/disks), and additional services. It has been a while since they introduced category-changing new devices and people hold on to their iPhones/iPads/Apple Watches longer due to smaller changes between generations and long software support periods. So, the primary way that they see how they could grow is by introducing more ads and more subscriptions. Slowly they make Apple's platforms more gross: - When searching in the app store, nearly half the page is ads now. - Pushing F1 movie advertisements through Apple Wallet. - Ads in maps. - Pushing subscriptions by putting ads for Apple Creator Studio in iWork apps (Pages, Keynote, Numbers). - Pushing subscriptions by putting Apple Fitness+ ads in the system setting on iOS (!). This might work for a while, but eventually, Apple will lose a key differentiator.

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kergonath 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> They're transitioning away from the making money off of hardware phase, and into the making money off of you phase.

As a result, I am transitioning away from being one of their customers.

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maccard 3 hours ago | parent [-]

To who?

	▲	microtonal 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		GrapheneOS works great and does not want to push ads, subscriptions, and whatnot. Now Pixel-only, next year also certain Motorola models.