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Comment by charlesism | Hacker News Reader

    The Apple of today is a service company

No, they're a company who are nervous about where their growth will come from. They aspire to be a "Services" company, but unfortunately they aren't much good at it (see the usual list of failures. eg: Maps, Siri, etc). But "Services" is a nice murky bucket into which they can sweep various kinds of revenue, and still appear to be innovating.

Do you remember this news story? https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/google-paying-apple-3-billio...

The key quote being "Google's licensing fees make up a large bulk of Apple's services business"

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> They aspire to be a "Services" company, but unfortunately they aren't much good at it (see the usual list of failures. eg: Maps, Siri, etc).

The whole "Apple is not good at services" thing is an old tripe. 2012 Apple was not good at services. 2018 Apple has now consistently been growing services tremendously for several years with several notable huge successes. They are now one of the largest companies (by revenue) in streaming music (Apple Music), contactless payments (Apple Pay), software sales (App Store), etc. Sure Siri and Maps are not necessarily best of breed. But not being best in every category, does not mean you are not good at something.

Actually, the key takeaway is that some analyst last year thought they were paying $3 billion. They’re making $10 billion on services now. Hardly seems that concerning, especially given the growth and the fact that you have no idea what Google is paying them. I also fail to see how a huge and rapidly growing services segment indicates that they’re no longer innovating. Especially given their total dominance and revenue growth in their other categories.

Your comments all over this thread kinda just make it seem like you have an ax to grind against Apple.

   Your comments all over this thread kinda just make it seem like you have an ax to grind against Apple.

I'll assume you're not really interested in debating my motivations for posting here. That sounds like a good way to just get into a petty internet argument.

Other than that, you make some good points.

No, I don't see Apple innovating in ways that matter to me, to be honest. Of course, that's a messy argument. They have changed plenty of things since SJ passed. Those products appeal to many people. So I don't know how to quantify it. They've certainly made a lot of money, so there's that.

As for services and Apple's focus on it: is it helping anybody? It doesn't help me. Instead I get nag screens and advertisements I didn't used to get. I get pushed to a "subscription model" I don't want. I get second rate versions of Spotify, Google Maps.

And I've seen Apple evolve from eWorld through iTools through dotMac, MobileMe, iCloud... I'm not the only person whose mouth those services left with a bad taste.

If Apple truly is, first and foremost, a "services company" as the OP pondered, then I think they really have their work cut for them.

Actually i agree, for the "nervous" part. I will be happy when greed inside decision-making processes crumbles over their heads. Who knows, may be failure is needed indeed to restart Product Thinking that Jobs was famous for.:)

Would you say they are not good at services or data science? I personally think it's the latter. Maps and Siri are pretty heavy with ML, and I won't expect these to shine compared to say Google. Services like itunes, icloud, App store, etc. are much less reliant on great algorithms, but more so the packaging and infrastructure.

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