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Comment by lallysingh | Hacker News Reader

Their products aren't compelling anymore -- they're living off the momentum of prior greatness. As soon as someone else has a compelling, exclusive phone feature, Apple's likely to collapse. A lot (LOT) of their product demand is from fickle customers that would leave them quite easily. There's no lock in, and there's no reason to be loyal -- it's a fashion brand.

As for privacy, I think you'd have to show that those customers don't have facebook accounts to take that seriously.

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> Their products aren't compelling anymore -- they're living off the momentum of prior greatness.

Not compelling relative to what? People have been saying this about Apple with respect to the original iPhone X (which sold a very large amount), the Apple Watch, and even the iPad which they managed to bring sales back up as the rest of the tablet industry floundered.

> As soon as someone else has a compelling, exclusive phone feature, Apple's likely to collapse.

Your biases show through when you talk about a company with the resources of Apple collapsing because of one exclusive phone feature. In reality, Apple's biggest challenge is competing against last years iPhone.

> There's no lock in, and there's no reason to be loyal -- it's a fashion brand.

Again, your biases. For many people iOS is the easiest mobile OS to use. It has it's quirks, but for many people it just works.

> Not compelling relative to what?

To desktops and laptops that offer more RAM/CPU/GPU per buck while costing much less.

> For many people iOS is the easiest mobile OS to use.

If they can afford it. Not so easy when earning 500 euros or less per month.

I lived in Latvia for one year. Median salary - 370. Lots of people with iPhones. Not her latests iPhones but lots of people. Funny thing - there was a great divide - the biggest amount of dumbphones I’ve ever seen since iPhone introduction and yet, lot and lots of iPhones.

It would be interesting to correlate if they were new or 2nd hand, alongside the owner's income.

> To desktops and laptops that offer more RAM/CPU/GPU per buck while costing much less.

This is not why people buy Macs, and it hasn't been in a long time. If anything, Macs are closer to giving performance/$ than they usually ever have.

People by Macs for aesthetic and usability. The vast majority of the population does not care "how many gigahertz their RAM has", and Mac sales reflect this.

There are PCs that also have similar aesthetics, while costing 500-1000 euros less.

As for the sales, not when you compare Mac against all other vendors worldwide.

Naturally it is nicer to just compare Apple against single OEMs.

I'm not sure about Europe, but in Australia fewer people own iPhones outright - it's normally something like $99/month with calls and data.

Many countries go with pre-paid handsets.

Then Android security is even more critical... But that's another tangent.

My point about the iPhone is that the majority of it's customer base buy iPhones to replace existing, working iPhones without much motivation in new features. There's a substantial social pressure to stay on the newest phone.

What features justify replacing a 2 yr old phone with a new one? For $800-$1000?

So far they have been pretty good at making people want to replace their existing iPhone with a new iPhone. I'm using an iPhone 7, and while I won't buy a new phone any time soon because my current one still works, the 120Hz oled screen is attractive (and the design makes my current phone look ancient with its huge chins on the top and bottom), and the better camera would be nice to have.

Yeah they have. Really well. But it's left them quite vulnerable to a trend-sensitive audience that may leave them just as quickly.

There is lock in to the wider ecosystem beyond a particular phone feature, eg. iMessage, iTunes, HomePod, etc.

Plus, apple has a huge lead in CPU and GPU performance and this is only accelerating, paving the way for future potential phone features imo.

Yes, their smartphones and Macbooks are not innovating at the pace that they used to. But so aren't Google's, Microsoft's, Samsung's and all other PC/Smartphone company's.

The reason for that is that PCs and smartphones are plateauing as a computing platform.

I'm super curious to see what Apple's game for VR and AR headsets will be. Currently, Oculus/FB is leading the race there.

Well, at least I can plug an external GPU into latest MacBook Pro. Can’t do it with latest Surface - not T3 ports.

Maybe some time will come where they go from fashion-only-brand to consumer and/or budget brand? Sure it could hurt their image, but if they keep going into that privacy direction it could possibly give them A LOT more customers, who just can't (or don't want to) afford apple right now.

If their fat margins collapse, so does their market cap.

innovate or die.. it's an honest way to go

There is heavy lock-in with Apple, moreso than any other company I can think of. But for sure it is a fashion brand.

But in order to be fashionable, they need to have compelling designs and technology. They do not anymore.

Their main new product seems to be those stupid AirPods, and I don't think you can carry a trillion dollar company on that. Everything else is just a minor tweak on an existing product.

I don't know about that. You have some connectors and adapters, but most people's investments are online instead of in long lived hardware. Maybe some Mac apps? But most users are primarily on Safari and iTunes. Hardly locked in?

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