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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

This is merely a “strategy credit”. Apple makes almost all of its money by people giving them money directly and them giving you stuff. They can afford to be privacy focused.

If you’re okay with cheap, unpolished products where you are constantly being tracked and getting advertised to, buy a Google product. If you want products where you give the company money and they give you stuff - buy Apple.

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>Apple makes almost all of its money by people giving them money directly and them giving you stuff.

The story used to be "they are making money on hardware", then when that peaked it became "they are making money on services", once they peak in that market it's going to be "they are monitizing the content delivered through the ecosystem to provide a curated and safe experience" - it's all about showing growth an keeping stock prices.

They have been making money off of curated content that you use with their hardware since 2003 when they introduced the iTunes Music Store. I’m still using my same Apple ID to purchase content from Apple that I used 17 years ago.

But that still doesn’t change the equation.

I give Apple money == they give me stuff.

> The story used to be "they are making money on hardware", then when that peaked it became "they are making money on services",

The story is still that they're making money on hardware; over 80% of their revenue (and potentially more of their profits; profit margin on the music stuff in particular can't be great).

77% but close enough.

https://i0.wp.com/laptopcapri.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05...

Ah, was looking at data for a different quarter. Probably varies during the year, though; I assume hardware share peaks in Q4.

cheap, unpolished products where you are constantly being tracked and getting advertised to

This is a bit of an old meme, it reminds me of the PC vs Mac wars back in the pre-Jobs-return era. Or Ford vs Chevy. It's really impressive how strongly companies have convinces us to associate our identities with their brands.

Android is still a mess of an ecosystem where most OEMs bundle their own crapware, most don’t provide updates for more than a couple of years if at all.

I had the displeasure of using Google Search without an ad block for the first time in awhile. God it’s awful. Not to mention AMP pages being the default for many popular new sites when linking from Google on mobile.

GoogleTV/Android TV/Chromecast are all worse than Apple TV and Roku

Give me Office 365 over GSuite any day on either mobile or desktop.

No one had to convince me about Google’d brands. Google’s entire reason for existing is an advertising operation. 90% of their profit comes from advertising.

And along come lineage and f-droid, saving you from whatever google are the chinese try to throw at you.

If you want products where you give the company money and they give you stuff - buy Apple.

The "stuff" tends to come with artificial limitations so that in order to use it effectively I have to give Apple even more money.

Which product comes with “artificial limitations” that force you to give Apple more money?

For iPhones, Lightning rather than USB-C, no headphone jacks, and inability to use software outside of the app store. For Macs, lack of post-purchase expandability, and it's getting gradually more difficult to run non-store software.

Yes, you can come up with arguments why these things are actually good for users. But coincidentally the workarounds always end up with more revenue for Apple: AirPods, 30% commission on apps, inflated BTO upgrade prices...

- you can buy extra lightning cables from anywhere at about the same price as usb c cables.

- most modern high end cell phones aren’t coming with headphone jacks anymore. All iPhones come with a headphones

- most high end laptops also don’t have internal expandability anymore.

-you also don’t have to buy AirPods. You can buy any Bluetooth headphones

- Google also charges the same 30% for apps.

- the default is allow signed apps. Not apps from the store.

- but then you have lightning cables and usb c cables. Yet another connector that's incompatible with everything else!

- [citation needed]. High end android phones with headphone do exist, so you definitely have the choice to support those vendors.

- most

- bluetooth

- f-droid, saving the day yet again.

- the default. You can just enable that without having to do anything shady at all.

> and inability to use software outside of the app store

Google wants browsers to be like OSes, because they can't directly compete with desktop OSes. This concept is incompatible with security and privacy, so Google's interests are more harmful (they fund Mozilla).

Granular permissions don't solve the privacy issue, because denying them contributes to fingerprinting. Also, JIT compilers violate W^X.

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