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Comment by InTheArena | Hacker News Reader

Revenue up 54%, $89B in Q2. M1 macs are a hit. Services are a hit.

It's remarkable to see the success that AMD and Apple are having without Intel.

I’ve been considering dropping Spotify for the “Apple One” plan, looks like I’m not the only one from that huge jump in services.

The only things that keep me from moving over to Apple's plan are being able to import my playlists and liked songs (thousands!) from Spotify, and Discover Weekly and Billboard Hot 100-esque type playlists.

Does Apple have equivalents of those features? Discover Weekly is incredible.

Spotify is way ahead of Apple Music on everything to do with discovery. I tried to switch to Apple Music (mostly for the Homepod Mini support) and really disliked the apple music app.

I had the same experience. I went into it and really wanted to buy into Apple Music but after a couple of painful months I went back to Spotify.

It's interesting, I had the opposite experience. Years ago used Spotify and found that Discover Weekly rarely had anything I'd actually want to listen to, whereas with Apple Music's New Music Mix I'm adding the songs it digs up fairly frequently. Might have to do with preferred genres.

I didn't have great luck with Discover Weekly either, but I also suspect that there was a familiarity bias in play -- Apple Music was the first service I paid for, so I stuck with it and found lots of things that I really liked. When I tried Spotify a few months ago for a while, it just didn't feel like it was materially better and I found the UI a little confusing (see: familiarity bias), so there didn't seem to be any reason to switch.

I have a suspicion that if I'd actually paid for Spotify and stuck with it for a few years, though, the reverse would be true. My gut feeling is that these two services just aren't different enough in practice to make switching between them worth it for most users, unless they want a feature in the larger ecosystem (e.g., AirPlay 2 or Spotify Connect).

I've used both on and off, for a couple years each. Ultimately what made me come back to Music was simplicity and ecosystem integration. Big fan of the social features in Spotify though, like the Wrapped "year in review" feature.

Some leaks in the past suggest Discover Weekly simply searches through other users' liked songs and if you like Artist A and they like Artist A and B, and you haven't checked out B yet, there's a better chance you'll like Artist B over C that neither of you have heard before.

They're not leaks, they literally had talks and blog posts about it. https://www.slideshare.net/MrChrisJohnson/from-idea-to-execu...

Transferring songs and playlist is actually very easy (unless you are listening to very niche stuff). Songshift (no affiliation) worked very well for my needs and moved most of my playlists and songs over. Not sure about discover weekly though

I second Songshift.

I switched awhile ago, and have now gotten the bundle as well. I bought an app on iOS called SongShift that has handled migrating my playlists very well. It’ll even keep them in sync both ways.

My musical preferences did not lend themselves well to Spotify’s discovery, I don’t think, and Apples has been a similar experience. Both have been ok, but neither stellar.

Apple has a few personalized playlists that get updated weekly, I really enjoy them. Seems like in general, Spotify fans think Spotify is superior, AM fans think it's superior. I've tried to use Spotify recently for a couple's subscription and I find the UX worse, but maybe it's just different more than anything.

I've used both extensively. The libraries are fairly similar or maybe even the same these days but Spotify is miles ahead on recommendations and automatically generated playlists, radio, things of that nature. Apple was better for mixing your local library in with theirs (you can kinda do this on Spotify but it is extremely clunky). Otherwise they're about the same.

I started on Apple music and found the app ok but not great and found the webui to be completely broken. Like you would click play and it would play a different song in the list.

Switched to spotify and it has all worked better and the recommendations are better.

It seems they built Apple Music in a browser out of the Previews of the iTunes Store, which would explain why it is so terrible.

I've converted at least 5 people from AM to Spotify once they realized things like the social features like collaborative playlists, artists created playlists, following your friends to see their playlists and what they're listening to and they all tend to say the discovery/radio is much better although I think Pandoras blows it away. The UX is constantly in flux and it's different between OS's (only the desktop has 90% of the social features) and they keep nixing good features (mostly social, I guess due to EU regulations) which is frustrating.

Last year they updated it and removed the Android widget completely - we absolutely revolted blasting them with 1 star reviews, etc. They timed it with the launch of their India service so I have this theory that they knew they'd lose a bit of customers (they had no idea how many Android use widgets apparently) and negative reviews would come in but replace them with revenue/reviews from India which knocked their stars right back up.

Literally same day. I don't like the company because of things like that but it's still IMO the best music service. I'm using Tidal as well for its hifi/masters now.

I've used soundiiz.com for importing likes & playlists (though from different source and target services). Works well enough.

Apple Music has New Music Mixes and Continuous Playing.

I did this when it came out and have definitely not regretted it.

Send me an email and join my family plan

Is that allowed? Don’t you have to be at the same address or something?

Don’t do it, the huge caveat is the plan owner pays for all store purchases.

Yes this is false. It was like that in the past, but you can separate purchases and just share the apple one.

That's optional.

Not as far as I’ve been able to discover.

Purchase Sharing is at the bottom of the Family Sharing preferences.

Not at all

I really questions people's decision making process when I see them on Apple Music or Apple Maps

I'm not the only one

I've had terrible terrible experiences with Apple Music, and there are far better options out there.

But the alternative for Maps is Google, and the last thing I want to do is give them a bead on my current location and all the places I want to go and explore. With Google's ownership of so much information, I think anybody avoiding Google Maps is very well justified.

The point is to be navigated to the correct location. Just as recently as December in Los Angeles, an address on the beach sent a skin starved date to an alleyway 10 minutes inland that she was totally cool with being in, and I had to tell her to Apple Maps likely did that, whereas Google Maps matched my much more romantic location. Could the opposite happen? I guess. Does it though?

Thats never been my experience, but I really only have my own to go on.

However, in the early days of Google Maps, when MapQuest was still around and before cars had in-dash navigation, Google Maps did give me bad directions for driving, that I had printed out, and made me late. I still ended up using Google Maps, and they got better.

I will still use Google Maps to discover biking routes in unfamiliar areas, so I do give up my location to them occasionally, but in my experience that's the only edge that Google Maps has these days.

Apple Maps bookmarking is vastly superior to Google Maps (subtle ui, better list support). Apple Maps on CarPlay is pleasant, Google Maps is garish. Apple Maps biggest down for me is reliance on Yelp for business reviews.

The macs are unfortunately still a sideshow compared to iOS devices (written on an iPad now).

All related - iOS has never run on Intel.

In the emulator, err, simulator it does, doesn’t it?

What's most important is not how the apps are developed, but what the hardware runs on.

Only because the dev hardware ran x86. Now with M1, you won’t need to.

In theory, iOS can run in a chroot on the M1 Macs, right?

Maybe. It’s complicated.

chroot only virtualises the file system.

iOS apps do run on Intel using catalyst. I recently ported over my hacker news client from iOS to MacOS and it works well on catalyst with small changes to handle right click and toolbar color etc. I was legit pleased to see how easy it was to get it working.

Sorry, I doubt AMD would be where they are now had they not been a second source for Intel’s x86 chips, that’s what really bootstrapped them.

M1 is meaningless. To 99% of their market it is just a new vague number to justify an upgrade (like ram sizes, 3/4/5G, etc).

What is masterful is how they redirected the desirable-number-du-jour to be something that is both 1) proprietary and 2) not cutting into their service revenue (e.g. larger storage = less people shelling out for cloud storage)

The M1 is far from meaningless. Apple's new MacBook Air is by far the best laptop I've ever used. It has fantastic battery life, stays cool without a fan, and competes with the Intel i9 in terms of performance.

I doubt very much the M1 will make people abandon Windows or ChromeOS in droves. Windows+Office or Windows+Steam, or plain price point, is what keeps people from moving to Apple, and having better CPU isn't radically gonna change that.

You are literally repeating the same marketing/self-justification that everyone said for every new Air model.

Don't take my word, look it up.

Around launch date, everyone in the universe will post "new MacBook Air is by far the best laptop I've ever used. It has fantastic battery life". Then the same model 6-12mo later "I loved the thinness, but now it's being too slow for X so I might get a macbook"

As someone who has been a laptop upgrader for 17 years with Apple, and about 7 with Dell, I can affirm what others are saying that the M1 upgrade is a quantum leap forward. It's a pretty big deal in terms of integrated (Battery + CPU + Latency + Responsiveness - every time my Monitor adjusts without blinking I smile) experience.

Not just marketing speak. If they can keep up this momentum with M2, etc... they'll be creating some defensive moats around their laptop/desktop business.

Apple had never release a MacBook Air that's faster than the previous top of the line MacBook Pro. This is a first.

The air has had great battery for a while that's true, but now it has great battery and great performance.

I find it very interesting that due to the existence of the Emoji Bar, and the lower performance and worse battery life due to Apple Silicon, the MacBook Air is now a far more Pro machine than the 15 inch MacBook Pro.

In the late 80s and early 90s, every computer that Apple made was better than all their other machines. Even if they were making a smaller budget device like the SE or SE/30, performance increased so quickly that it would beat all the previous machines.

For one short year, in 2020, due to the ARM transition, Apple repeated that feat. It could keep on going, if for example, the refresh of the Macbook Air comes out in 2022 and beats the Pro machines that came out in 2021.

Yep, going from a Mac Plus to an SE-30 is probably the closest experientially to my MacBook Pro 15/Intel Mac Mini-> M1 Mac Mini in my memory.

Form factor basically same, screen the same, OS the same, yet somehow the qualitative feel changes with the new responsiveness. I don't switch to any Mac other than the M1 now except of necessity because of the instant ability to feel the downgrade.

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